Pastor's Letter 20200920 - 20 September 2020 - Generosity

[Father Michael]

September 20^th, 2020

 25^th Sunday, Ordinary Time

 Today’s Theme:  “Generosity”

 

“Go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.” 

A Message from Father ^†Michael

 Scripture Note

 In our First Reading we hear the words, “God’s ways are not our ways; God’s thoughts are not our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:6-9.)  We can only imagine how much our ways of doing and thinking about things differ from God’s.  Of course, no amount of mere mortal research or consideration we might attempt could ever uncover such a mystery.  There is simply no human comparison that would lead us to such an understanding.  That is why we must have faith—in order to address those matters beyond empirical study.  We believe that God’s generosity utterly transcends ours. 

 Along those lines, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, as we read in today’s Gospel passage, was aimed at the legalistically minded Pharisees of Jesus’ day (Matthew 20:1-16.)  They were critical of Jesus, in part, because He befriended sinners and outcasts from society.  In the parable, Jesus illustrates what God is like—generous and full of compassion for the poor and the outcast.  [In that respect, the parable is similar to that of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32.)] 

 An “Unfair” Story?

 From the perspective of our capitalistic mindset, we might consider the actions of the landowner in Christ’s Gospel story today to be “unfair,” in that it appears to favor the “idler” over the “diligent” employee.   To better understand it, we must delve deeper into its meaning. 

Imagine a scene in “anytown” USA, where day laborers are gathered at daybreak, awaiting someone to come by and offer them work.  Some may have been there from earliest morning, others might have “camped out” overnight to better enable their chances of being picked for work.  Some are lying down in the shade, while others are bunched in the open sun.  They are totally exposed—on display for anyone passing by to see them—and scanned by passers-by with indifferent, curious, maybe even hostile eyes.  Their value depends on what people want from them—they have no value in and of themselves.

If selected, they will work for whatever wages are offered.  As the day progresses, a look of dejection begins to settle on their furrowed faces.  The day is wearing on—hope is fading.  For most of them, there will be no “eleventh-hour” reprieve.  They will go home to their families, empty-handed.  In our modern world, “the first shall be first” and “the last shall be last.” 

In Jesus’ story, though, the eleventh-hour people weren’t idlers.  They wanted to work; but no one had offered them the opportunity.  Imagine how such people might feel as the day wanes on.  They would feel rejected, useless, perhaps hopeless. 

The idea that any employer would take these people on near the end of the work day and pay them a full day’s wage would be unthinkable.  Yet this is exactly what the owner of the vineyard in Jesus story actually did.  This is the strong point of the parable, Jesus’ audience knew exactly the point that he was making.  The vineyard represented the Kingdom of God.  Those who had been working all day long represented the Pharisees and the Jews, in general.  The eleventh-hour workers were sinners and Gentiles.

Jesus was saying that God was offering the salvation of the Kingdom to sinners and Gentiles on equal terms with the Jews.  To that the Jews objected vehemently.  They didn’t think such a thing was fair; they expected preferential treatment.  For them, and perhaps for many people today, God works “on the merit system.”  Accordingly, a person earns their graces by being righteous.  In contrast, Jesus was saying God doesn’t work that way! 

One might expect that people who have worked and risen from poverty to relative wealth might be compassionate towards those who haven’t made such a journey.  Yet we know, for most people, the contrary seems to be the general state of affairs.  Successful people tend to be rather harsh in their judgment of poor people, and resent any help that is given as a “handout.”  They have the attitude, that “I had to work long and hard in order to ‘make it; nobody gave me anything; I did it; why can’t they?”  A popular adage that promotes self-sufficiency suggests that, “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day.  Whereas, if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”  (A popular comedienne, Jackie Kashian, says her hardcore merchant father had a twist on that, which goes, “Teach a man to fish and you will ruin your customer base!”) 

Nonetheless, one espouses only “worthiness, competition and rewards,” this Gospel won’t make much sense.  Jesus’ parable makes little sense from the point of view of strict justice.  But which of us would want God to treat us by such a standard?  All of us stand more in need of God’s mercy and generosity that of His justice….  So, this parable isn’t about justice; it is about mercy and generosity.

