Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 25 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 55.6-9 / Responsorial Psalm: 144.2-3,8-9, 17-18 (R/v 18a) / Philippians 1.20c-24, 27a / Matthew 20.1-16
Sisters and Brothers, isn’t it crazy that even though some of us here are longtime parishioners and others are first timers we accept each other at this Eucharist without envy or jealousy? Crazy too that no matter how long, or short we have served in this parish—or, even, not at all—we celebrate our equal right to a place at Lord’s altar? We don’t ask who’s more entitled to be here, nor do we ask anyone to leave. Instead, you and I acknowledge each other’s worthiness by worshipping together.
Isn’t it crazy too that when Mass ends, we will do the opposite? We will return to our homes, schools and work places, and find ourselves—for one reason or other, and at some time—envious of those we interact with. Who amongst us has not resented others who are treated equally as we are? Or, begrudged their better accomplishments? Or, even acted self-righteously and defensively about our rights?
None of us sets out to act in these ways but we have done so. We are prone to turning into angry, disgruntled and disappointed green-eyed monsters when we are treated unfairly and unjustly.
This is why we can readily empathize with the longer-serving labourers in today’s gospel passage. We know their outrage and dismay. They have worked harder and longer than the latecomers, but they get the same wage, nothing more. Don’t we feel their pain that a grave injustice has been done against them? Their grumbles echo ours.
Jesus challenges us to think otherwise: “for the last will be first, and the first will be last.” He offers a logic that is contrary to today’s business ethics and labor practices. These demand that salaries are commensurate to hours of work, scope of job, and reach of responsibility. In matters of faith, this translates into the logic that God rewards us for more prayer, more penance, more good works.
Today, Jesus reminds us that everyone is entitled to share in God’s love. This the commonsense of God’s commonwealth, or goodness
Yes, God loves us in unique and special ways because we are individuals, but God gives out his love equally because his love is for everyone. I think many of us know God loves all and gives his love to all. I wonder if we know this more in our head than in our hearts.
If Jesus’ parable about equal pay for unequal work does however disturb you, then give thanks. Give thanks because you letting Jesus’ parable turn your views of fairness and unfairness upside down. More importantly, you are letting Jesus help you know God as God is.
Many of us have the image that God rewards those who do a lot for God. And so we do pray more, sacrifice more, and more good work. The more we do, the better God’s rewards will be, we believe. Repeating this belief through our words and deeds blinds us to the truth about God’s unconditional love for all.
Today, Jesus wants to shock us—shock us out of that common but complacent understanding that God only rewards those who do more. Shock us out of this because it misrepresents God. To think that God only rewards those who do more reduces God’s love to an economic exchange.
Pope Francis repeatedly challenges this way of thinking about God: God is not calculative. For Francis, God’s heart is so much bigger than we can ever imagine: it is so large, so deep, so expansive. God’s heart so big yet it cannot contain God’s mercy. God’s mercy wants to always pour itself out to save us all, again and again and again. God cannot contain his mercy: it is for you and me. God does not calculate who deserves mercy; mercy is for all.
Today’s parable is about the utter limitless God’s mercy and generosity. Jesus is challenging us to open our eyes to how God really measures our worth. In God’s eyes, our worthiness has nothing to do with how much we do, or how much we earn in pay, or how well we perform, or by any of the yardsticks we use—like status, popularity, social achievement, wealth, looks. God simply measures our worthiness by the goodness of our human hearts.
The hired workers in today's gospel exhibit this goodness. They come simply because there is work to be done, and they want to do it. They have no expectation about the kind of wages they will get. They simply come because the landowner offers them work.
They are the ones. Jesus teaches, who are now the first. They are first because they simply appreciate the privilege of sharing in the landowner’s work in the vineyard. Jesus wants us to see in them how true reward has to do with the privilege of being called to God’s work. This is the richness of kingdom of God—everyone is being called. Do we recognize this richness God wants to give us by calling us to come to his kingdom, or are we too fixated on rewards we expect from God?
God does not understand fairness and unfairness as the world does. Rather, God works with a different focus, in a different way, and by different standards. So, who deserves to be rewarded by God? The one who comes to God and works with God without any expectation of wages, rewards or benefits, or even the promise of something better to come. God wants to give to all who simply come—come, for no other reason than this truth: that you, I, we are call simply called by God to come and be with him. “Come and see”. “Come and follow me”. “Come and abide in me.”
Anyone who comes is like the latecomer who works in the vineyard. Will we dare come to God like this? Dare to come without expectation, especially every Sunday, without worrying whether we will be first in the queue or last in line? Dare to come and trust that God’s bounty is always more than enough for our salvation and fullness of life?
I say “dare” because we can only live this way if we are prepared to lose ourselves completely in doing God’s work with Jesus. Following Jesus is about losing ourselves in the privilege of being called by God, and in doing so, finding how much God savours us for the goodness of our choice. Such daringness demands we turn our backs on chalking up rewards we expect from God because we have ticked off the list of do’s and don’ts of Christian life.
Isn’t it crazy then that Jesus wants to remind us about this today? I believe Jesus does this because he recognizes something profoundly beautiful and ever present in us—that everyone of us is capable of living the Christian life well. Jesus recognises this because he appreciates we are all intrinsically good and worthy of growing into God’s likeness. This is what captivates him about us, whom he calls friends.
Jesus is driven, I sincerely believe, by a craziness for us. His craziness is his excitement that values each one of us for the good potential we have for change and growth. It is a craziness that believes we will simply come to him as friend.
Can you and I, in turn, be equally crazy to believe this about Jesus? Crazier too to let him teach us how to receive our equal and fair share of God’s goodness, even if we now come to him, late with our repentance to turn our lives around, or late with our willingness to work in his mission, or late in recognising that our difference is not bad?
May be when we dare to come, we will find Jesus revealing how much more crazier God is than we have ever imagined—God whose love is limitless, whose bounty is generous, whose mercy is without condition. Then we know how true these words are that we heard in the first reading: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord”.
Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
photo: "his hand" by jhopgood (www.bishopinthergove.com)
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