September

What happens when someone misbehaves and hurts you? What should you do, punch ‘em out?

No. Jesus lays out a detailed plan in the Gospel about how to help a person, especially in the Christian community, who has done you harm. This strategy applies whatever the damage was: saying unfair things behind your back, embarrassing you in public, stealing, unfaithfulness, you name it.

First, go to the person and let her or him know that you believe you have been hurt by what they did or said. This is not an opportunity to “let my anger out,” to get my rights, or worse, to hurt them in return. It is an attempt to repair the relationship, no matter whose fault it was. It is an effort to help, not hurt.

Of course, in Sunday’s story, Jesus is presuming that there is a basis of love between you and the other person. Another way to say it is that you are both members of “the church.”

What if going to the person does not succeed?

Jesus says you should next take two or three witnesses along. They will back you up if your interpretation of the problem is correct. If the person still does not listen, keep trying, he says. Tell the church. Continue to work on it until the matter is smoothed out. Let truth and forgiveness rule.

The underlying reason behind this whole strategy is hinted at in the First Reading. There the Lord says that Ezekiel must speak out to a person when they are doing evil and especially if they have been warned by the Lord.

The point is not to punish the them, or to turn Ezekiel into a police interrogation unit. The point is to try and help them back from the danger to their own self and to the community. “Frighten the poor sheep back,” the poet Hopkins puts it. You speak out.

A personal story. I had a terrible disagreement with a colleague/friend a number of years ago. We were working together on a musical event and it seemed to each of us that the other had done something unforgivable, hurtful and unprofessional. Believe me, I do not know who was right and who was wrong. But we spoke about it one-on-one and gradually came back into each other’s good graces. We remained very good friends. Still.

The same thing happened a number of summers later. I was the one who “blew up” because of the wrongs I absolutely knew were being done to me. I even sent a peeved email. My friend sent a scorcher in return!

Then we worked together to create the event! We knew instinctively what had happened. “We were both tired and quite stressed out, weren’t we,” my friend said. “So we each did our stressed-out thing. But we were both trying to help the performance be wonderful.” As you can guess, we remain great friends.

I think this is how it can work when Christians are “all too human” and hurt each other. It is not a matter of who broke the rules. All the rules are summed up in a single saying. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”.

How good it is.

Pre-Prayering

Many things are more easily said than done. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” And, “Everything is small stuff.” “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.” These are quick-and-easy things to say, but the doing is less so.

We move from experience to the next adventure and try to stay balanced, but keeping the “main thing” clear as the “main thing” takes wisdom and patience. Whatever is a “small stuff” today might be a “big stuff” tonight. Living our Christian faith is definitely not a quick-and-easy way of existing.

Living the Eucharist is one of those not easy “main things.” But gathering together with other strugglers can dictate a sense of proportion or resizing. Jesus gives his Body and Blood to us so that through us his “main thing” of blessing us in our “sweating” and attempts to stay balanced will be humanly possible. As we prepare for the Eucharist, we might pray with the “big stuff” of each day, and hour, and see if there is any grace for us to live this Christian possibility.

Reflection

We hear in our First Reading from the Prophet Ezekiel. It begins with God speaking to the prophet with a simple image. When a country is in danger of being attacked, a watchman is appointed to give warning about the approaching enemy. The image continues with the alarm being sounded and some hear it and prepare, others pay no attention to it.

Ezekiel is the attending watchman for the country of Israel. The enemy to be warned are within the House of Israel. The prophet is to hear and speak, but if he does not speak, the wicked will die and so too the prophet. The Prophet must be attentive to hearing what God says and reveal that. We are into the spirituality of confrontation where the guilt of not saying anything rebounds upon the person who hears what needs to be heard, but does not speak this, lest there be trouble, inconvenience, resentment, and/or unpopularity.

The Gospel is an instruction by Jesus to the disciples about, not confrontation exactly, but about the sacredness of community. The well-being of the others—the family, the community, the office—becomes the reason for prophetically attending the faults of one of the community.

Jesus lays out a strategy for the intervention. Perhaps some of us have been in on the planning of an intervention with someone who is suffering from an addiction. There are rules for this process, so to speak, and it takes great care and practice to be helpful for the person. Jesus is more direct, just do this and if that doesn’t help, do that and then if everything fails, do something more public. The practice is not as important as is the spirit and aim of such sharing-of-truth.

I may have written before about a Jesuit companion, who in my early years, rather casually announced that he was going to tell me my twelve major faults. Twelve? Major?? Faults??? I was not aware of any, even minor faults. He had not prepared his presentation nor tested my availability to such a display. I do wish I could remember even one of them now, these fifty years later, but I do remember him.

I have a dear friend and when she has something to announce to me, I have learned, through errors and errors, to just listen, ears open and mouth shut, lest I want to defend myself and prove her wrong. The good part is that what she tells me is how I would be more helpful to the larger communities of my life if I could be attentive to this or that. I usually am grateful and deeply embarrassed.

