September 24, 2017
The labourers of the first hour in today’s parable grumble against the landlord, because they do not find his system of paying fair. We, too, at times grumble against God, because we find the way He deals with us at time grossly unjust. And we have good reason to grumble. Is it fair that one child is born with an IQ of 150 and the other child is struggling with a severe mental or physical handicap? One is born into a well-off family and will have a good education and favourable chances to make a career. The other grows up in the slums of a Megacity as a street child and will suffer from hunger and sickness most of his life. And what to think about the fact that often the unscrupulous and ruthless get super-rich and the honest and hard-working hardly earn a living? Not to mention the many made-mad injustices, the brutal oppression, unjust discrimination and economic exploitation in so many countries. Many are so scandalized by the apparent injustice of the world that they stop believing in such an unjust God. With the story of the workers in the vineyard Jesus gives us at least a partial answer and at the same time another way of thinking about God of whom the Prophet Isaiah in the first reading said, that “His thoughts are not our thoughts and our ways not His ways”. How then does our God act in this way? The landowner, representing God, spends the whole day seeking co-workers for his enterprise. He seems to need an unlimited number of workers. No unemployment in his kingdom. Anybody is welcome any time. In a way, God does the exact opposite of what modern managers do. They are often only interested in efficiency and productivity and try to pay their workers as little as possible and to squeeze as much as possible out of them. So, our God is all the time inviting us to work with him in the corner of his vineyard he has put us in. Do we hear his invitations? And then there is God’s extraordinary system of payment. He seems to be a radical socialist: same salary for everyone irrespective of the work done. In our economic system, we are supposed to get paid for performance. In theory, often not in reality. Or how can you justify that a CEO gets 100 times the salary of his secretary or that women are paid less than men? The landowner in the story gives every worker the same wage whether he or she has worked little or much. That seems grossly unfair if you only look at the work done by each person. But God’s criteria of reward is not the workers’ output, but rather his needs. All workers whether they started early or late have a family at home. The denarius, the wage for a day’s work, is just enough to provide the main meal in the evening. Those who don’t get it will go to bed hungry. So, the landowner gives to everyone what he needs to survive that day, his daily bread, the food for the day for which we pray in the Our Father. God’s justice is to give us according to our needs. The one who has received little at the start will receive what he needs, and so will the one who has received much. In the end, all God’s co-workers will receive not some material advantage, but something infinitely greater. God wants to give Himself to us and He is the total fulfilment of all our needs and desires. All who followed the invitation to work in God’s vineyard whatever corner he has worked in for whatever length of time will have “life to the full”.
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke, MAfr