When we come into God’s presence, let us not parade our entitlements, our rights and our deserts.  We can’t put God “in our debt.”  Everything comes to us as a gift from God—motivated by His love for us.  We must rejoice that God is generous to a degree, which far outstrips any level of human largesse.  We must “open our hearts” to this generosity, and, having experienced it, let it serve as a model in our dealings with others.

A conversion is required before we can ever hope to begin to act in any way comparable to God—not an intellectual conversion, but a conversion of the heart.

The Nature of God

I’ve said today’s Gospel story is not about justice.  Yes, justice is a sublime concept, one that is often stressed in the Bible.  But we must focus on God’s generosity to have an understanding of this story.  Like the wages paid to the last of the workers to come into the vineyard, our Creator’s generous gift of Salvation cannot be earned.   There is a considerable conflict on this point among evangelicals who purport that only through faith alone (“solo fidei”) can one attain to everlasting life.  The epistle of James has it that “Faith without works is dead” (or, “barren,” in some translations.)  We tend toward the attitude that if one considers themselves “saved,” then they will comport themselves in a manner that suggests that state.  They will work toward becoming generous and giving to the less fortunate, by way of direct assistance, at times, and at others, offering a “hand up,” instead of a “handout.”  It isn’t reasonable to think that a “saved” person will be one who is “evil,” or does reprehensible things.  (I am not denying that we must not judge others, but rather leave that to God.  Further, I am not shunning the attitude that we may hate the sin, but love the sinner.)  My point is that the journey to the Promised Land is not one we can complete in a single act of faith.  Except in the case of deathbed conversions, and martyrs for the faith, most of us will be expected to continue “living” and exemplifying our faith, as evidence of our living righteously. 

God may be said to deal with us in ways very different from those in which we normally deal with one another.  “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is God’s generosity above ours” (Psalm 103.)  The goodness of God is a great comfort to us.  But it is also a great challenge, because we are called to imitate it; to make our ways of dealing with one another more like how we imagine God will be dealing with us.

A man who grasped this concept was Pope John XXIII, who launched the Second Vatican Council in 1963.  He has rightly been called a genius, in that he exemplified genius of the heart—shown in his magnanimous generosity and largeness of heart.  The agenda that he envisioned for the council included points that would attempt to “open the windows” and bring the Church “up to date (“Aggiornamento.”)  His view was that for too long there had been too little love in the matters of the Church proper, as regards the people of the earth.  (Unfortunately for that plan, he died before he could see it fulfilled.  Later, many of the tenets he hoped to address were not addressed in the Council affairs, conducted by Paul VI.)  To his credit, he believed that unification of all the “separated brethren” could be accomplished if “love” was the reigning theme.  After all, faith is addressed to the heart, in essence, a relationship of love with God Who first loved us.  It is with the heart we best grasp God.  “Everyone who loves is born of God” (1 John 4:7.)  Once God touches our hearts, and warms them with His love, we will begin to love in turn.  And then we will truly know what God is like.  “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16.) 

Finally, it is not for us to understand the essence or meaning of God, except that we have the example of His Son, Jesus Christ.  His way of dealing with the world is set out for us to emulate in our every waking moment.  To be sure that is an insurmountable task.  But it serves to give us a true goal for our human relationships.  If we can exemplify our faith in our daily thoughts, words and deeds, we will approach becoming worthy of the supreme gift we have been offered for our belief.  There is a place for “tough love,” of course, but it must be offered with an underlying compassion and understanding of the best interest of those with whom we employ it.  We must never confuse our efforts to help someone find their own sense of worth with a refusal to be sensitive to someone who needs to be appreciated.  We must first be perceived as truly generous and  caring about the welfare of others before we can attempt to direct their course in life. 

 May God Richly Bless You!

 The degree to which we enjoy the eternal recompense depends on our choices today, tomorrow, and the next day,

Until we reach the evening of our lives and the end of our labors. ~~Anonymous~~

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