Father Donald Senior, CP

Sept. 24: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Is 55:6-9; Ps 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18; Phil 1:20-24, 27; Mt 20:1-16

“It’s not fair …” That’s what a lot of us who will hear this Sunday’s Gospel are liable to be thinking to ourselves. The parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew’s Gospel seems out of kilter (as, in fact, the parables often are). Jesus tells his disciples a story about a landowner who, at dawn, went out to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing on the “usual daily wage,” they went to work. Then the landowner goes out again around nine in the morning and sees some others “standing idle in the marketplace” and hires them, too, offering them “a just wage.” The same procedure happens at 3 o’clock and then at 5 o’clock, when the landowner discovers others still “standing idle in the marketplace” and hires them too. So far so good. But trouble comes when all of the workers line up to receive their pay — with the last hired at 5 p.m. paid first with “the usual daily wage.” The reader knows they could only have worked a short time, but they get a daily wage! That, of course, is what the poor workers that began at dawn thought, too. Surely the landowner will give them more if he is willing to pay these last-hired idlers the “usual daily wage.” To their consternation, each of them also gets “the usual daily wage.” So, naturally, they complain to the landowner: “We have borne the day’s burden and the heat” and you have made the five o’clock crowd “equal to us.”  

And now comes the puzzling punchline. The New American Bible translation that we hear on Sunday renders the landowner’s response as “Are you envious because I am generous?” In fact, the original Greek literally says, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” The notion of the “evil eye,” which still lingers in Mediterranean cultures, is found elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel and was used in the Old Testament as well. To have an “evil” or “sick” eye in the biblical tradition means that you perceive things in the wrong way. Jesus spoke this way in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6:22-23): “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil [“poneros,” the same adjective in today’s Gospel], your whole body will be full of darkness.”

So what is the point of Jesus’ parable? Human logic would demand that those who work all day long in the heat should be paid more than those who work only a short time (and in the coolness of the approaching evening!). This parable is not about human logic but the mystery of God’s “logic.” We are invited to think of God’s love as lavish and unconditional and unexpected. God’s generosity is not bound by our human rules. 

The first reading for this Sunday from the prophet Isaiah makes a similar point. We are urged “to seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.” And then the prophet speaks for God: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

Every once in a while the Bible reminds us that God is “totally other” — beyond our imagination and our wildest dreams. Yet, at the same time, the Scriptures also assure us this awesome and transcendent God is “near” and close to us. Today we are asked to clear our eyes and glimpse the astounding generosity and mercy of God. We don’t really earn God’s love, even if we work hard all day. That love is freely given, just like parents’ love for their child. Working hard is the way we respond to what is a gift, not a wage.

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