Moving Fences

 I am unable to vouch for this story, but it’s worth telling anyway. 

Father Bernhard was a long-serving priest in an Austrian Village between Salzburg and Innsbruck. His care for the people in and around the village was much valued. He made no distinction between those who attended Mass on Sunday morning and those who did not. Amongst the latter, was an elderly villager – a kind and thoughtful man. In the summer, he would occasionally leave fresh produce at Father Bernhard’s door: in winter he would keep the priest’s woodpile replenished. 

It happened that the old man died, but not being a member of the flock, permission was required from the Bishop in Salzburg for a burial in the consecrated part of the church grounds. It was refused. 

Sometime after the funeral, a colleague priest visited Father Bernhard. In the course of conversation, the visitor remarked on the burial and how disappointing the refusal must have been. “Not at all” replied Father Bernhard, “a few days after the funeral, I just shifted the fence.” 

Again and again, Jesus ‘shifted the fence’ – a collaborating tax collector, a blind beggar, an untouchable leper, an adulterous woman, a Roman officer, a poor widow, a street girl, a woman with failed marriages and – in parable – an outcast Samaritan, a run-away son… and more. 

Jesus re-wrote the invitation list to the banquet and on it appeared the lowly, the least, the unlovely… “for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven”. Into this amazing, upside-down Kingdom, with the most unlikely guests, we too have been invited. 

Ngā mihi nui, Murray