Jack Hardaway
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Losing a job.
Sometimes, it can be like losing part of ourselves.
We forget who we are, or who we used to be.
It can leave us wondering who we are. Do we have value? It can break the heart.
It can leave us empty.
And that wilderness- of searching for a new job and the endless rejections- it can wear us down.
It is upsetting. Disorienting. It leaves us questioning what we thought was important, how we thought things worked, how things should work.
God hires everyone and gives us all a job to do.
That is part of the parable today, God’s kingdom is like that.
The pay and benefits don’t make any sense though.
That is the other part of the parable.
God’s kingdom is upsetting, disorienting. Encountering God leaves us questioning what we thought was important, how we thought things worked, how things should work.
Losing a job and encountering God have a lot in common it seems. They both involve an identity crisis.
The last will be first, and the first will be last.
We are being reoriented, to a new creation where everything is “turned right side up” as deacon Mary likes to say.
Just the fact that we can read and ponder this parable and the condition of being disoriented and reoriented means that we are the first who will become last.
It turns out gainful employment and the finding of identity aren’t what we thought they were.
Israel was having an identity crisis, wandering in the wilderness, finally free, and now they were starving to death, longing for the flesh pots of Egypt, back when they at least had food.
Freedom isn’t what they thought.
Birds and bread.
Quail and Manna.
Providence. Providing.
Food for the day.
That’s all.
Enough for today.
Twice as much on the sixth day, so that on the seventh day, the Sabbath day, they would rest, they would rest with God.
Getting ready for the Sabbath, for resting with God, that is where they would discover their identity, their calling, the vocation of God’s children.
This is where children always discover the problem. What about all those who starve to death? Where is the God who provides?
Our answers always fall flat.
There is no answer. There is only the question.
No one survives the wilderness, those who somehow do-they speak of providence, a survivors tale.
Our home is in God.
Everyone gets hired. We are all given a job.
The body and the blood of Jesus.
Jesus is God’s manna.
We are the Eucharistic community.
We find our identity in resting in the body and blood of Jesus.
We find our vocation in being the body and blood of Jesus in and for the world.
We have a job.
It doesn’t always make sense.
We murmur and grumble, the questions don’t get answered.
There is just the job.
Feed the world.
Be God’s Eucharistic people feeding the world, the world that has lost its identity, that is starving both for faith and starving for staying alive in a brutal wilderness.
Be the Manna.