The traditional day of taxation arrives but the new king still has not announced his demands. The people line up outside the castle with goods representing the ten percent tax rate required by the previous ruler. They wait and wait for the gates to open and the king to step forward, but nothing happens. After a full day of standing in line, the people become restless and even more worried. Finally, the king looks down from a balcony on the side of the castle and repeats his announcement that the old taxation system has been abolished. The people stay where they stand, waiting to hear how the king likely will increase the former rate and what day they will be expected to render such taxes. Instead, the king waves and tells them all to go home and back to their fields before he turns and goes back into the castle.
Over the next several months, the king walks through the fields and visits his subjects in their homes. No king has ever done such a thing. Kings don’t spend time with their subjects and certainly do not visit them in their fields where they work. The people assume the king spends time among them to see for himself how much they harvest or how much they make. Maybe the king does not trust his subjects to give him the full tax amount demanded. If he walks among them, he will have a better sense how much his people will owe him so as to guard against the subjects not giving their full amount.
The king’s presence among them makes them nervous and resentful, so they begin to inquire about the king’s desires and purpose in visiting with them in their fields. The king simply says that he likes to see their hard work and how they find fulfillment in the work they do. He wants to know their families and understand how he might better serve them as their ruler. He cares about his subjects and wants to provide for them the best way he possibly can.
Out of utter confusion and frustration, the subjects continue to fill the void of demands and expectations by coming up with their own. They tell one another stories of terrible punishment that is to come if they do not pay the king tremendous tributes of money and harvest yields. A rumor goes around that the king is building a massive dungeon under the castle where subjects will be thrown for decades if they fail to pay 40, 50, 60, even 90% of their harvest to him.
Once again, the subjects line up outside the castle on their customary tax day, this time with even greater offerings for payment. They grumble and complain that the king would demand so much of them, even their full livelihood. They fuss as they wait for the king to appear to take their taxes or throw them in the dungeon for failure of payment. The citizens begin looking at one another, comparing their offerings with others, worried they might not have brought enough because their neighbor seems to have brought twice what they have. They worry and argue among themselves.
Once again, the king comes out on the balcony, reminds them of his previous announcement, and tries to send them home. But many of his subjects stay where they stand. The next morning, he finds several of them have chained themselves to the walls of the castle. Some among them have told the rest that the king is angry because they did not bring enough on tax day and that is why he sent them away. These leaders have convinced people that the king soon will come to enslave them for their failures and the only way to gain favor and some forgiveness is by chaining themselves before the king does. He will favor them for realizing their wretchedness and locking themselves up.
The king comes out, breaks the chains, and sends them home once again.
The following year, on tax day, the people show up at the doors of the castle. This time, some have brought 1%, some 6%, others as much as 50% of their year’s earnings. No one is grumbling and no one is judging their offering against their neighbor’s. The king steps out on the balcony to ask why they have come since they no longer are bound to any tax system. The people tell him they have not brought taxes, but offerings of thanksgiving. They have come to understand the king. The day after he walks in their fields with them, he has supplies sent specific to the needs he has witnessed among them. If a farmer has a broken fence, he sends other farmers to help with fresh fencing supplies. If a family has lost their livelihood because their milk cow was killed by a wolf, he sends another milk cow. The people have come to show their gratitude for the king’s faithfulness to them, not because they have to, but because they want to. Life now is infinitely better than it ever has been before and they want the king to understand how thankful they are for his generosity, care, and kindness.
The king does not judge their gifts, assessing if they are adequate. Instead, he accepts their offerings, saying each one is enough. Before he brings the goods into the castle storerooms, he has his subjects consider who in the kingdom might have need of their offerings. If they know someone who needs what they have, he tells them to first take their offering to their neighbor, then bring it to him. What remains, the king stores and uses when he sees a subject in need.
I imagine this to be God’s experience in watching humanity. Patiently, God watches as we try to twist and redefine grace, unable to accept it as unbounded and infinite. We expect a certain economy, one that demands tit for tat based on bartering and exchange. We try to make God live by human rules of commerce by telling ourselves and one another that we must earn God’s grace and love or that we have received it and now are indebted to God to a crushing degree.
God wants a response from our heart of gratitude and love. We keep trying to make our offering compulsory. We cannot believe God would love us unconditionally and pour her grace upon us with abundance. We make new rules and spread misconceptions because we cannot accept such an immense gift. Meanwhile, God waits and watches, wanting us not on our knees but with arms open, ready and willing to return even a small fraction of the love she already has given.
To live in such love and grace is true freedom. Were God to require specific offerings or demand certain acts of contrition, then we would bound in chains. The minute something is compulsory is the minute we lose our freedom. But a gift, an offering, an act of love can only be given if it comes voluntarily and from the heart out of a pure desire to show appreciation.
The day we allow ourselves one another freedom, the day we all bring our offerings out of unbounded thanksgiving and love, is the day the kingdom of God will be made real.
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