The Generous ways of the Lord

Homily for 25^th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A 2014

Isa 55:6-9 • Phil 1:20-24, 27 • Matthew 20:1-16

Introduction

Do you remember when you were in school and the teacher gave you group work or group projects?  And then perhaps, like me, you were the kid, who did all the work, but the whole group got the same grade, even the lazy kids.  Do you remember that feeling of injustice and outrage that you boiled within you, that those kids who worked less received the same grade as you?

Scripture and Theology

We can therefore understand how the workers in the gospel parable felt.  They had worked the whole day in the hot sun, and yet they were being paid the same as those workers who arrived at the eleventh hour.  For us human beings, such as a situation seems totally unjust and completely outrageous.

But then we heard in the first reading, the Lord saying: “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”  In other words, is it possible that our feelings of injustice and outrage might be mistaken?

This parable that we have just heard shows how different God’s ways are from our ways.  Like the Master, God is not only just, but also generous.  The workers, men, are envious of the Lord’s generosity.  Let us look at the parable again.

The Master keeps his end of the agreement and so we can call him just.  He agreed to pay a day’s wage to each of the workers, let’s say $100 and at the end of the day he does exactly that; he pays them $100 each.  We call that justice: giving each person what they deserve, treating every person as they deserve.

But our God often does not treat us merely in the ways we deserve; he goes beyond justice and is generous to us.  In the parable we saw that the Master, paid the late arrivals, more than they deserved; he paid them a day’s wage, for less than a day’s work.   While this might seem unfair to us human beings, for God it was generosity.  These men were heads of families, and they probably needed a day’s wage to put feed their families.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” like we pray.  So, he still gives them what they need for their families. God is both just and generous.

But let us now look at the attitude of the workers.  While God is both just and generous, human beings are envious and jealous.  They are not concerned about justice, since in truth the Master was just to them; giving them what he owed them.  Their feelings of outrage begin when they think that they should get more than the others.  Their ways are not God’s ways.

This parable of Jesus was aimed at the Pharisees.  Like you and I felt outrage at the lazy kids in the group getting a good grade, the Pharisees also felt that it was unfair for Jesus to invite into God’s Kingdom sinners who had broken God’s law such as tax collectors and prostitutes and he was also inviting foreigners into the Kingdom, non-Jews who were considered unclean and unworthy and who did not even know God’s law, much less keep it.

With this parable Jesus teaches the Pharisees that God’s love is much more generous that their human love could ever imagine.  God has promised eternal life to those who do his will.  The Pharisees and all those who are faithful throughout their lives will receive eternal life.  Should they receive twice the amount of eternal life simply because they were faithful longer? That is nonsense.  Eternal life is eternal life.  There is no extra eternal life for doing good.

These workers who arrive late, represent those who come to the faith later, the sinners and gentiles.  But at the end, thankfully they turn to the Lord.  They too need eternal life.  So God gives it to them, not because they deserve it, but because God is generous.  After all eternal life is God’s to give.  God’s justice is often far more generous than our human understanding of justice.

I once read the story of a mobster called Dutch Schultz whose criminal enterprise flourished during Prohibition.  A son of Jewish immigrants, he carved out a life of crime for himself almost throughout his life. He was as brutal and murderous as mobsters come, perhaps as murderous as ISIS in Iraq and Syria today.  Then his life of crime caught up with him.  As he emerged from a restaurant one day, he was showered with a hail of bullets.

But before he died, he was taken to hospital where a priest came to him and explained the tenets of the Christian faith to him.  Dutch repented of his sins and asked to be baptised.  The priest baptised him and soon after that Dutch died.

You can imagine what an outcry there was about what this priest did.  For as Catholics we believe that baptism washes away all our sins and if somebody should die right after baptism, he will go straight to heaven.  And so, people were angry that Dutch got off so easily, that he found his way heaven so easily.  This was not fair to all those good Catholics who went to Mass Sunday after Sunday, who tried their best to keep all the commandments all their life long.  “Is this justice?” they asked?

But as we know, our ways are not the Lord’s ways.  The Lord chose to give Dutch the same reward he is giving us cradle Catholics.  That is his way!

Christian Life

But the Lord’s ways must become our ways.  Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus teaches us to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  Especially in this country, we have been raised to pull our own weight, to work hard in school and at our jobs, for a better life.  That is the true go-getter American spirit and there is nothing wrong with it, except that it is incomplete and imperfect.  We must add to this deep of sense of justice and hard work, the generous ways of the Lord.  We must change our ways so that we taken on the ways of the Lord.

We can start by examining our own lives and seeing how extremely generous God has been to us.  He has not paid us exactly what we deserve according to the human understanding of justice.  If he paid us only what we, who are sinners deserved, well, none of us would be here to tell of it. Sometimes when I praying privately and meditating on the Lord’s goodness to me, I realize that God has been extremely generous to me, especially through the various people he has put in my life.  Perhaps each of us feels the same generosity from the Lord.

In gratitude to the Lord’s generosity to us, we might want to extend the same generosity to others, a generosity that goes beyond justice.

I recently heard a story of a father whose son did something wrong that deserved punishment.  The punishment given was to do some chores, but that meant the son would miss the Saints Football game.  The father, in his generosity, decided to help the son with the chores, so that he would finish them quickly and together they would watch the second half of the game together.  This father method of punishment was both just and generous, like the Lord’s ways.

I also know of a family with three adult children; rather than split their inheritance among all three children equally, the children decided to give half to one child and let the other two split the other half.  Why?  Because this one daughter had really hit hard times and needed the money and the family home.  These siblings were not only just, but also generous, according to the ways of the Lord.

Conclusion

Throughout history we Christians have been known for our concern for the weakest members of our society, not because they deserve it, but because they need it.  And we do this because we try to be generous as the Lord who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome to the stranger, clothing to the naked clothing, care to the sick, visit to the prisoner, renewal and forgiveness to the sinner.  As we carry on this excellent care of the least deserving, may the generous ways of Lord also be our ways.