25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
A cycle
Indeed, just like us the Israelites in Isaiah’s day seemed to identify their thoughts and ways with the will of God. Especially in an election year politicians and political commentators of all persuasions insist that their ideas and programs are certain to lead us to the promised land.
Even though we believe that we are made in the image of God, in actual practice we tend to talk and act as if God was made in our image. Yet in today’s reading we hear the Lord say,
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways my ways.
Is there an other place in the Gospels where the disparity between the Lord’s ways and ours is more pronounced than in today’s reading from Matthew? I’m sure that most of us sympathize with the workers who had been toiling in the vineyard all day but then get the same pay as those who only worked a short time. If we were to take a poll I think that an overwhelming majority would say that the landowner was being unfair and unjust.
Commentators on Matthew say that in this parable the evangelist is making a point that newly converted pagan Christians will have as much right to enter the Kingdom of God as the initial Jewish Christians.
Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to take this parable in its context. In the passage immediately before this parable, Matthew had recorded these words of Jesus:
“But many who are first now will be last, and many who are last now will be first.”
Then Jesus tells the parable and ends with the same words, “Even so, the last shall be first, and the first last.”
Matthew then recounted an incident that occurred immediately after. The mother of James and John, two of the first apostles called by Jesus, asks Jesus to place her sons in a place of honor in his Kingdom. Apparently she has not understood the parable. Jesus explains that she does not know what she is asking for, and tells all the Apostles that true greatness lies in humility.
“Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; even as the Son of man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The parable then would appear to be a warning against complacency. Because many of us have toiled years in the vineyard of life, it does not mean that we can take on airs or assume we are better than anyone else. Even the best of us can trip and fall. And the least of us can experience a miraculous recovery.
Those who have trouble with this parable should consider that the opportunity to work a long time in the vineyard is a great gift. Working in the vineyard is its own reward. The more we work in the vineyard the more we will understand the concern and love of Jesus for those who have fallen away. In the gospels there are so many examples of the Father’s love for those who have returned even at the last minute.
Perhaps the greatest example occurred on the Cross when Jesus promised the Good Thief that “this day you will be with me in Paradise.”
In sports we all know that it’s not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. In baseball a pitcher can be throwing a perfect game but then lose the game with one bad pitch. A batter can go four for four but then strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to cost his team the victory. Who will remember his earlier hits?
In today’s passage from the letter to the Christian community at Philippi St. Paul says that though he longs to die and be with Christ, he is content to keep working in the vineyard as long as the Lord requires. “If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.”
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Reading 1. Isaiah 55: 6-9
Reading II. Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a
Gospel. Matthew 20:1-16a (the last will be first).
The Scandal of the Sovereign Gift
ReplyDelete25th Sunday in Ordinary Time — Cycle A
The Human calculation vs. the Divine economy. We live inside a transactional world. Our economies, our laws, even our private coping mechanisms rest on one assumption: you get what you earn. So when the laborers who bore the heat of the day are paid the same denarius as those who worked a single hour, our sense of fairness is instantly offended.
But Isaiah breaks the frame open first: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways." This parable isn't a labor policy. It's a revelation of the gap between human merit and divine grace.
The gift cannot be divided. The Fathers saw the denarius as Christ Himself — the coin bearing the King's own image. You cannot receive a fragment of Jesus. St. Augustine read the Master's hourly calls as the stages of a human life — infancy, youth, old age — and pointed to the thief on the cross, who arrives at the eleventh hour and receives the very same fullness as those who served a lifetime. St. John Chrysostom noticed something gentler still: when the last laborers say "no one has hired us," the Master doesn't blame their idleness. He simply moves — urgently, before nightfall — to bring them in.
The grumbling reveals the real sickness. The first workers' anger exposes a faith turned contractual instead of covenantal. It's the elder brother's sickness from the Prodigal Son all over again: when devotion becomes a checklist, someone else's mercy starts to feel like a threat. "Are you envious because I am generous?" God asks — and the question lands on all of us who quietly rank the pews.
Paul shows the way out. Writing from prison, he says it plainly: "For to me life is Christ, and death is gain." He isn't hoarding merit to buy his way into heaven — he already knows he holds the prize. Whether he labors one more hour or meets the Master face to face, the joy doesn't depend on the math.
This is also where the parable stops being only spiritual. The eleventh-hour workers weren't idle by choice — "no one has hired us" — they were shut out of the marketplace. Catholic Social Teaching, from Rerum Novarum onward, has read that line as a mandate: human dignity, not productivity, sets the wage. A living wage isn't earned by the hour; it's owed to the person.
When we finally believe our standing before God rests on His goodness and not our striving, we stop counting who deserves what — and start rejoicing that the Master is still out in the marketplace, even at the last hour, looking for us.
Amen,
roger
Thank you, Frank of Connecticut, for your fabulous reflection,