God's Exasperation

Sunday

God's Exasperation

I think pretty clearly this is one of those Sundays where the people who put the readings together ... missed it ... because there is sort of a "tour de force"... there is no way to make these three readings cohere, I don't think, so I'm not going to attempt it. But, rather, take something implicit in the first and third readings, a notion that is certainly present in the Scriptures that has kind of gone into eclipse which may be useful to rehabilitate.

First of all, this metaphor of the vineyard is a classical one. It goes all through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: this vineyard represents God's people ... In both instances, in different ways, of course, the problem is the same from God's point of view, and it is that that I'd like to talk about. Namely the notion of the "Exasperation of God ... "

As I said, this is not a notion that gets much play here today for a bunch of reasons. For those of us who are well past thirty and grew up in the Roman Church, where many of us felt that guilt was our most important product, the production thereof, that is, can be happy to hear that the "exasperation of God" has passed out of fashion ... But I think there is a real danger in that. I grew up and went through the Catholic school system up to grade school I believe, and reflecting on it, it looked like guilt was something that was positively aimed at. But I've since changed my mind radically. I think guilt is as inherent in the human as breathing is, and I don't think the Roman Church has any market on the question of guilt and anybody who knows a real serious Lutheran, for example, knows what I'm talking about. I mean Lutherans are even worse in the sense that as far as the possibilities of guilt are concerned, because of the kind of privatized consciousness that they have, and they're constantly looking to that conscience. I mean we, at least, can say "well, I've failed Sister Crystella" and then I can feel guilty about that. But the Lutherans have this worse situation: "I've failed my own conscience." My God, there's no place to go after that. But I'd like to even push it further ...

As I said, guilt is any sense of deficiency. Guilt is a sense of deficiency. Now, who has not felt a sense of deficiency completely independent of any kind of religious content. Vanna White, I'm sure, used to go to bed saying: "I didn't turn the letters fast enough" or Donald Trump said: "I didn't make the deal when I had the chance ... " That's the raw material of guilt, folks ... and nobody escapes it ... and it is, as they say in the field, "a cheap rap" to say that this is a Catholic commodity. It is not. It is a human commodity ... and it is very useful. I mean you don't even have to walk to the coffee shop at King's College, that's as industrious a guilt-mill as any third grade classroom in the Catholic school system is ... The kids talk about each other's clothes, or complexion, or body contours, or demeanor in one way or another. Guilt ... Exasperation would seem to bring up that because to talk about the exasperation of that and then can project a sense of exasperation on the part of God ... "Disappointment," maybe, is the better word... Anybody who is a parent knows exactly what I'm talking about and, by that, I mean it is not just our response to our kids, but to our response to our own failure as parents as well ...

Alright, where are we left with that? The problem with an infantilized notion of guilt, of course, is there's no place to go but some sort of supine, ... groveling ... before the parent figure, whether God, or my mom, or the Bishop, or the Head of the department, or whatever ....? There are alternatives. And, above all, there is the great religious alternative wherein I...-that kind of failure only comes into real existence in a non-infantile way before God's expectations of me to grow up ... What does God want of me? God wants me to grow up ...

And I put it to you, there's a qualitatively different sort of response and different kind of guilt when I talk about the exasperation of God before a three year old who doesn't do it, you know .... who doesn't make it to the toilet on time or eat her cream of wheat, or whatever .... and the guilt of a person who says: "I've got this life .... I've got this chance to live .... to do something..., to outgrow myself continuously ... I'm called by that to God, called to that by God, rather ... And therefore the sense of guilt, or the sense of exasperation comes into focus but, at the same time, does not become some neurotic or destructive pressure, but becomes the basis for a real active hope ... Real active hope ... In fact I'd like to suggest that's God seems to imply the notion of guilt or is attached to it. And, as I said, there is some warrant ... for saying that we have been made to feel guilty... and, in a way, that is not bad simply because it is a sense of guilt but because it is infantilizing guilt. I mean, it is the guilt of "the hand in the cookie jar...". That certainly is a kind of guilt of which God is just fed-up. You know, God is exasperated ... But it is possible to outgrow that and get beyond that and to say: "What does God really want of me?" and "What could be the source of God's exasperation?" Because what we're talking about, because I can't speak for God and even Isaiah or Jesus, talking about the exasperation of God, I think we are on safer ground to say not, to move not to God's sense of exasperation but to our own sense of self-understanding as to where we have ... failed ... in an adult way.

And so, when we're talking about the moments where we have infantilized ourselves, and I do it routinely ... : I behave in a way that I know is silly and trivial, and I ought to know better as an adult ... my cowardice..., my constant shaping of the impression I make on other people ... in the classroom, the meetings .... walking down the street ...

I'd like to suggest that if God isn't exasperated, and that's a metaphor, just like "the love of God" is a metaphor, just like I don't know what exactly is "the exasperation of God," so I can't know what the "love of God" is either... But, I can know, in myself, that I am called by God to adult responsibility and I can, therefore, look at myself and see where I've failed in the only place that we can construct a hope that is authentic and not just some kind of wishful thinking.... So.... I think it's useful, talking about god's being exasperated... : "Ah, c'mon folks, get with the program.... grow up.... and come to Me in the doing of it..."

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