Doesn’t it feel great to receive something when you feel like you haven’t quite earned it? It’s like the time my partner and I were in Chicago for a weekend, and they were just handing out free boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese on the street, but since we passed by that street corner again on our way back to the train, we came back home with 4 boxes of Mac & Cheese. I’m curious what comes to mind for you when you think about a moment where an unearned, unexpected generosity fed you in some way. A gift from a friend that made you feel seen. A compliment on your outfit from a total stranger that made your day. Someone covering your meal to get you through to the next paycheck.
After leaving Japan 11 years ago to live here in the US, I am reminded from time to time of just how beautiful and complex my gift-giving culture of origin is, because of how intentional gift-giving is, and how the one receiving the gift has to embody the position of undeserving of a gift, and also calculate their now-indebtedness to return a proper gift to out-do the original gift. Some of you may have seen the tweet that was trending during the FIFA World Cup this year when a Japanese tourist shared his experience going to a Mexican restaurant in the US for the first time. These are his reflections:
“USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter.
‘We have not earned these.’
‘They just come with the table, man.’
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.”
I share this because these three readings in our lectionary today made me think about our human framings of justice, generosity, and grace in practice. And what is it about our humanness that sets limitations and conditions to these things when we put them into practice? Is it fear? Is it ego, keeping us from the unbounded embodiment of these things?
In today’s parable reading in the Gospel of Matthew, the grace and generosity of the landowner is so freely and confusingly given. For me personally, it was hard not to feel some resistance to the fact that every
day-laborer was compensated the same amount of money. Some had been working since 6am, others from 9am, and noon, others since 3pm, and the last crew that the landowner picked up at 5pm likely worked for just an hour. The 6am crew protested, and would I perhaps do the same if I was one of them? Having worked at least 11 hours longer than the 5pm crew, in the scorching heat, and earning the same amount? For context, the scripture says each received the same usual daily wage, likely a denarius, which was enough to feed a large peasant family for a day. So, here, everyone who was called in by the landowner receives enough of what they need. And the landowner went out to the marketplace throughout the day to make sure no one was left behind without work and pay. Everyone is looked after, and has the means to move forward. But…who really earned, deserved the full day’s worth of pay? Or is there something to reconsider about how we even ask that question as people inspired by the life of Jesus? In a journey to embody God’s unbounded grace, what does it mean to earn it? That final question in the parable catches our attention: Are you envious, because I am generous?
When I feel that my bubble of generosity and empathy for an “other” has shrunk, I always go back to my favorite quote by Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger: “You are a part of me I do not yet know.”
Because, if we are, as the Apostle Paul writes, many parts of One Body, how might our joy and generosity expand when it becomes less clear where “me” ends and “you” begin? If your joy is my joy, your success my
success, your injustice my injustice, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, where does jealousy have left to simmer?
When I read the story of Jonah, how the Ninevites repented and reconciled with God and turned from evil, I see Jonah’s disconnectedness from the people of Nineveh when he is upset that they were spared. An envy that he suffered in his journey in order that they be saved. And I wonder, in the spirit of blurring where “you” end and “I” begin, how would Jonah’s heart change if he had seen himself as one with them? Without categories, without qualifiers.
It reminds me of a poem that unveils that question a bit, by Michael DuBois, titled The Homes of Our Neighbors of Burning, written this year:
I’ve started removing qualifiers
from the[se] things I read and hear –
A school in Iran bombed
A child of immigrants detained
Palestinian girl left without limbs or parents –
And it has torn the curtains Clean off my fragile windows
Here, take it,
My false, self-righteous security; I do not want it anymore.
The homes of my neighbors Are burning, and no amount
Of smoke can trick my eyes away.
Friends, please, I call to you: Grab a bucket or a pail.
Gather every drop
Of compassion you can find. The embers have taken
To the wind and we must Douse the flames together – Together or not at all.
Like many of us here, I had the opportunity to sit with the community that gathered at the corner of Baldwin & Willy Street, a sacred statement of grief, its magnitude and weight was felt in the sea of bodies that gathered shoulder to shoulder there, after Corey Ruiz was shot three times and killed by police here. Of the many things I witnessed in the community, what stuck out to me was the grace and generosity of everyone who showed up. It wasn’t a question of who earned the assistance and support. Instead, neighbors donated water, food, shelter, generators, flowers, candles, professional mental health support, spiritual support, de-escalation, and companionship, and presence. It was unpaid, round-the-clock, giving, without expectation. While much of Madison has moved on from those weeks, my hope is that our grace doesn’t run dry past that street corner on those hot summer days, but continues to flow in the support for police reform, expanding mental health care accessibility, holding leaders accountable, and companioning alongside our unhoused, black, and brown neighbors of Dane County, as we wonder what can be possible when we practice unreasonable, illogical, foolishly generous, grace. Or in the words of Christ, when the last shall be first.
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