God invites all to join the work and receive the reward – Matt 20:1-16

Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish.

We don’t know why those men were standing around the market place at the eleventh hour, about five o’clock in the afternoon.  The vineyard owner doesn’t know either, so he asks them, and they give almost a non-response, “because no-one has hired us.”  I call it almost a non-response, because it’s patently obvious: if anyone had hired them, they’d be at work in someone’s field or someone’s barn and not standing around a market place!  Maybe a more probing question might have been, “and why has no-one hired you?”  But the master doesn’t ask this, and so we can’t get to know.  We don’t know if they were seen as too old to be able to labor, or too young to know what they were doing, or too odd to be able to get on with the other workers, or if they looked sickly, or threatening, or if they slept in and showed up to the market place late, or if they were just unlucky.  All we know is that the master called, and they followed.

The market place scene at the beginning would be very familiar to Jesus’ audience.  Day laborers were a cheap way for land owners to get seasonal labor.  They would each be paid one denarius a day, that’s what our translation renders as “the usual daily wage,” and Jewish sources from the time tell us that 200 denarii per year would be enough to subsist on.  So, the sight of laborers standing idle, unhired at the end of the day must have been a familiar one too.  The story starts in a very familiar way, but gradually fades into another dimension.

Jesus’ audience would be surprised at a landowner who has to go out himself to hire workers, and can’t just send a steward.  Maybe this is a landowner who’s struggling financially and can’t afford to be generous.  But, then, he keeps going, every three hours to invite and invite more.  Finally, he breaks his three hour pattern and goes out just one hour before sundown to make his final invitation.  How much work could he actually expect to get out of these leftover unwanted workers, who would have to walk to the vineyard, get oriented to the task and then maybe get half an hour’s work in at most?  And then the payment comes, the denarius.  He gives each their daily bread, but no more.  None are treated unjustly, but only some are extended mercy, the ones who need it.

God identifies himself with such a landowner.  God identifies himself with a landowner that comes to us personally, that doesn’t subcontract out to a steward but comes to us, journeys to our market place and invites us.  Jesus tells this parable as he is journeying to Jerusalem, to his death, to make the ultimate invitation for us to love like him, indiscriminately, sacrificially, prodigiously.  God identifies himself with a landowner that doesn’t choose us or evaluate us based on our skills, but sees the value we have inherently, created in his likeness and, for those of us baptized, clothed in his grace.  God identifies himself with a landowner that extends that invitation again and again until even those who are unlucky, those who are unvalued, those who just plain slept in and forgot to turn up, get the message and come, and follow him.  God calls those who think they’re not good enough, who find themselves unloved and think themselves unlovely, and doesn’t give up.  And God rewards, not based on our accomplishments, but in the richness of his mercy, he gives us our daily bread, strength for the journey.

The book of Revelation pictures Christians as pillars in the Temple of God.  God is building a Temple with a space for each of us to stand, with a role to play in lifting that ceiling up and giving him the glory in which we’ll share, redeemed by Christ’s blood.  Sometimes we can’t see how we could possibly have the strength or the stature to do that, but God can.  And God calls.  And God rewards.

The most beautiful depiction of God’s insistent compelling call I’ve come across is this poem by George Herbert, with which it’ll be more than fitting to conclude:

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning	5
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'	10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'	15
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.