I could come up easily with more than twelve items for correction within the others I live and with whom I am Superior. Thirteen of them are probably more my ego-centered perfectionistic, tidiness-centered issues. None of us is the Certified Public Accountant for everybody else.

We are not to let everything go by as if they were nothing. The question for me is whether I really love the community, family, whatever, and really believe that this particular behavior is hurting the relationships around us as well as the person involved.

What Jesus did not say, and I wish he had, is that the first step is praying and then facing one’s own selfishness involved in one’s fault-finding. What is it about me that is being inconvenienced or upset? Jesus also did not say that we should approach the other when we feel the other is available and ready for our prophetic announcements.

Readiness is all and while I might be more than ready to “share,” it is important to consider the interior space of the other. I think my response to the Big Twelve was shock and he did not seem too concerned about the fallout or seemed to be going to help me deal with the truth or untruth of them all. He may have thought he was doing something good coming right out of this Gospel passage.

This process is as important as is sacred our sense of relationships and community. Jesus is aware of the human frailty among his disciples and future followers. We need help to become aware and accepting of ourselves so that we can contribute even more gracefully and generatively to our families and communities.

First Reading

Ezekiel, Chapter 33, Verses 7-9

1. Does God still send watchmen or women or prophets to address injustice in the world today? Who are they? Are they always successful and do they live long, happy lives?

2. Do we have a shared responsibility for others and the world? Are you a “watchperson” in some way? What strikes you as unjust as you watch? Can you think of new ways of bringing justice and divine love into the lives of those people you love? Into your workplace? Into other places in your life?

 

Second Reading

Romans, Chapter 13, Verses 8-10

1. What commandment sums up all the rest? What is it that fulfulls the whole law?

2. Which ranks highest: how much you love? how much you do? how smart or powerful you are? According to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritain (Luke 10: 29-37), who is your neighbor?

 

Gospel

Matthew, Chapter 18, Verses 15-20

1. Can you rely on God to grant your request in some way when you and another person agree to pray about something? Do you trust that promise?

2. Do you always remember that “if two or three of you agree on earth about anything for which they (you) are to pray, it shall be granted to them (you)”? Pope Francis sent out the following message in March to a virtual audience following on Vatican News Media.

In these days of trial, as humanity trembles at the threat of the [coronavirus] pandemic, I would propose that all Christians join their voices together to heaven.

Pope Francis, Midday Prayer

March 25, 2020

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/03/22/pope-francis-calls-christians-worldwide-combat-coronavirus-pandemic-midday-prayer

“Repent and believe in the good news!”

These are the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s gospel and they are meant as a summary of the entire gospel. But what do these words mean?

In English, the word “repent” is often misunderstood. It seems to imply that we have already done something wrong, regret it, and now commit ourselves to live in a new way. Repentance, understood in this way, means to live beyond a sinful past.

Biblically, this is not quite what is meant. In the gospels, the particular word used for repentance is metanoia. Literally this means to do an about face, to turn around, to face in an entirely new direction.

But what direction?

Bishop Robert Barron, then a young theologian out of Chicago, offered a simple, yet profound, understanding of this. In his view, within each of us there are two souls, a little soul (a pusilla anima) and a great soul (a magna anima). On any given day we tend to identify more with one or the other of these and we are a very different person depending upon which soul is reigning within us.

Thus, if I take my identity from my little soul I will inevitably feel bitter and angry. It is here, in the pusilla anima, where I am petty, afraid, aware of my hurts, and constantly nursing the sense of having been cheated and short-changed. In my little soul, I am paranoid and defensive. When I relate to life through it, I am short-sighted, impatient, despairing, and constantly looking for compensation.

But I also have within me a great soul. When I let it reign, I become different person altogether. I am relating out of my great soul at those moments when I am overwhelmed by compassion, when everyone is brother or sister to me, when I want to give of myself without concern of cost, when I am able to carry the tensions of life without a breakdown in my chastity, when I would willingly die for others, and when my arms and my heart would want nothing other than to embrace the whole world and everyone in it.

All of us, I am sure, have had ample experience of both, identifying with the great soul and with the petty soul inside us. Sometimes we operate out of one, sometimes out of the other.

When Jesus asks us to “repent,” to do metanoia, what he is asking is that we cease identifying ourselves with the little soul and instead begin to live out of our other soul, the magna anima. The very etymology of the word metanoia implies this. It takes its root in two Greek words: meta–beyond; and nous–mind. Literally, metanoia means to move beyond our present mindset, beyond our present way of seeing things.

