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

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C; Holy Infant 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 calls “the usual daily wage,” and about 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 then things start getting odd as they always do in parables.

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 so 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 shiny silver 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.  In God’s case, it’s not because he can’t afford a steward, but maybe because he willingly identifies himself always with the poor. With a poor landowner, in this parable; with the hungry, thirsty, sick, naked and imprisoned now. In Christ, God comes to us directly. In the incarnation, Jesus leaves his thrown on high and comes to us, comes 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.

[11am]

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.

[8:30am]

And now, I., we help you respond to God’s call. The baptism of infants is a beautiful sign that God doesn’t call us based on our merits, but welcomes the littlest ones to him. That doesn’t mean that what’s about to happen is cheap or easy though. No, in baptism, you will be claimed as a daughter of God, and that means a coworker in the vineyard. This is your baptism into Christ’s mission, to live as a missionary disciple along with us, as we walk together from this first embrace of God into God’s final lasting embrace. And those who have been laboring longer than you, they won’t grouse. They’ll applaud, they’ll help, they’ll challenge, and they’ll pray. And when I say ‘they’, I mean ‘us’, the Church you’re being welcomed into, the Church which will in time nourish you in Eucharist, cleanse you anew in reconciliation, strengthen you in confirmation, and maybe someday witness your marriage or vows of religious profession as a nun or sister. We gathered here this morning stand as a symbol of that whole Church you will soon walk with, but the whole Church, on earth and in heaven now prays for you. Not just those of us here present, the saints and angels to pray for you. [Litany of saints]