TO TRUST AS GOD DOES
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
October 03, 2020
I have never been a parent to a child, so almost all of you
here can speak with better authority on this than I can. But I’m aware that,
almost from the very start of a child’s life, one of the most important tasks
of parenthood is letting go… that is of entrusting that child’s life to him or
herself, and to the watchful care of other people. It’s a life-long act of
profound trust, and the big challenge is the question of how much trust to be
bestowed upon that child, and when.
I remember two specific stories from one of my former
parishes. One of the young couples there had a new baby daughter, but they both
sang in the choir at church and wanted to continue in that ministry. So what to
do? For them it was pretty simple they handed off their daughter to some of
their friends at church, to hold her and guide her during Mass. It wasn’t any
one person who did that; there were several, from one week to another, and they
were delighted to do that.
I came to think of her as the parish baby, because she
seemed to “belong” to lots of people, in addition to her parents. By now I think
she’s now finished or about finished with high school. It was a relatively
small act of trust, because it was only for an hour and they were all in the
same room together – but it was an act of trust (not least on the part of the
baby!)
The other story came to me here from a retired priest who
used to come to Mass. It was about my mother. This priest had served at my
childhood Parish when I entered the first grade in the school there. He told me
that he always remembered running into my mom in the school hallway on the
first day of class, and she was weeping after seeing me to my new classroom. My
mother was many wonderful things, but she was not a weeper, and I had never
heard that story before. In fact, I could hardly imagine it. Again, it was a
small act of trust at the time. Sister Mary Morris, my new teacher, was kind
and gentle, and mom was only five minutes away if any problem arose – but it
was an act of trust.
And as all you parents know, as children age you have to
give them more freedoms – to become themselves and to forge relationships with
others. That requires more and more trust, and sometimes involves greater
disappointment. My oldest nephew is now 29-years-old, and I still remember my
reaction when he turned 16 and his parents let him get his driver’s license. My
reaction was, “Wait, you allowed this young man to drive a car?!” As far as I know,
he’s always been an excellent driver, which is far more than I could say about
myself at that age. It all requires trust, which is the gift of generous and
wise parents to their children. And surely it involves worry and even sadness
when one realizes that those decisions were wrongly made.
When are you old enough to hang out with friends by
yourself? When are you old enough to babysit your younger siblings? When are
you old enough to date? When are you old enough not to have a curfew? Or to be
responsible for your money? Or not to be required to go to church with your
parents? It’s a constant handing over of freedom to a beloved child or young
adult by a caring parent.
And it’s what God does with us – and what God has been doing
from the beginning. Both our first reading from Prophet Isaiah and our Gospel
of Matthew today tell us so. Both of these scriptures make reference to the
image of a vineyard, and although they have different emphases, they both point
to God’s trust in us to be people who are worthy of the freedom that we have
been given to make God’s Kingdom flourish in this world.
And in both of these biblical stories, human beings failed. In
Isaiah it seems that the failure was owing to people not making use of all of
the good gifts they had been given – the fertile ground, the choicest plants,
the means to make things grow well. God came around looking for good grapes,
and all he found was useless growth. Weeds.
In the gospel, the failure was selfishness on the part of
the stewards of the vineyard – the false idea that this all belonged to them,
rather than to the owner. In both cases, God trusted us human beings with the
freedom and responsibility to act rightly. And God still does that with us, and
for us. Amazingly, our God makes himself vulnerable before our decisions – as God
always has, especially in the sending of his Son Jesus. (And we all know how
that went on Good Friday.)
Trust and freedom are part and parcel of the Christian life.
We won’t stop making our mistakes – sometimes really bad ones – but God won’t
stop trying to reach out again.
But the other side to these biblical stories, of course, is
that God is still God. Which means that after all this patience and generosity
and trust and freedom throughout the course of our lives, there will be a
reckoning and a judgement. We will be held to account for the manner that we have
used our opportunities either to serve God’s reign, or to serve ourselves, or
not to serve at all. We’ve been given a gift, and our decision is how to make
use of it. It matters.
Yet again this weekend we welcome a group of young people to
the table of the Lord for the first time. The children here present are here
for their First Eucharist, together with those who love them and who have led them
to this moment. But for you, and for all of us who are older, communion is not
only a precious “thing” to possess; it’s an expression of God’s trust in us,
and of God’s willingness to await our free response to such a treasure. So
beginning today, we not only welcome something; we promise something. Namely,
to be faithful stewards of the gifts we have, and to be ever mindful of who and
where they come from. We don’t live for ourselves. We live for the generous
master of the vineyard.
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