God’s notion of fairness is different from ours

Matthew 20:1–16

“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off.

“[And] he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’

“When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? [Or] am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’

“Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Music Meditations

Seek Ye First—Maranatha
Seek the Lord while He may be found—OCP
My worth is not in what I own—Fernando Ortega and Kristin Getty
Whatsoever you do—Robert Kolchis

Opening Prayer

From the First Reading for the 25th Sunday A

Isaiah 58:6–8, 10–11—on authentic fasting that leads to blessing

Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking off every yoke?

Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry,
bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own flesh?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

If you lavish your food on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then your light shall rise in the darkness,
and your gloom shall become like midday;

Then the LORD will guide you always
and satisfy your thirst in parched places,
will give strength to your bones
And you shall be like a watered garden.

Companions for the Journey

Adapted from “First Impressions” 2011:

“I will give you what is just” Each of the laborers would need a day's pay to feed their families. Each day, as day laborers, they would have gone out looking for work—day by day—standing around, hoping to get hired, needing to get hired—all along, thinking of the hungry mouths back home. So what pay would be “just”?

These are tough economic times. We have many unemployed and those who do have jobs are working very hard every day. But even if the times weren’t as difficult still, we admire hard workers. We don’t admire shirkers, for we seem to have an innate sense of what’s fair. If a person has a job to do, they should, we believe, do it properly and then receive fair compensation. So today, when we hear the parable of the vineyard workers we tend to identify with and take the side of the “all-day workers.” These are they who say, “We bore the day’s burden and the heat.” Who hasn’t worked like that or, right now, has a job that feels like that?

When those, in Jesus’ parable, who worked the whole day, see what the latecomers have received, the same pay but for only an hour’s work, they go to the owner of the vineyard and make their complaint. “These last ones worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us.” It’s as if the owner broke a contract he made with them and they are indignant.

I think there was a contract—it was in the owner’s mind all along. Because, as the day wore on and he kept going out to hire still more laborers, he stopped naming the salary he would give them. He tells the first group, hired at dawn, that he would pay the “usual daily wage.” When he told the next group to go and work in his vineyard, he doesn’t mention the pay, but merely says, “I will give you what is just.” After that, for the next groups, again the pay isn’t mentioned, just the instruction, “Go into my vineyard.” So, there are hints early in the parable that something different is afoot.

I think the owner planned all along to pay all the workers a full day’s pay because they were day laborers. All were needy and vulnerable, each of them would need a day’s pay to feed their families. Each day, as day laborers, they would have gone out looking for work—day by day—standing around, hoping to get hired, needing to get hired—all along, thinking of the hungry mouths back home.

Why were some standing around, still waiting for work towards the end of the day? We are not told that they were the lazy ones who casually came out late in the day looking for a little work. Probably they were still without work because the strongest and youngest would have been hired first. Those not hired earlier would have been the elderly, disabled, children and women too—except perhaps, for the very strongest. In our world there is the dictum, “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” At most of our workplaces there are work evaluations done periodically and the productivity of an employee is reviewed regularly. Raises are based on merit. Often there is a union scale and minimum wage to protect workers. When it works, you get just pay for an honest day’s work.

But Jesus isn’t talking about our labor and pay policies. It’s not a parable about how we are to treat employees. He isn’t telling us to pay people for doing only a little work. Rather, he is describing how God acts towards us; how things are in the “kingdom of heaven” where God’s influence is felt and God’s power is at work. In the kingdom of heaven, judging from today’s parable, the guiding principle is generosity and it is given with no little element of surprise. How could those minimal workers have even hoped for a full day’s pay? You arrive at a friend’s house for dinner, ring the doorbell and when the door is opened a crowd of your closest family and friends are there to shout, “Surprise!” It’s your birthday. That’s not something you planned for; maybe you don’t think you deserve all the fuss. But there it is a party for your benefit, “Surprise!”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a superstar performer for the Lord. The bottom line is that while I try to do my best, I don’t want to be judged by just my accomplishments. There are days of hard work with their successes. But there are other less-satisfying days, when I would not like a measure taken of the day’s achievements for the Lord. Some days I invest less effort in what I must do and there are times, I know, I could have done a lot better. What about those other times in our lives we would like to forget, when we should have made different and better choices? But we didn’t. How is all that going to be evaluated at the end of our lives?

We are the recipients of such generosity from God. Jesus first of all paints a concrete picture of what grace is like. If we, who hear this parable today, are awake to what is being offered us again at this Eucharist, then we would have to conclude, “How can I be as generous to others, as God has been to me?”