When one looks at the miracles of Jesus, it is interesting to see that so many of them are connected to opening up or otherwise healing someone’s eyes, ears, or tongue. These miracles, of course, always have more than a physical significance. Eyes are opened in order to see more deeply and spiritually; ears are opened in order to hear things more compassionately; and tongues are loosened in order to praise God more freely and to speak words of reconciliation and love to each other. To put it metaphorically, what Jesus is doing in these miracles is attaching the eyes, ears, and tongue to the great soul so that what a person is now seeing, hearing, and speaking is not bitterness, hurt, and pettiness but rather compassion, gratitude, and praise.

Many of us are familiar with a famous passage in Thomas Merton within which he describes a revelation he had one day while standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville. Among complete strangers in the middle of a shopping district on a very ordinary day, Merton had the sense that his eyes, ears, and tongue were all at once attached to a bigger soul:

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all of those people, that they were mine, and I, theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.

…  Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin, nor desire, nor self-knowledge, can reach the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only we could all see each other that way all the time! There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose that the big problem would be that we would all fall down and worship each other.*

To repent is let the great soul, the image and likeness of God, reign within us so that, like Merton on the corner of Fourth and Walnut, we are so overwhelmed with compassion that indeed we do turn and face in a completely new direction.

Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander pp 153–154

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• sins against you
• gathered together in my name
• there am I in the midst of them

To the point: In this Gospel Jesus acknowledges inevitable conflicts arising among those living in the community of the church. Rifts in relationships between members of the church are actually rifts in the relationship with Jesus himself. Not facing whatever fractures the unity of the church belies its gathering in Jesus' name. Healing fractures ensures that members of the church remain in relationship with Jesus and grow in love for one another. The impulse for resolving conflicts and preserving the unity of the church comes from Jesus himself and his continued presence in the community. The response to Jesus must come from the members of the church and their work of reconciliation.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: In the First Reading God confronts Ezekiel with the responsibility to remain faithful to his prophetic mission to confront the wicked. Jesus in the gospel calls the church to this same responsibility to confront the sinful.

… to experience: In our own lives, we know how easy it is to sin against another and how difficult to repair the relationship. Healing and reconciliation are possible when an honest exchange is brought about by the commitment of both to living the mercy, reconciliation, and forgiveness Jesus taught.

Commentary by John Chrysostom

The Apostle says: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

You will be doing everything for the glory of God if, when you leave this place, you make yourselves responsible for saving a brother or sister, not just by accusing and rebuking him or her, but also by advising and encouraging, and by pointing out the harm done by worldly amusements, and the profit and help that come from our instruction.

You will also be preparing for yourself a double reward, since as well as greatly furthering your own salvation, you will be endeavoring to heal a fellow member of Christ’s body. It is the Church’s pride, it is the Savior’s command, not to be concerned only about our own welfare, but about our neighbor’s also.

Think about what high honor you raise yourself to when you regard someone else’s salvation as a matter of extreme importance. As far as is humanly possible you imitate God himself, for listen to what he says through the prophet: “Whoever leads another from wrong to right will be as my own mouth.” (Pr 28:10)

In other words, “Whoever tries to save those that are negligent, and to snatch them from the jaws of the devil, is imitating me as far as a human being can.” What other work could equal this? Of all good deeds this is the greatest; of all virtue this is the summit.

And this is perfectly reasonable. Christ shed his own blood for our salvation; and Paul, speaking of those who give scandal and wound the consciences of people seeing them, cried out: “Because of your knowledge a weak brother or sister is destroyed—someone for whom Christ died!” (1 Cor 8:11)

So if your Lord shed his blood for that person, surely it is right for each of us to offer at least some words of encouragement and to extend a helping hand to those who through laxity have fallen into the snares of the devil.

But I am quite certain that you will do this out of the tender love you bear your own members, and that you will make every effort to bring your neighbors back to our common Mother, because I know that through the grace of God you are able to admonish others with wisdom.

Homily 6, 18-20: SC 50, 224-225

John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) was born at Antioch and studied under Diodore of Tarsus, the leader of the Antiochene school of theology. After a period of great austerity as a hermit, he returned to Antioch where he was ordained deacon in 381 and priest in 386. From 386 to 397 it was his duty to preach in the principal church of the city, and his best homilies, which earned him the title “Chrysostomos” or “the golden-mouthed,” were preached at this time. In 397 Chrysostom became patriarch of Constantinople, where his efforts to reform the court, clergy, and people led to his exile in 404 and fmally to his death from the hardships imposed on him. Chrysostom stressed the divinity of Christ against the Arians and his full humanity against the Apollinarians, but he had no speculative bent. He was above all a pastor of souls, and was one of the most attractive personalities of the early Church.

Confronting in Church

If you ever belonged to a group with a member who failed to “go with the program”—a team member of your basketball club who often missed practice, or a cast member who refused to learn his lines—you know the kind of situation addressed by this Sunday’s Gospel. Of the five major speeches of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the fourth one (from which today's reading comes) is about the internal management of the Church. One scholar called his study of this speech “Matthew’s Advice to a Divided Community,” because he saw in this passage the evangelist's focusing of Jesus' sayings to address problems of his own divided church.

