Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

A Fair Wage: The End of the Line

What is fair?  Recall the words of Isaiah from the first reading: “For my thoughts 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 thoughts above your thoughts.” Is God really that inscrutable? Some would use this as an excuse to simply abandon all reason, which usually means embracing whimsy and self-interest. Considering the passage in the context of Isaiah 55, however, we can see that the prophet is suggesting it is God’s great mercy that is inscrutable; for indeed, it is God’s mercy that touches humanity, not God’s wrath, in the person of Jesus.

     Jesus, in today’s gospel, is addressing his disciples on the heels of Peter’s declaration, “Look we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Like so many of Peter’s declarations, we might cringe, but we can easily see ourselves in such questioning. Peter’s question brings us an important issue for those who “have left everything”. Clearly, Peter regards the disciples as being the leaders of the Kingdom, most deserving of salvation; however, Jesus’ parable, when applied to that attitude clearly seems to indicate a position at the end of the line (“…the last will be first, and the first shall be last”). The ordering of first and last in the sentence, placing last first, suggests a reordering of Peter’s sense of entitlement. “Scramble for the back of the line” seems to be Jesus’ advice to the disciples, but the ambition to be last so that one may be first seems to bring us back to the same problem: “I am entitled to compensation”. We can hear Peter’s petulance at the end of the line: “Okay, now I’m at the end, let me be first!”

      What we need to do is abandon our “line mentality”. The Kingdom isn’t about where we are, it’s about who is there with us. Like the master of the vineyard in today’s parable, God does not regard time as an indication of virtue. In eternity, time is meaningless. Like the refrain from Amazing Grace “"When we've been here ten thousand years/Bright shining as the sun./We've no less days to sing God's praise/Than when we've first begun." Our reward for our relationship with God is the relationship itself, not an enhanced environment.

      There is the story of the man recently arrived in heaven being disappointed at the plain furnishings and amazed to see the utter joy on the faces of the people who are enjoying themselves in blissful communion. He approaches one of these folks as asks them if this is heaven. “Yes, it is!” the man replies. “How can this be heaven; it is so plain and unattractive?” “Oh, that,” the man replies. “Heaven isn’t out there”, gesturing at his surroundings, “heaven is in here” gesturing to his heart. Our reward of faith isn’t something we get, it is someone we become: the image of the One who made us.

Hell for those expecting more.