Scripture Reflection September 21, 2008: Your kingdom come!

Scripture Readings:
Isaiah 55: 6-9
Psalm 145
Philippians 1: 20c-24, 27a
Matthew 20:1-16a

Reading this Sunday’s Gospel, I couldn’t help asking myself: is this just? How can the landlord pay those people who worked for him the whole day the same salary as those who just came for a couple of hours? Didn’t they deserve more? This story can’t be an example of fair wages…
I think we have to put ourselves in the time of Jesus: the unemployed at that time had to wait each day in the market place until someone hired them for a job. If no one hired them, it meant they had no food to put on their family’s table at night. Most probably, the landowner hired more workers in the afternoon so they wouldn’t go home unpaid and hungry. But did he really have to pay them the same wages and create unnecessary bitterness and jealousy?
Certainly this parable is not a lesson about just labor relations. Rather, it is a story about God’s generosity. Jesus shows us the extraordinary generosity and compassion of God. We can read it more directly in the psalm: ‘The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works’. God opens the door to the kingdom of heaven to everyone who wants to enter – those who have worked their whole life for him and those who come at the last hour - giving tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom. In this parable Jesus wants to describe how it is to live in the ‘kingdom of heaven’: In God’s kingdom it is not about success, it is not about rewards, it’s not about fair wages. God’s words completely overturn our way of thinking: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

I can find myself many times in those workers who have been hired first. Especially after intense weeks of service to others, the community, the Church, I expect to receive something in return for what I have done. And yes – I have experienced a feeling of jealousy toward those who obviously have done less and yet receive more attention than I do. In a way this is human – as human beings we need some kind of recognition from time to time.
But there are also other moments in my life when I feel like the workers of the last hour. After experiences of failure, lack of success, discouragement or sinfulness, I realize how much I depend on God’s mercy and how much I’m in need of his love.

Nowadays we talk a lot about justice and we all agree that justice is something we should practice in our relationships and as society. But God asks more of us then justice. Strict justice can be cold and sterile. Justice finds its real meaning only in love and charity. Love is the absolute value which gives meaning to all the rest and brings justice to its fulfillment. The Lord asks us, his disciples, to serve God and our neighbor with generosity and joy, to work for his kingdom and not for rewards. God doesn’t want us to pursue a ‘career’ in his kingdom and then expect proportionate compensation. He wants us to do his will. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians it seems that Paul also knows about the temptation to focus on attaining his ‘reward’ and being with Christ. But he knows that Jesus wants him to serve only the Gospel and continue his ministry here on earth.

God wants us to be generous and merciful with everyone, like he is. “Be merciful,” explains Jesus, “just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36)
We are invited to resist the temptation to distinguish between those who ‘deserve’ our love and those who don’t; between those who are likable and those who aren’t. I know – this is challenging, but I think the more we experience God’s love and mercy for ourselves, the more we can be generous and merciful to others. Our love will be a response to God’s love for us and we will be able to pour out to others what we receive from him. And love attracts love and will encourage others to open their hearts to the need of their neighbors. Living this way we can see the ‘kingdom of God’ already being realized here on earth, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.

Birgit Oberhofer