Twenty fifth Sunday in Ordinary time – Year A

‘GOD AWARDS ACCORDING TO MERITS’ IS THE EPITAPH ON THE TOMB OF LOVE

Introduction

The terms Eucharist and charisma are well known. They are derived from the Greek‘charis,’ which means benevolence, free gift, giving joy and happiness. We feel great satisfaction when we receive a graduation diploma after so much work and sleepless nights. However, a simple flower given by a loved one at a moment in which they declare their love awakens in us immense joy. The gift produces a unique emotion because it signifies that someone thinks and loves us while tenderly pronouncing our name.

Introducing the criteria of retributive justice, accountability, reward and punishment, threat and flattery, recording merit and transgression in our relationship with God is a diabolic deformation of faith. The rabbis had cataloged people into four categories: the just, if they observe all the law; the wicked, if transgression prevails in them; the mediocre, if merit and fault are equivalent; the repentant if they ask forgiveness from their sin. With the principle: ‘Reward is given only for good work,’ they decreed the end of a love relationship.

The dialogue between God and human beings is established only where there is a free encounter, free gift, unconditional reciprocal love. Whoever loves claims nothing and expects nothing other than to see the loved one smile and rejoice. In the line of the prophets, the best among the rabbis said to the Lord: ‘Your salvation is manifested in this: you are merciful to those who have no treasure of good works.’ ‘What you’ve done is grace because, in our hands, there were no good works.’ Jesus made this righteousness ofGod his own.

• To internalize the message, we repeat:

“I thank you, Lord, because you welcome and love me just as I am.”

First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-9

The Israelites have been in Babylon for 50 years. Far from their land, they havesuffered and cried (Ps 137). The elders still remember the dramatic scene of the holy cityin flames and the bloodthirsty and violent soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar invading her. Withtears in their eyes, they told the story to their children born in exile, instilling in them the hope and the expectation of the Lord’s vengeance. They learned in the catechism that God is just: He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. For this, they are sure that the Lord will punish the enemies of his people. Israel has only to wait, and she will see that the Lord will not leave the wicked unpunished one day.

In this historical and cultural context, a prophet emerges, who utters a disconcerting oracle: God does not think so. It is necessary to change this evil way of thinking because it is a curse to attribute such thinking to him. “The wicked—that is, the Israelite who expectsreprisal from God—forsakes his way,” the unrighteous person makes his thoughts wicked(v. 7).

Even before distancing from moral miseries, the conversion required by the prophetdeals with a readjustment of the image of God, conceived reasonably, without staying so close to man. The Lord challenged all the naive projections that man holds about him. “It is that my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are different from mine. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (vv. 8-9).

The person also comes out revalued by this revelation. If they leave the vindictive idol they created, they progressively assimilate the thoughts and feelings of the true God. They experience a growing and healthy disgust for their own meanness and pettiness.

>Second Reading
Philippians 1:20c-24,27a

The Letter to the Romans concluded last Sunday. For four weeks, we will have a passage from the letter to the Philippians as a second Reading. Paul had come to Philippi, a city of Macedonia, in 49 A.D., together with Timothy, Silas, and perhaps even Luke. The city—a major cultural and economic center—was most famous for the battle on the plain. The army of Octavian and Anthony had overcome that of Brutus and Cassius. At Philippi, the apostles stayed only for a few days. They were able to initiate a community—the first in Europe. They began speaking to a group of women gathered around, one of whom was Lydia, who was converted and baptized along with her family after the Lord opened her heart to adhere to the words of Paul (Acts 16:11-15).

Among the communities the apostle founded, where there was often disagreement and friction, Paul’s relationship with the Philippians was idyllic, based on solid friendship and mutual, genuine sympathy, to the point that he accepted aid and gifts only from them. “You alone opened for me a debit and credit account, and when I was in Thessalonica, twice you sent me what I needed” (Phil 4:16).

He wrote the letter from Ephesus at a difficult time. He was, in fact, in prison becauseof the Gospel. Communication between the two cities was pretty easy and quick. Frequent contact and the news passed easily. From a dealer, a traveler passing through, or a Christian sent especially; the Philippians came to know about the misadventures of the apostle. They decided to show him their friendship and concern with a concrete gesture of solidarity. They had collected gifts and instructed Epaphroditus to bring them to Paul.

After receiving this testimony of affection, the apostle wrote the letter to the community of Philippi. In it, he reveals the most intimate, sweetest, and most tenderemotions of his heart. The passage recalling the arrival of Epaphroditus is moving: “our brother who worked and fought at my side and whom you sent to help me in my great need” (Phil 2:25) and the words with which he sends him back to Philippi with a letter: “Receive him with joy, as is fitting in the Lord. Consider highly persons like him, who almost died for the work of Christ; he risked his life to serve me on your behalf when you could not help me” (Phil 2:29-30).

For many years, Paul has worked for the cause of the Gospel. He endured suffering and overcame opposition. In Ephesus, while in prison, he begins to feel fatigued and theweight of years. He thinks more often of an encounter with Jesus, to whom he dedicatedhis life. He wants to die to be with Christ but also would like to continue to work for the cause of the Gospel and to confirm the community he founded in the faith.

Faced with this alternative, he recognizes that it would be better to die. However, the churches are still in need of him. With a generous gesture of abandonment to the will of God, he is said to be willing to postpone his meeting with the Lord to continue to serve the brethren. The famous statement: “For to me, living is for Christ and dying is even better”(v. 21) is the synthesis of his feelings and his deep faith. For this reason, this is written on his tomb in Rome.

Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a

There is something unfair and irritating in the behavior of the owner referred to in theparable. He acts generously but does not take merit into account. Nobody forbade him tobe charitable with his money. However, rewarding those who had appeared at the 17th hour and who until then had remained idle and, perhaps, had done nothing but loiter is highly illogical. Those who deserved recompense, if anyone, were those who had struggledmost, the workers of the first hour. We stipulate contracts based on certain principles, and these are not observed in the parable.

It is precisely in the provocative act of the master that the central teaching of the story is couched. Let’s find out. It is harvest time. The ripened grapes are collected and crushed, paying attention to the time and moon's position. For owners of large vineyards, these aretense days. They need workers and laborers who do not have a steady job and know how totake advantage of the kindness of the tenants to snatch a favorable contract. The morewilling place themselves well before dawn at strategic points. They expect that someone may pass to hire them. It is at this point that our parable begins.

Even before sunrise, behold, the tenant arrives breathless. He has been on his feet for more than two hours. He has scheduled the day's work, placed the tubs, baskets and barrels. He baked the bread and prepared the olives to be distributed to the workers at midday. His face is tense and from his look, snappy, almost nervous gestures, he shows all his concerns and haste. A few words to agree on the payment, and behold, the first group, the early risers, are already in the vineyard.

The eagerness of the master to conclude the work as soon as possible is really great. In fact, he comes out four more times searching for workers: at mid-morning, midday, at three in the afternoon, and when he calls the last group, it was already 5:00 p.m., an hour before the end of the workday. So far, nothing strange; everything is normal and logical.

We begin to identify the characters: the master is God or Christ; the workers are the disciples who, at different times of their lives, respond to the call; the vineyard is the Christian community, where work is not lacking and must be done with extreme urgency. The haste is the same that we find in the disposition given by Jesus to his envoys; “Do not stop at the homes of those you know” (Lk 1:4) because there is no time to lose. The day is the image of everyone’s life, and the evening is the time of the righteous judgment of God.

We thus come to the crux of the parable. The law states: “Do not exploit the lowly and the poor daily-wage earner, whether he be one of your brothers or a foreigner whom you find in your land and in any of your cities. Pay him daily before the sun goes down because he is poor and he depends on his earnings. Then he will not cry to Yahweh against you, and you will have no sin” (Deut 24:14-15) and, in fact, the master ordered the workers to be put in line and handed to all a silver coin... beginning from the last.

Here is the impropriety! If he had rounded the pay of those who had worked only one hour, secretly, without attracting attention, there would be nothing to object to for compassionate reasons. However, provoking the rage of those who, after 12 hours of laborwith sunburned faces and limp with fatigue, seems downright cruel. The workers of the first hour, despite their aching limbs, are subjected to an irritating scene. They unbelievingly observe their colleagues receiving an undeserved pay with the shameless and relaxed audacity of layabouts.

In this surprising and disconcerting behavior of the master, the message of the parable is perceived. With the first hour workers, he had agreed to a silver coin, with others what would be just had not been decided upon.

The lack of understanding comes from the lack of clarity about what the boss meant by just. The workers understood him according to their own criteria. They were convincedthat he would take account of merit. Instead, the owner follows his own justice principle and distributes the pay in a completely free and open way. He did not wrong anyone; he just decided not to consider merit. He gave everyone according to their need and, of course, the first to benefit were the last, the poorest (v. 16). That is the surprise of God; thatis his strange way of conceiving and practicing justice. The parable is the clearest and most provocative denouncement that can be imagined of the religion of merit taught by the spiritual guides of Israel (and supported by many even today).