In the center of Matthew 18 sits a procedure similar to the protocol mandated in almost any secular policy manual. For example, the student handbook at the school where I teach says that if you want to challenge a grade you should first take your case to the instructor. If the problem is settled at that level, fine. If not, take it to the department chair. If you find no satisfaction there, go to the dean.

This is a procedure for conflict resolution that thousands of reasonable persons have arrived at without consulting Scripture. What elevates this protocol to something worthy of the inner life of the Church is the context the evangelist provides. First, Matthew has carefully placed the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep right before this disciplinary procedure. The story of the lost sheep, which in Luke 15 is a defense of Jesus' practice of eating with tax collectors and sinners, becomes in Matthew 18 a model for the exercise of Christian authority (go after the wandering sheep lovingly).

Then, right after the escalating procedure, which in the hard case can result in excommunication, Matthew describes this use of authority with the “binding and loosing” language used in Jewish circles to describe the chief rabbi's authority to include or exclude from community It is the same language used of Peter's authority in Matthew 16:18. This grounds the authority in Christ. To further keep this disciplinary authority in perspective, Matthew next includes two powerful sayings that remind his readers that the community in which such discipline occurs is the same community whose power of petitionary prayer derives from their praying together and whose source of unity is the presence of the risen Lord in their midst. (Mt 18:19-20)

Finally, Matthew rounds off the context of the confrontation protocol by completing the speech with another parable, the unforgiving servant—about a man who is forgiven something like our national debt and then turns around and abuses a coworker who owes him a mere pittance. The obvious message: if we have been forgiven enormously by God, we should pass on that forgiveness generously to our fellow human beings.

Thus, the evangelist takes one of the toughest challenges any community has to face—what to do with the recalcitrant member whose behavior endangers the life of the community—and presents a reasonable protocol of escalating confrontation; but he makes sure this is done in the spirit of Christ by surrounding it with teachings of Jesus modeling extreme care (shepherd parable), prayer, and endless forgiveness. What holds for pope and bishops extends, of course, to pastors, parents, teachers, employers, and friends.

Challenge in Community

As if particularly sensitive to the demands of Christian community life, the readings from the Lectionary’s Cycle A this month provide contrasting sets of virtues and vices, ones that foster and destroy relationships. Willingness to communicate and forgive enhances a common life of faith. Jealousy and envy, as we will see in subsequent weeks, rip communities apart.

Community life, whether in a family, intentional grouping, religious congregation, or the church itself, is the great testing ground of faith. St. Teresa of Avila thought that relationships in community were often a greater indication of one’s relationship to God than the heights of mystical prayer.

An activist like Dorothy Day was wise enough to see that injustice and exploitation were as present in small service communities as in political empires.

Paul reminds his Roman audience that love, tested in immediate relationship with our neighbor, is the fulfillment of all laws. Even dramatic sins of adultery, murder, and stealing are variations of the more domestic betrayals of deception, manipulation, and egotism.

In each case it is a lack of love, a harming of the neighbor, that occurs. This is why our one duty, our sole “debt,” is to love one another.

Today’s Gospel provides a practical scenario on community relations:

“If your brother should commit some wrong against you, go and point out his fault, but keep it between the two of you. ... If he does not listen, summon another, so that every case may stand on the word of two or three witnesses.”

Only after these careful encounters is the conflict to be referred to the entire church. Then, if recalcitrance persists, there is separation.

Sounds simple enough.

The problem is, it depends upon behaviors that do not come easily. We don’t often enjoy directly confronting another person, especially someone with whom we are having difficulties.

Some families will go years before addressing a problem. Grudges or resentments within a community more often die with those who hold them rather than come to resolution in quiet conversation. Misdeeds of friends or relatives are usually discussed with anyone but the accused.

Encountering the truth with another person daunts us because it makes us face another being who cannot be reduced to our own desires or projections. We may try to make others a function of our egos, but it fails. Rather than enter the struggle, we ignore it.

If, however, we seriously love another person as an “other,” and not a mere instrument of our wills, we experience the kind of self-transcendence that is required in our relationship to God.

Is it any wonder, then, that what we bind and loose on earth is somehow bound and loosed eternally? Our human relationships mirror our relationship with God. Whenever we encounter each other—not only in prayer—Jesus is in our midst.

Defusing Conflict

Our ancestors in the faith and Mediterranean culture in general are prone to conflict. (The technical word is agonistic, deriving from the Greek for battle, struggle, contest.) From experience they know that conflict is dangerous because it can escalate to violence and result in bloodshed, starting a blood feud that wouldn’t end until everyone was dead.

For this reason, they utilize a wide array of strategies to defuse conflict. One is to fume and threaten with no intention of ever carrying out the threat. The cultural belief is that words are better than action.

