25th SUNDAY in OT-A
(Is 55.6-9; Phil 1.20c-24.27a; Mt 20.1-16a)
24 September 2023
We are struck from the outset in today’s gospel by the love for his vineyard of this “landowner” or, literally, this “master of the house” (oikodespotês). The protagonist of the parable is portrayed as reflecting God as Lord of his “house”, which is simultaneously each soul, the Church, and the whole cosmos. The whole universe, in fact, is God’s personal domain, and over it he exercises authority by right of ownership and covenanted love. Scaling this cosmic relationship down to human size, Isaiah says that “the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel”, and that the inhabitants of Judah are “his beloved plantation” (5:7). The preferential love of God for his people clearly forms the background of this parable, which we find only in the Gospel of Matthew.
The landowner’s passion for his vineyard emerges gradually in the narrative. Although the owner is clearly in full control of the situation (finding workers, determining wages, and so on), he is also the character in the parable who expends the most physical and psychological effort. He does so, in fact, more than all the workers together! We see the master of the house quitting his bed long before dawn, before everyone else, and he continues on his feet until the last moment in the story.
Five times the text refers to the owner going out to find workers: he goes out at the first, third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours of the day. Every timed, remarkably, he goes out in person instead of sending servants, as one would expect. His repeated action of “going out” insistently demonstrates not only his willingness to provide an adequate number of workers for the cultivation and harvesting of his vineyard, but more importantly his sustained efforts reveal his passion for an all-encompassing “universality”: he goes to great lengths so as not to exclude anyone from his project. He seems fixated on not excluding any potential job-seeker from the enterprise of his vineyard, and on not depriving anyone from the enjoyment of a closer relationship with himself as lord of the vineyard.
But the end of the parable suddenly throws us listeners into disarray: we are seriously perplexed as to what the actual central concern of this enterprising landowner might be. Through all his arduous, day-long endeavor, is he primarily concerned that his vineyard should produce the highest possible yield? Or is he, rather, consumed with the mysterious desire of testing and altering the hidden motivations of the hearts of everyone he meets and hires? Who is he really, we want to know—this man who exerts himself so much, working simultaneously on the physical and the metaphysical planes? In the fullness of the parable’s meaning surely he has to be Christ our Lord, who came to our world from his Kingdom of glory in order to involve as many people as possible in his great work of redemption! But what exactly is the “change” he is aiming for in people’s hearts?
The protagonist’s actions of going out, calling, hiring and sending are truly transformative events for the workers. For all of them, the point of convergence, where they all meet as struggling human beings, is the vineyard of the owner, which I suggest represents the Promised Land of God’s Heart. By mysteriously converging on that one blessed spot after answering the Master’s call, all who come together from the four corners of the world find there the true destiny of their lives. The enterprise offered them rescues them out of economic need, personal isolation, social insignificance and lack of existential identity.
The call then introduces them into new possibilities of community, lasting meaning and self-discovery through their new relationship with this task, this master and these companions. Where one might have expected a boring, mundane conclusion, however, with wages conventionally distributed in proportion to the number of hours worked, we are confronted instead with the shock of an apparent injustice, leading to a disgruntled revolt on the part of those who have worked the longest.
Then a rather extraordinary reversal takes place. In the midst of loud grudges and complaints about enduring toil and sweat in the heat of the day, the real work, the deep work of the heart, begins as day is cooling into evening and the tools of manual labor have been put away. First had come the long and tiring physical labor of picking grapes, undertaken by the hired workers; now begins the even harder labor of converting their hearts, undertaken by the Lord of the vineyard.
The human needs of the workers, driving them to seek work, have handed them over to the wise authority and inventive capacity of the Lord. Their dependence on him has put them at the mercy of his ever creative and re-creative love. In this moment of weariness and relaxation after work at the end of the day, while waiting for their remuneration, the workers are more vulnerable than ever and, therefore, more subliminally available to the Word of Truth.
Angry grumbling erupts when those who started working at the beginning of the day see that everyone, even those who worked only one or two hours, is now receiving the same agreed pay of only one denarius, in our translation watered down to “the usual daily wage”. Greatly scandalized, they realize that, as the Lord says through Isaiah, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways! Therefore, in order to make his thoughts of absolute generosity pierce into the hearts of these angry people, the master of the vineyard confronts them with two penetrating questions that probe the workers’ motives: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious [the original says, Do you have an evil eye] because I am good?
The Lord seems to want to raise one and all to a new status, to transform everyone into a new community of grace, to gather them all up, without exclusion, into a “vineyard” or “kingdom” where no one will lack anything, where the only law in force will be that of universal generosity, following the pattern of the heart of their Master and King. The Lord insists that it is his right to establish such a kingdom, based on his divine freedom to do as he will as Lord and Master of all things. What a paradox to the worldly: that the Lord, the hardest-working character of all in the story, is also the most generous and all-embracing!
Indeed, between the lines we can read the spiritual law that says that only those who aspire to enjoy the divine freedom of their Master can become citizens of such a kingdom. Such is the basis of citizenship here, the only “passport” that gains admittance. The unfreedom of envy and distrust is the greatest obstacle in this society, the only thing that excludes anybody, for it blocks the free flow of grace and love that is the very nourishment and life of all the dwellers in this Kingdom.
But this freedom of spirit can be purchased only at a great price, nothing less than the death of my old begrudging self, as St Paul states: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Only those who can utter these words with Paul from the heart will be able to embrace with joy the criteria and actions of the Lord of the vineyard; only those who are interiorly free—free from the morbid compulsions of jealousy, competitiveness and entitlement—will be able to cooperate wholeheartedly with Christ in the redemption of the world, will be able to be transformed at last, by the work of the Father’s re-creating love, from mere grasping mercenaries into true and beloved sons and daughters, joyful citizens of the Kingdom of God.
In conclusion, let’s make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters. This parable, at the deepest level, is not mainly about our simple moral alteration from self-centered, envious persons into altruistic, generous ones. Because it is a parable about the Kingdom, the story can at bottom symbolize only one thing: the Father’s gift to us of his beloved Son. In other words, it is a Eucharistic parable. The Master of the House of the Church cannot give any of his workers either more or less than the one denarius, because the single, indivisible, denarius he has promised represents nothing other than Jesus himself.
As we experience daily at this altar, the Father loves us so much that he will not give us less than Jesus; but neither can he give us more than Jesus, because even God has nothing more precious than Jesus to give! As Paul puts it so sharply to the Romans: [God]—who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all—how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (8:32) So, what madness takes hold of us now and then that we could ever hope for more than the best God has to give?
