By Ryan LeBlanc

My students broadsided me with a perspective I never saw coming – again!

We were sitting with Christ’s words, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” – Matthew 20:16

Simple. Obvious. Not a problem, I thought to myself, because the meaning is right there.

Not so much.

“Wait a second. If the first goes to the back, and the last comes to the front, there’s still a first and a last.”

“How come God will send the rich away empty (Luke 1:53)? Why does he hate the rich so much?”

“I thought God never sent anyone away.”

These students, you see, were transferring their knowledge from what I had taught about hell – that no person is actually sent to hell by God, in the sense of being dragged there against their will by a God who punishes in retribution.

Rather, we had learned that an infinitely loving God will only have one restriction on himself, self-imposed: the freedom of the person he created. Love that forces someone to live in heaven is not love, but control. The Catholic teaching is clear that a person can only go to hell by intentionally and wholeheartedly rejecting God’s love. God allows us the free choice to move away from him, but he never casts us away.

God never alienates anyone, right Mr. LeBlanc?

And so, because they had been listening to me, this ‘easy’ Bible verse suddenly became difficult.

What does Christ mean?

Allow me a moment of transparency. It also became difficult because I often justify my bias against the rich, powerful and influential in the world, partly because I see the ongoing violence and suffering of injustice, and partly because I am just sinfully jealous and self-righteous.

Let us take a moment of recollection (as I did) to imagine the Jesus of Nazareth who spoke these words, and the people to whom he spoke them.

The world we’re imagining consisted of rich, powerful and influential leaders who exerted their control over so many suffering people who often scrambled to access their basic needs.

(Actually, it doesn’t take too much imagination – this exactly describes our world today.)

In such a society, some people are at the front of the line, and many more are crowding in, trying to get as close to the money and the power as they can. Looking down from above, we can imagine swarms of grabbing, striking, squabbling masses, with some “first” at the privileged centre, using their excess to command protection, and many more “last” at the margins, straining and hoping for a glimpse of the plenty.

Where does God enter into a world like this?

The life of Jesus has already shown us.

He is born in the margins, on the outside edge. “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost,” – Luke 9:10. The people he set out to encounter were the outcasts, the last to be invited, the neglected and forgotten.

Returning to our image of looking down from above, God appears when we stop striving and grasping. He arrives where power, wealth and influence are not, or at least not recognized.

And who’s there? The last.

• The last people anyone would have expected.
• The last people to be served by social institutions.
• The last people to have their voices sought and heard.
• The last people to commit themselves to grabbing for what they can get.

The little ones, identified by the Hebrew word anawim, have nothing for themselves, yet call out for God to deliver them – from the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Romans, yes. But also from the corrupt kings, the distant priests, the unjust community, the abusers and predators they live with. And most importantly, they call to God knowing their own sin and ask for deliverance from their own selfishness, brokenness, pride and darkness.

While everyone else’s eyes are on the worldly assets, who will be the first to see God’s glory break into the world, his healing work begin anew? That’s right, the last will be the first.

And if I am one of those in the swarm, getting closer and closer to having my own way and making my life work out the way I want to, and God shows up in my blind spot, will I even notice? If everything about my existence is committed wholeheartedly to getting and keeping what I want – what everyone wants and will take from me ­– when am I going to get around to noticing the endless flow of grace and joy that God freely pours out for every person? Will I even notice?

The closer I am to first in the world – the highest net worth, the most followers on social, the highest proportion of people who obey me versus those I have to obey – the furthest away I am from the abundance and humility of God’s kingdom. Always looking towards those who have more than I, I’m looking in the opposite direction for what will give me peace.

Getting there will put me still further from the love of God. Last place.

Where do we want to be?

As with all things Jesus, this Gospel teaching presents us with a profound choice.

Where am I looking towards? The front of the line or the back of the line? Towards goodness, or towards emptiness? It’s actually the opposite of what one would expect.

We tend to be really concerned with where we rank among everyone. Am I better, richer, beautiful-er, right-er than everyone else? Am I in with the haves – or the have-nots?

The God of the Bible is not concerned with this. Where we are on the scale of wealth and poverty, power and weakness, does not actually determine how close we can be to God.

Instead, the direction to which we orient ourselves, the focus of our vision and our drive, either allows for God to enter our lives or it blocks him.

We might look to the teacher for understanding, for example, when it is the questions of students that leads us into deeper meaning. Or we might congratulate ourselves on how much our prejudices align with our own interpretation of the Gospel, only to realize we’ve missed the whole point.

The truth of the Gospel, and for many of us the uncomfortable surprise, is that we consistently think we are heading in the right direction, when we are not.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a teacher at Bethlehem Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family. His writing is available on his blog at https://ryanleblanc.podia.com/

Catholic Saskatoon News is supported by gifts to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal: dscf.ca/baa.