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25th Sunday of Ordinary Time A
September 21, 2014
Reading I: Isaiah 55:6-9
Responsorial Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18
Reading II: Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a
Are you envious because I am generous?’
The generosity of god, you might say, is the key message of the new covenant, and of the old covenant too. It is an extraordinary message. We find it so unlikely that our culture still resists it. We seek justice and require everyone to give an account of their conduct, especially of their administration if they hold some position, and we demand punishment for wrongdoing. But God, it seems, offers pardon - forgiveness, and does not want to punish them. Amazing.
So amazing is it that people hearing this gospel parable will feel the master is unfair, and withdraw from a god who could be so unjust. Fact is, of course, that if any employer did try this in the workplace, he would spend all next day looking for workers only to find the queue a mile long late in the afternoon. Why work a whole day if the pay is just as good for working only one hour at the end of it?
Sometimes it is very useful to look beyond the passage chosen for today's gospel reading. In this website https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2017&version=ESV you can easily skim back as far as chapter 17 where the story of the Transfiguration introduces the last phase before the action moves to Jerusalem and the grand finale. There's a lot to get your head around, much to do with community standards, many lessons we still find hard to learn.
In fact it's a wonderland world where everything is upside down and works backwards. These final injunctions are brought to a close with a significant sign of healing (Mt.20:29-34). We might let the last paragraph become the first:
And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” And stopping, Jesus called them and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.
The puzzles that Matthew has stacked into chapters 19 and 20 clearly show our blindness. The parable of the level playing field in today's reading is followed immediately by James and John getting their mother to ask Jesus to guarantee them first and second places in the kingdom. This Jesus squashes with a sledge hammer:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
You'd think it would be enough to make anyone take to the hills to escape the laying on of hands, in an age when an up-side-down church requires its leaders to sport their mediaeval glory, blind and deaf to the mockery of the world. It might wipe the smile off the face yet, "for drink my cup you will", my friend.
But see, the prophet calls us all to order:
Seek the LORD while he may be found,
call him while he is near.
Let the scoundrel forsake his way,
and the wicked his thoughts;
let him turn to the LORD for mercy;
to our God, who is generous in forgiving.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
Is this for real? Is there really another order of being, a God who is generous and forgiving while we are sharp and critical. Wisdom says there is. I try to listen, to wonder. It is so unusual - unlikely. All around are calls for justice, for retribution, for punishment. 16 years is not enough for some fool high on ice who drove through a red light at 120 kph and killed three people. No one denies society must punish, and severely even if only as deterrence. But we must remain mystified that God would forgive everyone when they own up to having done wrong and try to make a new start.
I think this may also be a rule of life as we see it all around us. Is it a characteristic of evolution? Life springs from the ashes. There is a cleansing and renewal going on all the time, and countless individuals are obliterated in the process. It is too much for me to comprehend. Enough perhaps that I am humbled by the scale of it, and by the many elements that are contrary to what I'd expect. If there is a plan, perhaps I can accept it even without understanding. If there is no plan, then it's all crazy. Why are we involved? Why would anyone bother?
At least I don't have Paul's dilemma. Perhaps I should have!
Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.
For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.
If I go on living in the flesh,
that means fruitful labor for me.
And I do not know which I shall choose.
I am caught between the two.
I long to depart this life and be with Christ,
for that is far better.
Yet that I remain in the flesh
is more necessary for your benefit.
The fact is I'd be willing enough to be among those employed towards the end of the day, especially if it gets me a full day's pay anyway. And I'd be happy to die in my sleep, thank you, in say another 10 or 20 years. I'm in no hurry. Not like the mystic Paul who could say "For me life is Christ, and death is gain." Oh, I know what he means, but I'm not as enamoured of the Christ as he was, or committed to spreading the good news at any cost.
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OTHER STUFF
The context in which it was originally told must have been a complaint of Jesus’ opponents that he was paying more attention to the outcast than to the respectable members of society.
I feel there may be no better example than this of a basic problem of spirituality: it makes no sense when we young and looking to understand how life works, and by the time we're old and have the odour of maturity about us it's just plain obvious.
I leave to others any discussion of social justice arising out of this parable, although in its original setting there must have been a complaint about Jesus paying more attention to the outcast than to the respected members of society.
My preference is to see it as teaching a fundamental principle of wisdom: life owes us nothing. Everything comes as gift freely given. Just as we didn't ask to be born, neither did we have any right to life or to the place we find ourselves in socially. Only when we stop teasing the threads of entitlement do we come to value what is given free.
This is the sort of armchair wisdom that really gets up the nose of someone who's had the short end of the stick from the start, or had their expected share in some of the good things whipped away from them by some dirty trickster. Or by a serious abuser, or a crippling accident or disease that leaves them fully alert but unable move a finger.
An economy or economic system consists of the production, distribution or trade, and consumption of limited goods and services by different agents in a given geographical location.
A given economy is the result of a set of processes that involves its culture, values, education, technological evolution, history, social organization, political structure and legal systems, as well as its geography, natural resource endowment, and ecology, as main factors.
I looked this up in Wiki because it strikes me the readings today are about God's economic system, and I wondered how it compares to ours. Not being an economist, my treatment must of necessity be simplistic, but a few questions popped up from the start: Is there a gold standard in God's economy? (Naturally we're dealing in human affairs for we know nothing else.) Is the goal to reach parity in transactions? Is there an exchange rate between currencies? Are goods and services valued by some gold standard? Is there an audit at the end of the term?
For starters, the reading from Isaiah seems clearly to say the systems are very different:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
I can think of two parables in which Jesus refers to this: the story of the irresponsible younger brother who wasted his fortune, yet was welcomed home when he came back begging for food and a place to sleep, and this story of workers who were paid an equal wage even though some had done much more than others, and this in spite of the resentment we might feel was justified against the boss.
In the other column you can put other items, like the case of the employees given funds to use, and the one who buried his for safe keeping was severely criticised for being all too cautious.
Can we say that the currency of the kingdom of god is mercy