For the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year A, Jesus gives another parable, that of the Workers in the Vinyard. There is a lot to this parable. The context goes back to last Sunday’s parable from Matthew’s chapter 18 where Jesus concludes the Community Discourse on the requirement to forgive. Then we have chapter 19 where Jesus provides his discourse on divorce, the requirement to be as children, and the response to the rich young man on being perfect. That is all skipped in the Sunday lectionary, which brings us today to chapter 20, a parable which illustrates God’s generosity of grace. In some ways Jesus is continuing His Community Discourse in these two chapters. The only shift I think from chapter 18 in these last two chapter is that Jesus shifts from requirements to counsels.
As an allegory, the Parable of the Workers in
the Vineyard sets up the landowner as God, work in the vineyard as doing God’s
work, and the day’s pay as a reward in salvation. God extends His grace to all who do His work,
whether for working all day or for just an hour. I did not embed Fr. Geoffrey’s Plant’s
homily on today’s Gospel, but I want to quote his conclusion:
The workers who were employed early in the morning trusted in what they had done. They had laboured for twelve long hours and assumed that God rewards people according to what they have earned. The longer they had worked, the greater they believed would be their reward. But Jesus overturns that expectation. The owner of the vineyard is not an accountant carefully calculating what each worker deserves. He is astonishingly generous. The workers hired at the eleventh hour have no achievements on which to rely. They have nothing to bring except their need. They can only trust in the goodness of the landowner. That is how God's grace works. Grace that can be earned is no longer grace. Grace that can be calculated is no longer grace. Grace that can be claimed as a matter of entitlement is no longer grace. God's grace is not a wage paid for work performed. It is a gift, freely given to those who are willing to receive it. Whether we labour in the vineyard for one hour or for twelve is not ultimately decisive. God gives salvation as an unmerited gift.
In some respects, this parable with the workers who worked all day as disgruntled with the owner’s generosity reminds me of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel. The workers who worked all day express the same sort of injustice as the older brother with the prodigal brother. Both parables show God’s generosity as being primary over God’s justice. It’s interesting to note that Matthew the tax collector provides a parable with money while Luke seems to focus more on family dynamics.
Three
years ago I embedded a homily on this passage from Bishop Barron who
emphasized St. Catherine of Siena’s famous quote, “All the way to heaven is
heaven” in explaining this passage.
Today’s Gospel:
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
"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,
the landowner 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,
the landowner 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."
~Mt: 20:1-16
Though not a homily, let’s turn to Dr. Brant Pitre for the exegesis.
Dr. Pitre:
So just a little bit of background here with the cultural setting that Matthew is imagining. Here is a situation where you have a wealthy land owner in this case the owner of the vineyard who would hire out day laborers; that was very common in first century Judaism, so a day laborer was a person who would go out into the marketplace of some public place and wait around for the hopes that some wealthy landowner might come and hire them for a temporary job and basically the idea would be is that you'd be hired for one day you'd go out to the field or in this case to a vineyard during the harvest season and you'd work for a day's wage and then you'd be paid that day, so it was sort of a contract work you know just temporary work like a temp worker.
Dr. Nina Heereman, professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Patrick’s
Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California, in her explanation
of this passage, makes the observation that Jesus and His earthly father
Joseph could have been such day laborers waiting to be picked up for a day’s
work. I thought that a great
observation. Dr. Brant continues.
Around sunset time
the owner of the vineyard says to call the laborers and give them their wages
but start with the last and then go toward the first. So I want you to feel the force of this difference.
Between the first and the last minute,
guys who were working the fields is pretty grave when you really put it in
context the men who were called last worked from 5 p.m. to 6 o'clock they
worked for one hour right in the cool of the evening the men who were called
first worked from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. so they pulled a 12-hour shift in the
heat of the day as they said in the scorching heat harvesting the grapes. Okay and as the owner of the vineyard starts
to pay out he starts with the guys who were hired at five o'clock and he gives
them one Denarius. Now as soon as the
guys who started at 6:00 a.m. see that, their natural assumption is going to be
well these guys got paid a Denarius for one hours work then I should make at
least twelve times as much because I work 12-hour shift and instead the master
gives them each the exact same one Denarius no matter how long they worked.
