A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 20, 2020
Is 55:6-9, Phil 1:20C-24, 27A, Mt 20:1-16A
For some people steeped in timeclocks, hourly wages, collective bargaining and labor law, this Gospel has always been a head-scratcher.
If the worker who was employed from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. gets, let’s say, 75 bucks but then the worker who started at 6 a.m. also gets 75 bucks, how is that remotely fair? The late-starter is getting $75 an hour while the guy from the Dawn Patrol is getting $6.25. What should the hourly rate be? Shouldn’t it be the same for everybody?
And you can skip that “I feel generous” part, too. This is about wages, not tips.
Except … listen again to the employment contract:
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.
The usual daily wage. Which, for argument’s sake in our example, is $75.
So if the workday is 12 or 14 or 16 hours or merely one or two, a day’s pay is a day’s pay. The length of the day does not enter into the equation.
And the reward was agreed upon at the beginning of the business relationship.
There was no coercion. The laborers headed out to the job site willingly, Seven Dwarfs-like.
There was no fraud. There was no last-minute reneging on the landowner’s part. He paid the usual daily wage.
So to appreciate this Gospel in economic terms, we need to get past the notion of hourly wage that dominates our modern society and look back at the bygone concept of “day’s wage.” Most outdoor work was sun-up to sundown, and the day’s length varied by season. The overarching reward was food and shelter.
For most laborers, that was fine. It was enough. And the winter layoff was coming all too soon, anyway.
But was Jesus really teaching a class in employment law? Or is this parable told from his more likely 30,000-foot perspective?
Let’s get out of the weeds.
For one thing, we can make the case that, when it comes to sharing and doing charitable acts or acting on behalf of social justice, any amount of time or treasure is valuable if we give all we can under our current circumstances, whatever they may be. If we lend a hand at 6 a.m. or at 5 p.m., and that’s fully what we can, then there’s value. Especially if, even though we may be latecomers, our effort or donation puts the initiative over the top.
Especially when the precious metaphorical vines and grapes we’re dressing are our brothers and sisters in need, physically, psychologically, spiritually, or any and all of them. Christ is always hiring workers for his vineyard. Christ is always recruiting workers to spread the Good News.
For one hour a day or 24.
But why, then, this parable? Why tell a story that has puzzled thousands upon thousands of people for thousands upon thousands of years?
And even if Jesus shared this with his First Century disciples, why did the Holy Spirit inspire the evangelist to include it in the Gospel and not, possibly, a different story, a more understandable or relatable story, a different incident we know little or nothing about? Why did the Doctors of the Church include this in the canon of the Bible for all time? Why must we ponder it even now?
Here’s a shot in the dark:
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.
In other words, God doesn’t owe us an explanation. God, who created the universe, all things visible and invisible, who wrote the laws of nature and set all things in motion, doesn’t owe us anything. But gave us everything.
And because some of those gifts included intellect and curiosity and free will, God in his infinite wisdom — God whose thoughts are not necessarily our thoughts — God gave us first the prophets and then Jesus to explain things to us in a way we can understand.
Frankly, God probably doesn’t want our brains to hurt.
Let’s think back to school, however many years we may have spent there, however long ago or recent, and to our lives since then. We stuffed a lot of information into our tiny brains back then, and yet those of us who are parents invariably have been caught flatfooted by how much more and how much different our children are learning.
Think about on-the-job training. Zoom meetings. Reliable news sources.
God already knows all these things and an inconceivable amount more. A staggeringly huge amount more. We can learn all our lives and never scratch the surface.
And yet, God does invite us to try to share those lofty thoughts.
What’s most important is sharing the truth of those thoughts, not always the details or the empirical facts.
We already know the first truth — that God is love and that everything God does is good. And then we know that God gives us life and love and forgiveness unceasingly and boundlessly, with no strings attached. That God welcomes us to love him back, always with outstretched open arms, and that God is infinitely patient whenever we stray.
No, we can’t fully know the mind of God, and sometimes the message can be a head-scratcher. But our God-given curiosity and the grace and wisdom that flow through the Holy Spirit can bring us more in tune when we make a vigorous effort through prayers and acts of charity and justice.
And that’s a good day’s work.