Another strategy for defusing conflict is to turn the other cheek rather than engage in tit for tat, or eye for eye (Mt 5:38-41). This strategy is not popular among Americans. Popular wisdom advises, “Don’t get mad, get even,” and the rising tide of violence in this country suggests that many citizens follow this cultural wisdom.

Today’s Gospel passage presents three more strategies for conflict resolution. The advice is intended to head off conflicts between insiders; it is not intended to govern relationships with outsiders.

Confrontation

The conflict arises because “sin” is an interpersonal offense. In societies where honor is the core value, it is very easy to sin against another, to offend another’s honor. People learn from an early age the potentially fatal consequences of such an offense.

If someone thinks another person has shown dishonor, the offended party is advised to confront the sinner in private (“when the two of you are alone”). The reason for this privacy is to avoid placing the suspected offense within the official arena of honor and shame, that is, the public eye.

If the perception of dishonor has been mistaken, or the alleged dishonor unintentional, the conflict has been successfully defused in private. No one has lost face.

Negotiation

The second strategy is to take along two or three negotiators or witnesses (Mt 18:16). Now the situation is semiprivate and becomes a legal matter (see Dt 17:1-7 which requires more than one witness).

The Greek word in Mt 18:19 translated as “anything” literally means “legal case, litigation.” The witnesses are fully aware of the seriousness of their role (see Ex 20:16; Acts 6:13) and the consequences of bearing false witness (Dt 19:15-21). Whatever they decide is legally binding.

The hope is that the negotiators or witnesses will succeed where individual efforts failed. Honor must be repaired or restored in order to avoid the next step.

Adjudication

The final strategy now fully engages the cultural values of honor and shame. The matter is related to “the church,” that is, the entire community. The event has become fully public and publicized. In matters of honor and shame, the community is the final arbiter.

If the offender chooses to disregard the community’s judgment, the consequence is excommunication. To be considered as “a Gentile and a tax collector” is to be designated an “outsider.” The recalcitrant sinner is thrown out.

The force of excommunication is lost on American individualists who have little allegiance to any group, including family. Americans prefer to “go it alone” and “do it my way.” “See if I care. I gotta be me!” Not so our Mediterranean ancestors in the faith. Without community one is effectively dead.

The Judgment

The plural “you” in Mt 18:18 means that all disciples of Jesus have authority to bind or loose, that is, to settle conflicts and legal cases between community members.

When the community gathers in Jesus’ name to hear a legal case, Jesus is there. When the community agrees, the Father in heaven agrees.

How shameful a thing is conflict among Christians.

Reading I: Ezekiel 33:7-9

This passage comes from a chapter in which Ezekiel sets down the responsibilities of the prophet as he envisages them after the restoration from exile.

One of the images under which he defines that role is that of the watchman, a familiar figure in the defense system of Palestine. Watchmen were posted on the hills to warn of the approach of a foreign invader.

Ez 33:1-6 are a parable; verses 7-9 (today’s reading) are its application to the prophetic role. It is characteristic of Ezekiel that he conceives the prophet’s function as concerned with individuals.

This was a result of the destruction of the nation as a corporate entity at the time of the exile. Henceforth all that the prophet can do is to speak to the individual.

If the prophet fails to deliver the warning, it is his own responsibility. If he does deliver it and the individual refuses to pay heed, it is not the prophet’s fault. He has discharged his responsibility.

Ezekiel’s picture of the prophet as watchman has been selected to go with the Gospel, which speaks of mutual concern in the eschatological community, in which we all share the gift of the Spirit.

 

Responsorial Psalm: 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

The Venite consists of two parts: the first a call to worship, the second a warning against neglect of the word of God.

The first part is very popular among Anglicans as the invitatory canticle of Morning Prayer, but in most recent revisions the stern warnings of the second part have frequently been omitted.

Yet, it was this second part that the author of Hebrews (Heb 3:7-4:13) took up and expounded as especially relevant to his Church.

The situation of the people of this Church was that they were growing stale instead of advancing in the Christian life (the medieval sin of acedia), just as Israel grew tired in the wilderness.

The refrain, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” is singularly apt after Ezekiel’s parable of the watchman.

 
Reading II: Romans 13:8-10

As we saw last Sunday, Romans chapters 13 to 15  consist largely of ethical exhortation. Here Paul presents the second table of the Decalogue.

Note the unusual order (Hellenistic-Jewish): 7, 6, 8, 10, according to the Reformed and Anglican enumeration; 6, 5, 7, 9-10, according to the Roman and Lutheran enumeration.

Paul then summarizes (Rm 13:9) its single injunctions in the all-embracing command of Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Note the logical structure of this passage:

1. An imperative (Rm 13:8a).
2. The grounds for the imperative (Rm 13:8b).
3. The second table (Rm 13:9).
4. A deduction from the imperative
       given in verse 8 (Rm 13:10).