The people—catechized by the priestly caste—forgot the good God, father, husband,and faithful friend preached by the prophets. They were convinced that the Lord was alegislator and a judge, so the relationship with him could only be one of the servants beforethe master. The rabbis taught: ‘He who fulfills a precept acquires for himself a lawyer, who commits a transgression, acquires for himself a prosecutor. All God’s judgments are based on measure for measure.’ They completed their catechesis talking about books kept inheaven, on which the meritorious deeds and transgressions were carefully noted.

According to this logic, God could not give anything for free. To receive his blessing, you had to earn it. To the objection: ‘The Bible says that Abraham was called by Godwhile still a pagan. He was not just; therefore, his vocation was completely a free gift.’ The rabbis replied, ‘Even if it is not explicitly stated, Abraham certainly had done good works; he had earned his vocation!’

With his parable, Jesus destroyed, forever, this self-righteous way of relating to God.The love of the Lord is never bought, conquered, or assessed according to good works. It is received freely and in proportion to need. “God has filled the hungry with good things, but he sent the rich away empty” (Lk 1:53). He never tires of going out to meet anyone, even when he misses all they fail to turn up. God does not pay according to merit. No one canfeel they are in credit with him (Lk 18:9-14). Before God, we are all children: we turn our eyes to the Father and expect from him all the best.

The religion of merit stems from the conviction that getting into the vineyard of the Lord—that is, the Kingdom of God—is equivalent to making an immense effort to observe the commandments and precepts. So we ask: how is it possible that those who scrupulously practice the law of God can be rewarded to the same degree as those who have neglected it? Why does God only call those at the last hour, who are saved only in the nick of time, must be part of the heavenly inheritance in the same way as the servants who have remained faithful throughout their whole lives?

Many ‘just ones’ feel an unacknowledged envy against those who are converted at the last moment, had the good fortune to ‘work less’ and enjoy life more. However, thinking that joy consists of being far from God and that fidelity to his word deserves a prize is long from the mark. An example may help us to grasp the ambiguity of this way of thinking.One person may start to study music at an early age and practice for many hours a day. Another, at the age of 70, decides to put their hands on a piano at the age of 70, when other interests in life have waned and do so with little enthusiasm. What ‘reward’ awaits the two? Nothing more than this: the joy of relishing the music. Their enjoyment will be different: the one who started early had more time to savor the pleasure of performing andlistening; their joy is more intense and more profound.

Blessed are the servants who came first in the ‘vineyard of the Lord.’ Theyundoubtedly have also struggled. They have enjoyed ‘since morning’ the presence of the Lord. The first hour workers are those who have spent every day of their lives in intimacywith God and in listening to His Word. The others who presented themselves late, who did hide when the Lord came to call them, have lost many opportunities that would otherwise have been offered to them.

Those who defer their entrance into the Kingdom of God do not anger God. He does not punish them for this. He complains, yes, because he wants to involve people earlier in his love and make them happy. This indecision, perplexity, hesitation in abandoning themselves to him also equates to moments of lost joy. Every moment the bride spends without the groom is a moment of missed love.

With this parable, the evangelist, who addressed Christians imbued with a self-righteous mentality, also wanted to put the disciples on guard against the danger of competition within the community. No one can think of themselves as superior to others because no one can consider themselves a veteran just because they were converted first orpractices the Gospel more faithfully. No one is master of the ‘vineyard’; they are allworkers, all are brothers and sisters.

The parable is not ended. After the words of the master, how did those who were murmuring react? Have they accepted? Have they continued to grumble? Have they responded with insults? Have they thrown the money in the face of the winemaker? Have they vowed to never come back to work for him? The reaction that we attribute to the workers in the parable reflects our response to the goodness and generosity of God. In hisvineyard, we commit ourselves freely. We do not do good to others to win a prize. It would be the worst of selfishness to use the poor and needy to accumulate merit for ourselves.

READ: This parable is not a popular one. Notice that it has several endings as if the author did not know how to deal with this teaching of Jesus. Pay attention to all the characters and their reactions.

REFLECT: Why is it difficult to rejoice in the great fortune of another? People get jealous when they think someone has something that belongs to them—or even when they simply want what another has. What is your reaction to this parable?

PRAY: You can always find someone who has more than you and others who have less. In your prayer, ask to avoid envy. Jealousy destroys relationships. Pray to avoid it at all costs and remember that life can be unfair. Pray for a heart that delights in the well-being of the other.

ACT: When something good happens to another, join in the celebration and try to move beyond self-centeredness. Make an act of genuine appreciation and delight in the blessings received by someone in your circle of friends.