“Tax
collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.” What would be your reaction to that? Imagine you’re a chief priest, you’re
standing in the Temple, your home base, the place you feel most grounded in the
presence of the God who called you into his service, into leadership in his service,
and this odd, homeless, wandering preaching who had just shown up in Jerusalem
to great acclaim from the people has the nerve to say to you: “Tax collectors
and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.” I’m sure we can imagine various responses,
and, knowing how the story ends, we know that their reaction culminated in
plotting to have this wandering preacher killed. But, I’d submit there’s one proper response:
gratitude. Gratitude followed by
conversion of heart.
Gratitude
to God, and gratitude to the tax collectors and prostitutes. Gratitude to them, because they’re the ones
showing us the way to the kingdom of God.
Or, one might put it better: gratitude to them, because they’re the ones
in whom God is showing us the way to the kingdom. To those who are entering the kingdom before
us, we can say nothing but: “thank you, thank you for heading up this
pilgrimage we’re at the tail end of, for beating through some of the brush so that
the path is that much clearer for us.”
Because all of us have a long way to go before we can live wholly and
holily with each other and with God for ever in heaven, and to show us the way
of turning from sin, of shedding the dirt that clings to us and walking into His
loving embrace, God gives us the witness of those who have further to go, whose
dirt is more visible, and who turn, and start walking, in order that we may
follow. Conversely, when we experience
great mercy, great forgiveness, turn from some great sin we find in ourselves,
that forgiveness is never given just for us: forgiveness and conversion are
intensely personal, but never private, they’re always intended for the whole
church, that God’s extension of mercy to us might be a guidepost for all who
seek to sojourn with us.
I know a few people entering the kingdom of God before me. Before entering seminary, I was a teacher working inside San Quentin State prison. The spirit of conversion I encountered within those walls was amazing… quite literally, it amazed me. I saw men doing so much to turn their lives around that it forced me to ask the question: what am I being called to do in my life, what’s the conversion, the turning from sin, the growth in virtue that this experience, these relationships, should be occasioning in me? My answer, I came to realize, had to involve discerning priesthood and religious life. But, more and more, I’ve realized our answer has to involve growing and deepening our discipleship. As I continue my walk towards the kingdom, I’m forever grateful for the gang-bangers, drug pushers and armed robbers, turned apprentice geometers under me, who are entering before me, and showing me the way.
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