The Extravagant God
My uncle Frankie (on my mother’s side) was a delightful but not too dependable young man. My father was a sheet metal man and roofer who felt that these were legitimate jobs – not like being a waiter or a song and dance man or bartender which left you unsoiled by sweat and free of muscular aches and pains. And so my father tried to introduce my uncle Frankie to a real job – as a construction guy. It was too much for Frankie. He couldn’t stand the hours or the lifting and climbing. Once when he was on a suspended scaffold with my father outside a school building he became so jittery that he jumped through an open window, leaving my father dangling for a few scary moments. He was also a cheapskate. Whenever my father left a tip at lunch, Frankie would slip it over to his plate – leaving my father wondering what the waitress saw in my uncle and why she was so cool to my father.
God is not like my uncle Frankie. For one thing his affection for us is dependable – who else would die on a cross for us? Also he is extravagant. Today’s parable about the sower shows something of that. Note how this sower scatters his seeds extravagantly, as though he had plenty to spare. Matters not that some falls on the footpath or on rocky ground or among thorns – places where they are wasted. (I mean we have oak trees on our land that cast how many acorns that will never take root – but the trees are just as generous every year!) Still the sower trusts that enough seed will fall on good ground to yield a crop that makes the wasted seed seem insignificant.
Or take the passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus characterizes God as making his sun to shine and his rain to fall on the just and the unjust – no holding back even from the unreceptive. God’s confidence in his extravagance is also evident in today’s first reading: For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven . . . So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty . . . accomplishing what I desire.
Or take that parable about the laborers in the vineyard. Even those hired late in the day get a full day’s wage – which is a way of saying, says one scholar, “No one earns the kingdom of God. Everyone receives it as a gift. If there are complaints to be made, it can only be because the owner of the vineyard is too generous.” (Margaret Ralph; Loyola Press)
Or think of the time when Jesus did not hesitate to supply bread to 5000 people – out of some mysterious supply of his own. Or think of how he expects us to be as extravagant in our behavior as God is – When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
To be extravagant means to exceed the limits of reason or necessity – even as God exceeds human stinginess and would have us do the same – which makes one realize Christ’s Gospel is meant to produce an EXTRAVAGANZA (a fantastic type of performance) upon this earth! But does anyone want to live that fantastically – or shall we leave Christ as disappointed as in his own day of which he said, To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance . . .”