25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mt 20:1-6

"'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."

I think everyone can relate to the frustration of the first group of men from today’s Gospel, who end up paid the same wage after having done more work.  It is a little more understandable when one keeps in mind the relation of Jews and Gentiles in the early.  Before Christianity, the Jews were the exclusive chosen people of God.  God had chosen them, established with them the covenants, sent to them the prophets, and they labored in the Lord’s vineyard as his chosen people for centuries, and this labor was often hard.  They knew the abuse and the disdain of the Gentiles as a result of their fidelity.  They bore, as the men in today’s parable complain, “the day’s burden and the heat.” 

At the dawn of Christianity, the Church’s proclamation was that Christ has established a new covenant to which all are called on the basis of faith and our shared humanity.  The Gentiles – the non-Jewish races and peoples who were now included among the people of God – who had worshipped false gods and undertaken all manner of impure practices, as far as the Jews were concerned, were now on an equal footing with the Jews, and, understandably, some Jews had questions about this.  What happened to their privilege?  What was their reward? 

           

St. Paul addresses this very same issue in his letter to the Romans, and we see how hard pressed he is to provide an account of how this elevation of the Gentiles and their inclusion in the elect of God occurs according to God’s plan, and that the Christian proclamation does not imply that God has suddenly changed his mind regarding his chosen people. 

St. Paul makes his case by pointing out that what God has called all of humanity to is an exalted state incomparably greater than anything enjoyed formerly by the Jews.  God in Christ has revealed himself and made possible a complete intimacy with all that is good, beautiful and true.  The Jews should regard this as more than compensating for whatever advantage they have lost relative to the Gentiles.  To resent the loss of their superiority with respect to the Gentiles can only be the result of failing to realize the full magnitude of the gift given to them by God that they did not deserve any more than the their Gentile brothers. 

To cling to their former advantage in this way is tantamount to resenting the gift God has given to humanity in Christ.  It is not hard to recognize the kinship of this resentful attitude with the bitter sentiment expressed by Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where he declares, “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”  God’s act of generosity, because it took an unexpected form and involved the loss of something formerly enjoyed, went unrecognized and elicited its very opposite, an attitude of resentment and spite.  The words of the landowner are telling in this regard: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

Of course, this Gospel has more to do with the situation of the early church.  It has everything to do with us and our reaction to the Lord’s generosity, which all too often exhibits the same symptoms of spite and envy.  What I have in mind is summarized beautifully by a fellow named Michel de Montaigne, who was an important French writer from the Renaissance.  He said, “If we want to be happy, that is easy enough.  The problem is that we want to be happier than others.  And this is hard, because others always seem happier than they really are.” 

I suspect that Montaigne was right about most of us.  We tend to imagine others are happier than they really are.  When we meet people, and stop to say hello, and they generally don’t discuss their problems.  We ask how they are doing and the response is usually positive.  We are aware only of their happiness even as we are fully aware of our own anxieties and difficulties.  This by itself wouldn’t be such a problem if it didn’t disturb our peace and diminish our own happiness, but all too often it does, and betrays the fact that the happiness of others makes us fear that we are being left out.  Or to use the language of Jesus’ parable, it makes us fear that God is asking us to labor more for less reward.  The way we often console ourselves in these instances is telling as well.  “Everybody has problems” we say and remind ourselves that the sufferings of others are almost certainly as great as our own.  As long as others are not as happy as they seem we can be at peace.  We might simply be happy at the sight of others happiness, but this is often not our way.  We might take another attitude; we might rejoice that God was generous to another, but so often what seems, at least, to be God’s generosity to others elicits our envy. 

There is an episode in Dante’s Paradiso, his sojourn through heaven, where he encounters a woman who is near the bottom of heaven.  She was not among the most holy of persons, so there are many who are higher up and enjoy a greater closeness to God.  Dante asks her if she wishes she were closer.  She says no and says that if she did, she would be guilty of envy, which is, as she says, “contrary to the law of this place.”  She is referring to the fact that in heaven is ruled by charity, the contrary of envy.  The distance between our frustration at the happiness of others and the freedom expressed in this woman’s words is the measure of our conversion. 

A friend of mine is a big C.S. Lewis fan, and whenever we have conversations about faith he will almost always invoke something said by Lewis, and it usually hits the nail right on the head.  In one story called The Horse and His Boy, a lion (of course) tells a boy “I am telling you your story, no one is told any story but their own.”  This expresses a beautiful idea that is hard to keep in mind.  God gives to each of us a story.  We share the story of Christ; we all have the same vocation to his grace and life, but our individual paths to that life will features obstacles, burdens and blessings that are different from those of others.  As we look at the lives of others it is easy to imagine that others are spared the hardships that we are asked to endure.  God has provided for us a path that is all our own, and we must remain confident that God has provided it to us out of his generosity.  

The stories of others often seem easier than our own and so more attractive, but it goes the other way as well.  My friend referred to that quote from C.S. Lewis within the context of a discussion concerning homosexual marriage.  Our culture presents romantic and physical intimacy as the highest of all goods, and so the suggestion that there are certain persons for whom this is not a possibility seems like it is too much of a burden.  It seems unfair that there would be those who are excluded from what others enjoy.  But on the other hand, there are those who deal with material deprivation that others do not face.  There are those who deal with diseases from which others spared.  There are those who grow up in a stable home that life does not grant to others.  We each have burdens to bear that others do not.  These are as much a part of our own story as our personal identities.  And as such they ought to be understood as an essential aspect of God’s generosity, even if we experience them as difficult or even at times bitter.