Will this be on the test?

If I had to take one, my guess for the most frequently-asked question in any classroom on campus would be: “How long does the paper have to be?” Have you ever asked that one? I have. It’s the first day of class, new semester, the professor has just passed out the syllabus. I rifle through the pages, past the “learning objectives”, gloss over the book list (there goes another one hundred and fifty bucks), and search for the paper assignments, looking for most important detail: length. If it’s not in black and white on the syllabus, my hand is in the air before you can say “is that single or double-spaced?”  My heart goes out to the optimistic professor who holds out hope for that one student who shows up in class for the sheer joy of learning. Yeah, right!  Tell me what I have to do to get my “A” and will this stuff be on the test?

We make the same mistake with God, asking How much is enough? What is the minimum I have to do in order to enjoy favor with God? What do I have to do to get on God’s good side?  We reduce life together with God to a list of minimum requirements. In our admirable but misguided attempts to do the right thing we limit God to the role of a moral judge giving out grades based on our behavior and activity. When we do that, we can’t help but begin to see ourselves in those terms: I am what I do. From there it’s a short jump to: God only likes me when I am doing “good” things. When we put God in this box, we end up with questions about how “far” we can go before something becomes wrong or sinful.  Where do I draw the line when it comes to sex? Is cheating wrong if it doesn’t hurt anyone else?

Jesus’ message to us today in Luke’s Gospel tells us we’re missing the point when we base our relationship with God simply on carrying out our responsibilities. The basis of our relationship to God must be in our grateful response to God’s unconditional, unearned love for us.  Like the servant, what ought to motivate us to carry out our duties – do the right thing – is the awareness of our own belovedness in the eyes of an ever-present God, who gives to us, without regard to our accomplishments, all that we have: our faith, our life, our purpose and our responsibilities, not because we have earned them, but because it is the very nature of God as the Master Creator and the Giver of Life. The stunning, liberating, sobering truth is this: Nothing you and I do today, tomorrow or the next day, can increase God’s love for us yet nothing we do can ever diminish it, either.  And, yes this will be on the test.