Evidently, Paul is drawing upon an established pattern of catechesis. This pattern was probably derived from Hellenistic Judaism, as is shown not only by the order of the commandments but also by the typically Hellenistic attempt to discover a single unifying principle behind the separate injunctions.

The teaching of this passage is that there is really only one commandment that is universal and covers every situation and to which we are always obligated—the commandment of love. The separate commandments of the Decalogue are to be seen as specifications or illustrations of what love may mean in particular situations.

 
Gospel: Matthew 18:15-20

This Gospel reading is closely connected to last week’s. These are the only passages in all four Gospels in which the term “church” (ekklesia) occurs. Both passages include the promise about binding and loosing; in Mt 16 it is addressed to Peter only, and in Matthew 18 to the disciples generally.

It would seem reasonable to suppose that Matthew has taken both passages from a common source that formed a commentary on church origins: (1) a community rule (Mt 18:15-17), paralleled at Qumran; (2) the promise about binding and loosing, which in our opinion comes from a resurrection story, as is indicated by its combination with the Tu es Petrus saying in Matthew 16 and by the parallel tradition in John 20:19-23.

In its original form this tradition was evidently a saying of the risen Lord empowering the Twelve to admit or exclude men and women from the kingdom according to whether they accepted or rejected the kerygma.

By combining it with the saying about fraternal correction, Matthew’s source has converted it into a church rule. Binding and loosing now become the function of the whole community, and their character is changed to the administration of discipline within the community.

Breaking the Chain of Causality

This Sunday is about forgiveness, and most of us have something to learn about this important act. 

In the Book of Sirach, our First Reading, tells how awful wrath and anger are, and how the sinner “hugs them tight,” a wonderful image. Release them and let them go, it says. 

The Psalm speaks beautifully about God’s absolving love: God is kind and merciful, slow to anger, rich in compassion. The Second Reading says we ought to live not for ourselves but for others. We should imitate God. When we live for the Lord, it says, we will also be graced to die for the Lord. 

Forgiveness is a major ingredient of living for God and for others. People do not always do right, and we need to forgive them as God does. Forgiveness is the gift and the goal. 

But what does it consist of?

Our culture has some pretty diverse ideas about this. For some it is a condescending act performed only by a person who is higher than another—a King or Queen or a judge or a boss or a media star—someone who leans down to grant pardon. For others it means “I can forgive but I can never forget.” Perhaps this means, I will remain angry forever but I will never act upon it. Such a stance can include an uncomfortable attitude: “I will choke back my hurt and anger by a sheer act of the will. I may have been savaged by someone, but I will not display it in my reaction.”

On Easter Sunday of 1960, that seer of truth and lover of God, Dag Hammarskjold, wrote an interpretation that moved me:

Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who “forgives” you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.

There is a price you must pay for your own liberation. Since it has come through another’s sacrifice, you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, in spite of the consequences to yourself. You absorb them, if doing so truly flows out of love. (from Hammarskjold, Markings, p. 197)

Let us apply these insights to the Gospel.

There, Jesus tells a long and involved parable about a servant who is pardoned by the master but then goes out and refuses, viciously, to forgive his own fellow servants.

At about six lines from the end the owner of the vineyard calls him a “wicked servant” and says, “should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?”

What is the lesson? That the deepest motivation for forgiveness is loving gratitude. 

If someone has forgiven me out of love, then my authentic reaction will be deep appreciation. I will want spontaneously to pass the gift on. It follows that if God has forgiven me, I will want to give to anyone else the same liberation I have received.

By doing so you or I halt the chain of causality and pass along love instead of hate.

As we dwell in Christ’s presence this Sunday, especially if we are able to receive communion, let us sense his forgiving love, signified so deeply in the sacrament. Let us allow our gratitude to flow to others.

Pre-Praying

I am not a musicologist and actually I do not know what that is, really. How does a D-minor differ from a D-seventh? I do know a few finger shiftings on a guitar.

And I figured one thing out. The note which begins a song is often the note upon which the song ends. Not a great insight there I suspect. Just sing the Happy Birthday song and end on a different note than the regular one! It just doesn't sound right. We need to have a correct and happy ending instead!

Several people in our small community delight in scrupulous tidiness; others just delight. Better than a good dessert at the end of the meal is an antiseptic kitchen; all's well that ends clean. Orderliness is next to godliness or neuroticism, take your pick. Not all things end on the same note of comfort. Living with the disorder in an orderly manner is an orderly thing in itself! If I go crazy because of crumbs then I am an agent of discord as much as the crumby person in the kitchen. If I fix him, rearrange his beliefs, would I allow him to return the favor in his fixing mine?