A woman was interviewed on television. She was chosen as a “heroic mother,” who single-handedly raised a large family. All her children did very well in life and turned out to be good adults with good jobs and families of their own. Hers was a story worth acknowledging and celebrating. The person interviewing her, as if to get some formula that others could imitate to achieve successful families, commented, “I suppose you loved all your children equally, making sure they all got the same treatment.”

“No,” she said, “I love them. I love them all, each one of them. But not equally. I loved the one that was down till he got up. I loved the one that was weak until she got strong. I loved the one that was hurt until he was healed. I loved the one that was lost until she was found.” What’s it like in God’s world? What is the kingdom of heaven like? It’s like a mother who loves all her children according to their need, and loves them until they become who they were created to be—and then continues to love them.

We have asked God for forgiveness and believe we have received it today—whether we think we deserve it or not. The parable has taken flesh in our lives. We who have experienced love may think we are not worthy of it, but we are blessed by it nevertheless. The parable has taken flesh in our lives. We have done a small deed for someone, or some group, and the good effects in their lives are out of proportion to our efforts for them. We have known the parable in our lives. Late in our lives we awake to God’s presence and goodness. We wish we hadn’t let so many years go by unconscious to the God we have now come to know. We have known the parable in our lives.

If we have a notion that God thinks and acts like us, today’s parable should dispel that thought. But the God Jesus reveals didn’t begin to exist with the opening verses of the New Testament. Our Isaiah reading should convince us of that. The prophet makes it quite clear that God does not act or judge the way we do. We tend to cling to past wrongs done us and keep a mental list of those who have offended us. We conclude that God will treat them similarly—it’s only fair, we proclaim. But God’s graciousness, Isaiah tells us, is unbounded and beyond human reckoning. While we might conclude that God measures out grace and forgiveness according to our standards of justice, by what we determine a person deserves, the prophet reveals a God who shatters human standards beyond all our reasoning and expectation.

We ourselves might not feel deserving of such a bountiful God, still, today’s scriptures invite us to put aside any false humility we might have and become truly humble by saying “Yes” to our generous God’s offer of forgiveness and love. With empty hands we come receptive to the generous gift God is offering us at this Eucharist; a meal that unites us in love with our God, the source of all life and holiness, unearned but nevertheless present at this moment to us.

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Are you envious because I am generous?

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

Do I see this parable as a story of human need or as a story of rank unfairness?
Describe a time when you were bothered or annoyed by a situation in which someone was unfairly the recipient of generosity.
Have you ever been criticized for giving someone else a break?
Have there been times when I have considered myself more deserving than others?
Have I ever felt unappreciated by those around me?
We live in a meritocracy. How does our culture conflict with this parable?
What does this parable say about the day laborers in Jesus’ time, about what would be a payment “that is right”?
What does this parable say about God?
Describe God’s sense of fairness as you understand it.
What is the economic situation for day laborers in our current society?
Have you ever been one or hired one?
What is the state of economic security, food security, health security and education security in our country right now?
Do we measure a person’s worthiness by how educated she is, how hard she works, how long he has been in this country, whether he has earned my respect or forgiveness?
Do you know of anyone who takes no joy in work, finds no dignity in work, works only for the money it produces to supply what she or her family needs to live?
What in our society contributes to this joylessness?
What does it do to a person’s dignity when he cannot work, especially in this country?
What effect does social injustice have upon the world?
How do you see social justice principles affecting our national policies toward the poor in our country and in other parts of the world?
What is the difference between charity and justice? Is one more important than the other?
How is the kingdom of God different from the systems/values we encounter on earth?
Do you want always to be judged according to strict justice?
Or do you want to leave room for mercy?
Do you ever feel like the workers who were hired at dawn and had worked all day?
What do you do with your resentments?
Does it bother us more when bad things happen to good people or when good things happen to bad or undeserving people?
From Fr. Daniel Harrington, S.J.:
Have you ever been the recipient of someone’s unexpected generosity?
How did you respond?
Do most of us make God over in our own image, and do we have problems when God’s actions or words as translated through Jesus do not match the image we have created? Examples (The Prodigal Son, Mary and Martha, lost sheep, etc.) ?
Do I think of the “kingdom of God” as something we earn after death through sacrifice and good deeds?
Do I think of the “kingdom of God” as God himself who is pure love and nothing else?
Do I think of the “kingdom of God” as the world’s values transformed by love and compassion for others?
How has my religious tradition influenced my understanding of the term “kingdom of God”?
Are there “bad” people in heaven?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions

I consider the problem of envy. The older brothers of Joseph, Cain, the elder son in the parable popularly known as the Prodigal Son, countless wicked stepmothers—all suffered from envy. Envy begrudges another what we think we lack or feel we deserve. It has a terrible and sometimes paralyzing effect on us. We cannot think rationally, we cannot act rationally. Sometimes we cannot act at all, but seethe with resentment. Other times the corrosive emotions of anger and despair drive us to harm the object of our envy in some way. As a child, we may have struck another or taken something from him that he loved and destroyed it. As older and more subtle adults we use the weapons of gossip, criticism, cynicism and indifference to wound those we envy. I think about someone in my life of whom I was envious. Why? Was it deserved? Were frustration and despair a part of the picture? Did I have trouble admitting that my feelings toward this person were caused by envy? Did I feel inferior to this person? Unfairly treated by life? Defeated by my own limitations? Did I devalue in my own mind what this person had in order to make myself feel better? How did I resolve the problem? Was I ever the object of anyone else’s envy? Did I feed into it in any way? I pray to God for the clarity of vision to recognize and root out envy in myself, and to recognize and change behaviors which may cause people to envy me.

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Adapted from “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province, by Fr. Jude Siciliano:

“Listen… I want to tell you a story…

“My name is Benjamin. I was there—I was in the vineyard that day… hired at the last hour, I could not believe the blessing! How could he have known how desperate I was, walking the marketplace since dawn in the heat, praying that I would not have to go home to my children empty-handed. But no one would hire me…

“Please forgive me for what I am about to tell you, but you see, I used to be a tax collector. It was despicable work, cheating my own people, and over the years I came to despise myself, although the money fed my children and family. But I can no longer hurt my people, and two weeks ago resolved to seek honest work. How I regretted my past then! No one would hire me… they spit in my face and laughed at my need. My children are hungry, and today I promised my wife that if I did not find work I would relent and return to my shameful employment. And so you cannot imagine my joy when the owner of the vineyard gave me a chance. And to be paid a full day’s wage! This is beyond my dreams. It has been salvation for me and for my family. And now I must go to them…”

What might have happened if the other, resentful laborers had known this story? What if they had bothered to come close enough to ask Benjamin and the other latecomers why they had been in the marketplace all day—and learned it was “because no one hired us”? Can you picture them wanting to help this brother who is trying to start a new life—and spontaneously reaching into their pockets to share their hard-earned wages? Perhaps they would even realize that their “usual daily wage” is neither “usual” nor “theirs” at all—but is a gift from the ever-generous vineyard-owner… a gift to be shared. Their resentment could turn to rejoicing that they and their fellow workers really have been given all they truly need.

How easy it is for us, initially, to identify with those disgruntled, angry laborers. After all, we live in a culture that teaches us: “Survival of the fittest! It’s mine, I earned it! I worked hard for this, I have a right to it!” We live in a world torn by the violence of competition and misunderstanding, as we battle over money and power, land, culture, images of God. We worry about our national security, our economy, and we too easily turn to violence to protect what we grasp. My possessions. My land. My God.

It is easy to feel threatened by the “other”—the foreigner, the different, the marginalized. Matthew’s community was apparently no different in this regard. A Jewish community only recently joined by Gentiles, they had to learn that their generous God welcomed the outsider, the latecomer, and called the stranger to be brother and sister to the community laboring in the vineyard of the kingdom.

The Gospel invites them, and all of us, to allow our God who knows all hearts to open our heart to the other—and to transform our perception. From entitlement to gratitude… from resentment to rejoicing… from anger to understanding. Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, tells us: “When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.”

What would our world be like if we responded to God’s invitation to know and welcome the stranger? If we each could reach out and come close enough to know the stories of the marginalized people in our church, our workplace, our society? What stranger, what latecomer are you invited to open your heart to, today? And what mystery of transformation might our generous God work in that sharing?

Literary Reflection:

Some of us may need an attitude adjustment about how we value money and others’ needs for basic necessities. This poem by Wendell Berry, a former Stanford Stegner Fellow, is a wake-up call:

“We Who Prayed and Wept”

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from Kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

from Selected Poems

Closing Prayer

From New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton:

Kyrie
Keep me, above all things, from sin.
Keep me from loving money, in which is hatred
From avarice and ambition that suffocate my life.
Keep me from the deadly works of vanity
And the thankless labor for pride, money and reputation

Weekly Reflections

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 24, 2023