Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A September 20, 2020

 

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time   Cycle A    September 20, 2020

           Do you like this Gospel we just heard?  I hope not.  I hope you found it unsettling and upsetting.  Because this Gospel is not fair. 

          Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom of God, and God is not fair.  We don’t get what we have earned.  Rather we receive grace and blessing and eternal life way beyond and far above what we have earned, what we have a right to.  

          The Good News is this: God is not fair.  We don’t get what we have earned, nor what we deserve, but rather what we need, and beyond that, what we hope for. 

          Most of us are not the great saints, the martyrs, the truly holy people who lead exemplary lives, struggling and working to bring God’s Kingdom on earth, who were hired early in the day and worked through the burning heat.  Rather, a few of us may be really good people who are workers hired at noon, or we may be pretty nice people hired about three, and many of us like myself, are fairly decent folk who are those hired at five.  Am I right?? 

          But we still receive the full daily wage of eternal life, all that we need of forgiveness and grace for the fullness of life.   God’s Kingdom, so startingly presented in this parable, is not about “justice” and “fairness”, but about “mercy” and “generosity” and “life.”  So, this parable is Good News for us.

          But it is also a challenge.  It is a challenge for us to live NOW, not in the way of the world / of what is earned and owed and of right.  But rather is a challenge for us to live the Kingdom of God now: to put into action and practice God’s Kingdom on earth, a Kingdom that goes beyond rights and what is due, to a Kingdom of mercy, generosity and compassion. 

          This parable calls us to act strangely and do weird thing just like the landowner in the parable:

- to pay attention to the person who is a bother even beyond what is polite:

- to be measured, patient, respectful in political discussion even with the opponent who is a bigot and a jerk:

- to be generous and kind to those hurting from the economic dislocation and turmoil:

- to give generously of our own goods, and of our time and our talents, to those in need:

- to pray sincerely for all people, even those we disagree with, and those who irk us:

- to respond to all with generosity that goes beyond what is fair, or deserved, to what the other person needs:

- in other words, to be generous to others as God has been generous to us in Jesus Christ. 

          This Gospel should upset us.   It should disturb us.   Because it calls us beyond what is fair or just to a way of life not of this world.  It calls us to the marvelous, generous, bounteous Kingdom of God. 

          As we heard God say to us in our first reading today:  “For my thought 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 thought above your thoughts.” 

          And that is Good News.

God bless.