Reflection

It does not take very long for us to figure out that we cannot complete or fulfill ourselves by our self alone. We must find something and then somebody to assist our roundness, our soundness. For little children, cars, dolls, tea sets, Lego blocks assist them, but temporarily. Then as older folk we ask real people, real others, to bring us to an harmonious resolve with life. As with the dolls and trucks, they too fail to clean up our crumbs of disorder in life, sooner rather than later The quick-draw reaction is to get frustrated and angry with those others whom we thought and hoped would satisfy our longings.

All relationships cause noise, even relationship with inanimate objects, but especially with the animate. These do not really cause the noise; they bring the noise out of us by the way in which they are not exactly like us. Our noise is inside and comes out as we try to wrench and twist others to conform to our hopes and demanding expectations. I probably haven't even told them what my desires for them are. I might not even have known these myself because the noise deafened the song.

It seems good that we do not live with others who are exactly like ourselves, because then we would dislike ourselves even more. The noise is within us and to resolve it into a song takes more than a little self-awareness, leading to self-acceptance. I might have trouble with those realities (people) who invite me to awareness. 

Someone wrote that knowledge maketh a bloody entrance. If Shakespeare didn't say this he should have.

I say that self-knowledge can darn near kill us. Self-acceptance as the source of our noise is a deception, if it is not rooted awareness. So God blesses the confrontation we have with ourselves. Jesus shows us in the Gospel the freedom that comes from self-acceptance which leads to the acceptance of other selves. 

This is only a glimpse so keep listening to the noise becoming a song.

First Reading

Sirach, Chapter 27, Verse 30-Chapter 28, Verse 7

1. Is it harder for you to forgive someone else or to ask someone for forgiveness? If you or your ancestors are the ones needing forgiveness, how can you apologize/make reparation now for actions that happened in the past, such as slavery or destruction of the environment?

2. When you want to “hug wrath and anger tight” (paraphrase of the reading), do you have ways or people or places who will help you calm down your anger?

Second Reading

Romans, Chapter 14, Verses 7-9

1. Sometimes God asks people to do extraordinary things. But most of the time not. How do you live your ordinary life for the Lord? Can you find God there? If you did regularly, would your life be, paradoxically, extraordinary?

2. God created all things in love, entered creation, and rescued us himself. He does not leave us alone in this world or the next. Does thinking about this help you know that you are loved? And if you are a loving person, would you have time for things like holding grudges? Might you just want to “live for the Lord”?

 

Gospel

Matthew, Chapter 18, Verses 21-35

1. Do you think God wants you to forgive your neighbor just for your neighbor’s sake, or for yours too? We know that we need unlimited forgiveness ourselves. God loves us so much he has forgiven all our sins. Should those thoughts help us forgive others?

2. Pope Francis says that Jesus asks us to do something radical when he asks us to forgive our brothers and sisters unreservedly. Can you think of ways you can do this?

Jesus asks us to believe that forgiveness is the door which leads to reconciliation. In telling us to forgive our brothers (and sisters) unreservedly, he is asking us to do something utterly radical, but he also gives us the grace to do it. What appears, from a human perspective, to be impossible, impractical and even at times repugnant, he makes possible and fruitful through the infinite power of his cross. The cross of Christ reveals the power of God to bridge every division, to heal every wound, and to reestablish the original bonds of brotherly love.

Holy Mass for Peace and Reconciliation

Homily of Pope Francis

Cathedral of Myeong-dong (Seoul)

August 18, 2014

Every Tear Brings the Messiah Close

“People are always impatient, but God is never in a hurry!”

Nikos Kazantzakis wrote those words and they highlight an important truth: We need to be patient, infinitely patient, with God. We need to let things unfold in their proper time, God’s time.

Looking at religious history through the centuries, we cannot help but be struck by the fact that God seemingly takes his time in the face of our impatience. Our scriptures are often a record of frustrated desire, of non-fulfillment, and of human impatience. It’s more the exception when God intervenes directly and decisively to resolve a particular human tension. We are always longing for a messiah to take away our pain and to avenge oppression, but mostly those prayers seem to fall on deaf ears.

And so we see in scripture the constant, painful cry: Come, Lord, come! Save us! How much longer must we wait? When, Lord, when? Why not now? We are forever impatient, but God refuses to be hurried. Why? Why is God, seemingly, so slow to act? Is God callous to our suffering? Why is God so patient, so plodding in his plan, when we’re suffering so deeply? Why is God so excruciatingly slow to act in the face of human impatience?

There’s a line in Jewish apocalyptic literature, which metaphorically, helps answer this question: every tear brings the messiah closer! There is, it would seem, an intrinsic connection between frustration and the possibility of a messiah being born. It seems that messiahs can only be born after a long period of human yearning. Why?

Human birth already helps answer that question. Gestation cannot be hurried and there is an organic connection between the pain a mother experiences in childbirth and the delivery of a new life. And that’s also true of Jesus’ birth. Advent is a gestation process that cannot be rushed. Tears, pain, and a long season of prayer are needed to create the conditions for the kind of pregnancy that brings forth a messiah into our world. Why? Because the real love and life can only be born when a long-suffering patience has created the correct space, the virginal womb, within which the sublime can be born. Perhaps a couple of metaphors can help us understand this.

