“HONEY FROM THE ROCK”
Daily Reflections
Sunday, 24th September 2017.
Twenty Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Is 55: 6-9;
Ps 144: 2-3,8-9,17-18;
Phil 1: 20-24, 27;
Mt 20: 1-16
NOT FAIR, BUT GRACIOUS
Today’s liturgy gives us a most uplifting image of God. It tells us that he is not small-minded and vindictive like we often are. He is generous, compassionate, and forgiving. He is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love.
We often look upon God in very human terms. We make him as small-minded as ourselves. But in the reading from Isaiah, God says: ‘My ways are not your ways. ’The Israelites in exile in Babylon suffered greatly. With tears, the elders told the destruction of Jerusalem to their children born in exile, instilling in them the hope and the expectation of the Lord’s vengeance. They understood God as retributive, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. In such a historical and cultural context, Isaiah utters a disconcerting oracle: God ways are not man’s ways. The prophet asks for the correction of the image of God. The Lord struck all the naive projection that man makes about him. “It’s that my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are different from mine. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
The Second Reading contains lines written by Paul from prison to his friends at Philippi. He is thinking of his death, and longs for complete union with Christ. In it he reveals the most intimate, sweetest, most tender emotions of his heart. “For to me, living is for Christ and dying is even better” is the synthesis of his feelings and of his deep faith.
The Gospel contains a story about God’s generosity, a generosity which rises far above our human standards. This is a wonderful yet very subversive parable. The parable made its hearers furious. What’s the point in trying to play one’s full part, if at the end of the day all are treated in the same way? Why slog your guts out all day long, if you can amble along at the eleventh hour and collect the same wages for one hour’s work?
It’s very important to realize that the eleventh-hour people were- not dossers who were trying, by hook or by crook, to avoid work. They genuinely wanted to work. It was just that nobody had hired them. In those days the marketplace was like our labour exchange. Men went there early in the morning and waited for an employer to come along. If an employer needed some workers, he would go to the marketplace, look at what was on offer, and cream off the most promising. Therefore, by the eleventh hour, nothing but the rejects and left-overs whom nobody would employ were left.
Now everybody knew who Jesus was talking about in the parable. The eleventh-hour people were the sinners and the Gentiles. Those who had been working all day long were the Jews. The vineyard was the Kingdom of God. So what Jesus was saying was this: God was offering the Kingdom to sinners and Gentiles on equal terms with the Jews. Naturally the Jews objected vigorously. They didn’t think it was fair. They thought they deserved preferential treatment, that in fact they had earned it because they had been doing the Lord’s work all their lives. But what was being undermined was the innate sense of superiority of the Jews in comparison with the sinners and Gentiles.
Generosity was the last thing they wanted because it equalized everything. It took away their motive for being good and virtuous, namely, an earned reward. They assumed that God worked on the merit system: God would give a commensurate reward based on the hard work. Jesus however presents another notion, God does not work on a deal which is productive or beneficial. He is our heavenly Father. We are his children. Surely a father is not only allowed to be generous but must be generous if he deserves the name at all. The parable then is making the point that God is generous. His generosity is extended to everybody, even to sinners and Gentiles. We must not imagine that he is small- minded like ourselves. ‘My thoughts are not your thought, my ways are not your ways’, says God.
The Christian’s main concern must not be rewards, but simply the joy of serving God. Surely it is not only a better thing, but a privilege, to have been working all day long in the Lord’s vineyard, rather than hanging around the marketplace without meaning or purpose to one’s life? If God finally takes pity on those who have been hanging around at a loose end, and treats them with the same kindness and compassion that he has treated us, why should this make us mad? If it does make us mad, then it is telling us something. It is telling us that there is something lacking in the quality of our service. It is tainted with self-interest. Or it could be that we haven’t yet abandoned the idea that we can justify ourselves through our own good works.
The highest ideal to which we can aspire is to work with love. While it is not always easy, its rewards are very great. It is only with the heart that we can work rightly. If my heart is not in my work, then I’m no better than a slave. But if my heart is in it then it becomes a joy, and I put my best into it. To work with the hands, but not with the heart, is to work under a very severe handicap.
Prayer: Lord, help me to increase my commitment to living my life of faith. Allow me to hear Your gentle invitation to enter into Your Vineyard of grace. I thank You for Your generosity and seek to receive this freely given gift of Your mercy. Jesus, I trust in You. Amen