September 19, 2014
The following is a homily for the Scripture readings for Sunday, Sept. 21.
“Oh, no you don’t.” These four words swarm into our minds when we see someone jump ahead of us in line. “I was here first,” we say. We are all like that, but particularly New Yorkers who think that their time is the most precious commodity in the world … and anyone who keeps them waiting is evil incarnate. The Department of Motor Vehicles, the doctor’s office, waiting to see an agent in the bank – Hey! I was here first! Why is so-and-so going ahead of me? Just about the only place we don’t want to get picked is … jury duty, of course. Please, pick the person next to me.
So we resonate well with the Gospel because we, like the laborers in the vineyard, all have an innate sense of fairness. We should all get treated equally, from the slices of pie mom cut when we were kids to the buzzers restaurants give us when it’s crowded And it does seem unfair, these sluggards coming in at 5 in the afternoon, making the same daily wage as the early-morning crowd. It’s as if Jesus pushes our faces into the issue to see what we think. “My ways are not like yours, my thoughts are not like yours,” we hear from Isaiah in the first reading. You bet they aren’t.
But what if Jesus isn’t talking about fairness; what if he’s using fairness to talk about something else? Like what? “Are you envious because I am generous?” What if Jesus is giving us a test, not about fairness, but about grace and graciousness? What if God is overwhelmingly generous to every one of us, but we only realize that when we are in trouble, when we are in need, when we get a break?
After all, it could be that tomorrow laborers might be standing around, but be called in a very different order. Who says it’s me who works all day, every day? Who says God doesn’t give me a break? Or many breaks, for that matter. Or, if the shoe was on the other foot, who says my neighbor might not be quite happy to see me get the daily wage, because my neighbor knows that I need it? If I don’t resent generosity shown me, why do I resent it shown to others?
God’s ways are not like ours, because ours are based on our insecurity, our need to control, and our need to put ourselves first. Faith is God’s totally-free gift to preserve us precisely from these delusions about ourselves. As long as we think the world should operate in accord with the narrowness of our instinctual minds, just so long will the Kingdom of God seem remote. Only when we are wishing every single human being the fullness of life and love – only then will we have the mind of Jesus. Only when we wish every person the same thing we wish for our children, and ourselves, only then will we begin to grasp the freedom of the Kingdom of God. And why aren’t we? Why not?
Paul, in the second reading, already knows this freedom. Imprisoned, he’s facing the prospect of his death. And, as he does so, he shows death cannot shake him because he has already received the greatest gift … the gift of union with Christ. Should he die? Should he live? It makes little matter. He will continue working in the vineyard, happy to suffer a few years more, for the sake of those he loves, and those whom God loves, and those who have yet to know God’s love for themselves.
Before EZ Pass, I just knew every lane I chose would end up being the slowest. “What’s the matter with that jerk,” I’d say whenever people fumbled for coins. I was entitled, wasn’t I? But we are all really entitled to only one thing—to everlasting union with God, the greatest gift we could ever receive. Not to getting A’s, or the fastest service, or the biggest salary, or the most Facebook likes. And we are entitled to this union with God, in Jesus, only because it comes to us as God’s free, abundant, and grace-filled gift. That is the one precious wage worth striving for.
So let’s spread the news … God is not cheap … and let’s spread it by the way we live.