Wednesday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time, August 21, 2024

Matthew 20, 1-16

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “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. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

St. Matthew sets this parable immediately after he has overturned the expectations of his followers by teaching that wealth is not a sure sign or result of righteousness and that, indeed, it would be extremely difficult for the rich to follow him and to enter heaven: they would, essentially, have to reject the worldly lives they had lived and the understanding they had fostered of themselves.  The parable which makes up today’s Gospel Reading continues this upending of expectations.  It shocked those who heard it from the Lord’s own lips two thousand years ago and it continues to shock and disturb even today, overthrowing our own sense of fairness — precisely what the Lord wanted to accomplish.

There are many ways to understand this parable precisely because it features such unexpected behavior on the part of the landowner.  One way to look at it is that it is about the lavish generosity he shows to his workers, particularly the ones hired later in the day.  Another is to understand the anxiety the landowner has to get his vineyard harvested before anything happens to the grapes.  Still another is to see that the ways of the landowner are not the ways of his laborers, but extremely different.  In all instances, the landowner is a figure for God.  In the first, we see that God’s purpose is to manifest his own glory and one way in which he does this is through a generosity only he can possess.  In the second, we see God’s great care for us, his grape clusters hanging on the vine, and to bring us into heaven as expeditiously as possible lest persecution or the cares of this world bruise or destroy us.  In the third, we see God making it abundantly clear how different his way are from our ways, and that with respect to his providence and his judgments, all we can do is to wonder.

It also pays to think of how this is about sin and forgiveness.  The workers who come out at dawn are those who come to their senses about their sins and do not put off repenting but come to the Lord right away.  The night of sin is ended, the dawn of new life has arrived, and they go to the Lord, begging forgiveness, and receiving from the Lord the grace of becoming his followers, indeed, members of his Body.  Others come to him more slowly.    They have also torn themselves from their lives of sin, but with greater difficulty than those who came at dawn.  They are also forgiven and are made followers as well, to toil in the vineyard of the world, doing the Lord’s business.  At the end, at the final judgment, all are to be received into heaven.  Some among those who toiled the longest complain that they should receive a greater reward, but the Lord reminds them that it is only due his grace that they are saved at all, and that it is unseemly for his followers to judge each other as to their worthiness or lack thereof. 

If  we look at ourselves and think how God overwhelms us with his grace and mercy each day simply by allowing us to call ourselves Christian, we will see our time in the vineyard of this world as a great favor he has granted us, despite the heat of the day and the difficulty of the labor.