There is a “Free Lunch”

Deacon Doug McManaman

When I was teaching, I would often tell my students that there are two subjects that should be mandatory for all high school students in the province of Ontario, and both begin with the letter “E”: ethics, and economics, neither of which are mandatory in the public schools. Economic illiteracy has rather serious repercussions, not to mention ignorance of the fundamentals of ethics. 

One thing that economists will often point out is that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Well, I love economics, but the gospel reading (the Parable of the Wedding Banquet) suggests that there is one important exception to that principle, namely the kingdom of God, the fundamental content of Christ’s proclamation, the subject matter of almost all the parables. It is more than a free lunch; it is a free and eternal banquet. All are invited to this eternal banquet, without exception, but mysteriously, not everyone accepts the invitation. 

Now there’s a very subtle but important point to this parable, and it is something that many religious people can often forget. The point is this: There is nothing that anyone has done to earn an invitation to this banquet. It is pure gift; pure grace. This is an eternal banquet, a banquet not of this world, but of the “other world” (aionios), and the joy of that feast is beyond our ability to conceive. And it is a banquet that will last forever, but it begins in this world. We begin the feast here, and the joy of that feast is also to begin in this world. It is sheer gift. 

But we have a hard time accepting that which is given gratuitously, without our having earned it in some way. A neighbor of mine is an electrician, and I asked him if he has time to look at an electrical outlet for me. After a long day, he came over, looked at the problem, got it working again, but it took some work. He even put in new parts. I asked him how much I owe him, but he wouldn’t accept any payment. I insisted. He just wouldn’t do it. I found that difficult, and I thought about that difficulty of accepting what is offered as a pure gift. There seems to be a need to earn it in some way, a need to pay for it, to balance the scales. This can be transferred to the sphere of religion. When this happens, what we end up doing is very subtly we make our religion a matter of law. We reduce it to a morality, a set of precepts and rules to follow, that is, we reduce our religion to a conditional: “If, then”: “If you do this, then reward will follow”, “If you do not do this, that, and the other thing, then you won’t get this…etc.”. We develop a legalistic mindset. 

St. Paul battled this mindset in his letters, especially Romans. We are not saved by the law, but by grace. We are saved by the grace of faith. Our invitation to the eternal wedding banquet was not conditional: “…invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet. …they gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests”. All we have to do is believe that this gift is ours, offered to us, and is ours for the taking. Just accept this gift.

Law and morality come after, and they do so out of gratitude for this sheer gift. A good illustration of this is the story of Zacchaeus, who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus passing by. He was a hated tax collector, which means he was considered a traitor. What happens? Jesus approaches him, calls him by name, and says: Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house. He came down quickly and received him with joy. That’s it. What took place afterwards? Zacchaeus said: “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”

Jesus didn’t tell him to do that. That certainly was not a condition for Jesus staying at his house. That was the result of Jesus approaching him, calling him by name, and actually intruding on him so to speak. “Today I must stay at your house”. Why? Sheer gift. Zacchaeus received that gift with great joy, and what followed was a moral transformation. Sort of like heliotropic plants, such as the sunflower, that move in the direction of the sun. The sunflower was not told from outside to move in that direction, rather, the sun shines on it first, and in response it moves. People were scandalized when they witnessed this—”he’s staying at the house of a tax collector”, they said. 

Devoutly religious people have a tendency to put morality first as a condition. Perhaps in this way we feel that we have earned our salvation in some way, that the Lord has entered into my life because of something that I have done, some good that the Lord sees in me. Far from it; there is nothing we can do to merit the kingdom of God, nothing we can do to earn an invitation to the wedding banquet. It is pure grace. And that eternal wedding banquet begins now, in this life. The invitation is, here and now, offered to each person, good and bad. All we have to do is receive it, accept it, say yes to it, and the joy of that banquet will begin today. 

The first letter of John, 4, 10, says the following: “This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might have life through Him. And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And St. Paul says the same thing in his letter to the Romans: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

It’s not about us. We don’t have to earn it, nor pay for it; Christ paid the debt already, a debt we were unable to pay, and his blood was the means of exchange. All we have to do is believe him and allow ourselves to be loved by God, and then our life will change, but it will be a joyful change. A good number of Catholics see the Church’s moral teachings as a burden, and they resent the imposition of that burden. And yet, when law is placed first, it is indeed a burden, too heavy to carry; for we are inclined to sin, and we cannot rise above that inclination without his grace. But he said: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, my burden light”. The yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two oxen. Christ invites us to be attached to him by his yoke. Plowing is much easier when there are two oxen pulling instead of one. Yoked to Christ, living morally virtuous lives is no longer burdensome, but a joy, even if it is a struggle. I remember after my return to the Church when I was 17 years old, one thing I could no longer do was to take the Lord’s name in vain. Swearing in the true sense of the word–not foul language, but taking God’s name in vain in situations of anger. That, I noticed, was the first change that took place in my life. Other things took a bit more work to reform, but I was determined to correct them in my life, out of gratitude to God for intervening in my life. 

Grace must always be first, and then the moral life follows afterwards. And that’s why the gospel must never be reduced to a morality, not even a social justice morality. The good news of the gospel is that Christ died and rose from the dead, he died for you and for me, and eternal life is yours and mine for the taking, no need to earn it, we can’t. All we have to do is believe it. Faith, and then the joy of new life in Christ will change us in this world, as it did Zacchaeus. And then we will see that nothing in this world compares to being in a state of divine grace. Everything in this world comes to an end, fizzles out, our money, our property, our business, our health, it’s all temporary. But the life of divine grace, symbolized by the wedding garment, is a sharing in the divine nature, and that divine nature does not come to an end, and as long as we are clothed in it, it will blossom into unimaginable joy in eternity.