Once upon a time a mother and son were walking along the beach. A rogue wave crashed down upon them and dragged the little boy out to sea. The mother was frantic, turned to God and fell on her knees praying. “Dear Lord,” she prayed, “save my boy. Bring him back to me. I will always honor you and trust in you but please, please grant me this one request.” Soon enough another large wave crashed on the beach and deposited the boy at her feet. She picked him up and hugged him close. She started crying and praying, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you for giving my boy back to me.” She went on like this for a while until she looked more closely at the boy and then turned once again to God. “He had a hat.”
You can almost define our species as the one which is never satisfied, which always wants something else, something more. Lions have been content for millennia to hunt the savanna and raise their pride just as the first lion did. Monarch butterflies make the long, annual migration to Mexico on their flimsy little wings because that’s what monarch butterflies do. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly but humanity wants to go beyond what we are currently doing. We didn’t remain living in caves. Too damp. We gave up being hunter/gatherers. Too risky. We didn’t continue to devote all our energy to raising food. Too hard. We built roads and cities and cathedrals and skyscrapers and the internet and Mickey D’s. We didn’t limit ourselves to walking on our own two feet but learned how to swim and how to fly. We looked beyond the horizon and saw the moon and stars and made our moves off the planet. Maybe instead of naming ourselves homo sapiens, the wise creature, we should be called homo quaestio, the searching creature.
The restlessness we feel is built into us because we are, in fact, made for more. We are made for God. As the great African bishop, St. Augustine, put it: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, Oh Lord.” The problems come because all too often our pursuit of the “more” leads us to things other than God. Once we get over our futile pursuit for some elusive happiness out there and instead trust in the gifts of God, then all will be well. Jesus told the parable of laborers in the vineyard to remind us that God gives us exactly what we need. Those who had “borne the days burdens and the heat” thought they deserved more but the landowner assured them they had exactly what they required – the “usual daily wage” which would provide for their families. The “more” that they thought they deserved would not make their lives any better than if they received with gratitude what the landowner gave. Some “Mores” are not always better.
There is a special prayer that is part of the Passover meal in a Jewish home called the Dayenu prayer. Dayenu means: “it would have been enough.” The prayer notices how the blessings of God were exactly what the Jewish people needed at that time. They pray: If God had just brought us out of Egypt, that would have been enough. If God had just parted the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God has just took care of us for forty years in the desert, that would have been enough. If God had just given the Sabbath, that would have been enough. If God had just given the Torah, that would have been enough. If God had just led us into the land of Israel that would have been enough. Awareness of how God has been with the Chosen people in the past gives them confidence God will be with them in the future.
That is our story as well. Jesus uses the image of the generous landowner to point out that God has been, is, and always will be generous with us. God has given us the gift of life. God woke me up this morning and started me on my way. God provided us planet Earth with clean air and fresh water and bright sunshine. God has given us family and friends to ensure us enjoyment and laughter. God has given us strawberries and cream, corn on the cob and steamed crabs – at least if you’re from Baltimore. God has given us crying babies, roaring oceans, falling leaves, snow covered peaks and the color purple in a field. God has given us brothers and sisters to forgive and be forgiven by. Dayenu, it is enough. God is so good, so good to us.
However, as the prophet reminds us, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways, so God has also given us death. As St. Paul puts it in the epistle “life is Christ and death is gain.” That has to be exhibit A of how God’s thoughts differ from ours. When we think of death we think of loss, not of gain. When the doctor says to us, you have cancer, our immediate thought is one of dread. When we are in the midst of grief at the loss of a loved one we think of what we are missing, of the hole that has been created in our family. When we visit mother in the hospital and see her with tubes and drips and IV bags all with flashing lights and beeping monitors we still want her to come through and be restored to us. Since Jesus teaches us that God is generous we must learn to recognize the gift even in things we perceive as negative. Life is Christ, says St. Paul, and his life demonstrates that Good Friday does not get the last word. Our generous God gives us the blessed assurance of an Easter Sunday to come. Dayenu, it is enough and more than enough to have a God who blesses us in this life and welcomes us into a fuller and richer life to come.