His response to them is the key. He says to them first and foremost I'm not unjust because you agree lead with me for a Denarius so I haven't given you any less than you said you would work for. So he hasn't shortchanged them anything, that's the first point. The second point is he says I can give whatever I want to whomever I want, in other words am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? So another important point here is that the owner of the vineyard here is not being unjust because it's his money; he can give however much he would like to whomever he likes for whatever amount of work that they've that they performed right, and then the third point is something very interesting there he says or do you begrudge me my generosity. Right and now that's a English translation; the literal Greek here is it says this is your eye evil. Because I am good literally is your eye evil because I am good; the imagery there is of an envious eye so you'll see this in the gospel sometimes or the New Testament talk about the lust of the eyes, that's the sin of envy. It's seeing someone else's possessions something belongs to someone else and desiring to take it for yourself right as if it belongs to you, and so with what the master is saying here is that you are angry because I am generous because your heart is envious for that which does not belong to you that money is his it's not yours it doesn't belong to you have no right to judge how he distributes it right now what does Jesus up to in doing this well
It is an important element of the parable that the early on workers visually see the latter brought on workers get paid a full day’s wage. A significant part of the parable is understanding the sin of envy as coming through the eyes.
Let’s turn to Fr. Charlie Bouchard O.P. for the pastoral homily. He gives a fascinating example out of
literature, the short story by Flannery O’Conner, “Revelation.”
Fr. Bouchard:
The readings today,
the first reading and the gospel, especially, both give us examples of what
biblical scholars sometimes refer to as a biblical reversal. In other words, we start out seeming to go in
one direction, but then God's plan turns things around and changes the outcome
into a way that we didn't expect. This
is an example, of course, of the first reading saying that God's ways are not
our ways. And the Bible is full of these
stories of biblical reversals.
There is an author by
the name of Flannery O'Connor, who some of you have probably heard of. She wrote stories, almost all of which take
place in the Deep South, and they portray life in the South, which is maybe in
the early part of the 20th century might seem a little strange to us who did
not grow up down there. But she has one
story that I think is a perfect example of this biblical reversal that we're
talking about. It's a story called “Revelation,”
and it's about a person named Mrs. Turpin, who lives on a farm, and she's a
rather not very pleasant person. The
story portrays her as being very judgmental and kind of pompous. She looks at
the poor around her, and she kind of disparages them. She looks at the blacks around her in a very
uh, discriminating uh, racist society, and she judges them very badly.
And then at the very
end of the story, she has this revelation, which is obviously where the title
of the story came from. And she is on
her farm out over the pig pen of all things, this dignified woman standing near
the pig pen. And she has this great
vision, this revelation of the end times of what God's judgment is going to
look like. And the story tells us that
she looks up and sees this vision, this vast swinging bridge extending upward
from the earth through a field of living fire.
Upon it, the author tells us, is a vast horde of souls, rumbling toward
heaven. There are whole companies of
white trash, clean for the 1st time in their lives, and bands of poor blacks in
white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics, shouting and clapping and
leaping like frogs. And bringing up the
end of the procession, was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once, as
those who, like herself and her husband, had always had little of everything,
and the God given wit to use it right. She
leaned forward to observe them closer.
They were marching behind the others with
great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order, and common
sense, and respectable behavior. They
alone were on key.
Yet she could see by
their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. In this passage, to me, has always been just
an immense theological statement about these biblical reversals. Mrs. Turpin, who always thought that, you
know, she was maybe not the greatest in the world, but certainly somebody who
had it together in God's sight. Somebody
who did the right thing, who had common sense, who dressed properly, and yet
she was very judgmental. And so in this
judgment scene, she sees all these people that she had really despised and had
no use for, marching up to heaven in all their eccentricity, clapping and
singing, and being off key perhaps. Then
she sees herself and her husband and others like them, the proper citizens of
the town, who are also marching toward heaven.
But they alone were on key, even though they were at the end of the
procession.
And it's an example of how God's generosity really exceeds God's justice. That God extends this grace of salvation, not only to those who appeared to have earned it, although they were at the very end of the line, but also to those who, perhaps in the judgment of some, did not earn this grace or did not merit salvation. Those who live difficult, troublesome lives, those who couldn't pay their bills, those whose clothes weren't washed, all of those that Mrs. Turpin had disparaged, were really going 1st into heaven. The last ones we thought that would have been there. They are the 1st in line, and she and her husband follow at the very end.
“The last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Sunday Meditation: “What
if I wish to give this last one the same as you?”
This is such a beautiful and appropriate hymn, “Open My Eyes, Lord.”
Open my eyes, Lord,
Help me to see
Open my eyes, Lord
Help me to see Your
face
Open my eyes, Lord
Help me to see
Open my ears, Lord
Help me to hear Your
voice
Open my ears, Lord
Help me to hear
Open my heart, Lord
Help me to love like
You
Open my heart, Lord
Help me to love
Lord, let me love like You.