John of the Cross, in trying to explicate how a person comes to be enflamed in altruistic love, uses the image of a log bursting into flame in a fireplace (here). When a green log is placed in a fire, it doesn’t start to burn immediately. It first needs to be dried out. Thus, for a long time, it lies in the fire and sizzles, its greenness and dampness slowly drying out. Only when it reaches kindling temperature can it ignite and burst into flame. Speaking metaphorically, before a log can burst into flame, it needs to pass through a certain advent, a certain drying out, a period of frustration and yearning. So, too, the dynamics of how real love is born in our lives. We can ignite into love only when we, selfish, green, damp logs, have sizzled sufficiently. And the fire that makes us sizzle is unfulfilled desire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offers a second metaphor here when he speaks of something he calls “the raising of our psychic temperature.” In a chemistry laboratory it’s possible to place two elements in the same test tube and not get fusion. The elements remain separate, refusing to unite. It is only after they are heated to a higher temperature that they unite.

We’re no different. Often it’s only when our psychic temperature is raised sufficiently that there’s fusion, that is, it’s only when unrequited longing has raised our psychic temperature sufficiently that we can move towards reconciliation and union. Simply put, sometimes we have to be brought to a high fever through frustration and pain before we are willing to let go of our selfishness and let ourselves be drawn into community.

Thomas Halik once commented that an atheist is simply another term for someone who doesn’t have enough patience with God. He’s right. God is never in a hurry, and for good reason. Messiahs can only be born inside a particular kind of womb, namely, one within which there’s enough patience and willingness to wait so as to let things happen on God’s terms, not ours.

Hence, ideally, every tear should bring the Messiah closer. This isn’t an unfathomable mystery: Every frustration should, ideally, make us more ready to love. Every tear should, ideally, make us more ready to forgive. Every heartache should, ideally, make us more ready to let go of some of our separateness. Every unfulfilled longing should, ideally, lead us into a deeper and more sincere prayer. And all of our pained impatience for a consummation that seems to forever elude us should, ideally, makes us feverish enough to burst into love’s flame.

To offer yet another image: it is with much groaning of the flesh that the life of the spirit is brought forth!

The Challenge of Forgiveness

"Forgive your neighbor's injustice.” How often must I forgive the brother who wrongs me?

“Not seven times, I say, seventy times seven times.”

Some of the social ills that we struggle against result in part from the refusal of people to forgive. Wars are fought and innocent people are killed, maimed, or displaced because people cannot forgive their neighbors for their actions or those of their ancestors. Our own society shows its own refusal to forgive in its obsessive clinging to the death penalty.

The world of social evil stands in need of forgiveness.

Those of us who are African-American are challenged by the gospel to forgive the slave masters of their ancestors as well as the racist descendants of those slave masters. Those of us who are women are challenged by the gospel to forgive the sexist men who have colluded, through action or inaction, in the creation and maintenance of a 'man's world.' The victims of war are challenged by the gospel to forgive all the militarists of the world.

“The Lord is kind and merciful; slow to anger and rich in compassion.” The challenge is for us to become like God, who is our creator and guide.

Mercy in itself, as a perfection of the infinite God, is also infinite. Also infinite therefore and inexhaustible is the Father's readiness to receive the prodigal children who return to his home. Infinite are the readiness and power of forgiveness which flow continually from the marvelous value of the sacrifice of the Son. No human sin can prevail over this power or even limit it.

Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 1980:13.

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: moved with compassion, master … forgave him, he refused, should you not have had pity … as I had pity

To the point: The king did not do what the servant begged: “Be patient with me.” Instead, he immediately forgave the whole debt. Absolutely unthinkable!

This overwhelming, unexpected, compassionate forgiveness of the king makes the servant’s behavior toward his fellow servant all the more despicable. It also helps us understand Jesus’ response to Peter’s question about how often we are to forgive one another.

God’s forgiveness of us knows no limits and is always granted. Anything less is our forgiveness of one another brings the same judgment against us that Jesus renders against the “wicked servant.”

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: The reading from Sirach asks, “Could anyone refuse mercy to another?” Yes! The servant in the gospel did. And so do we—all the time. But, never God!
… to experience: Grudges among families, communities, nations are often passed on from generation to generation. For example, family feuds go on for decades during which time members do not speak to each other. The only thing that can break the cycle of hate, fear, and disunity is the gift of forgiveness.

Forgiveness in Community

This gospel is a troubling tale. Jesus tells a parable of a king settling accounts with a debtor who begs for patience. Out of pity, the king writes off the debt. But when that same official throttles a servant who pleads for similar patience, the king, hearing of the incident, renounces the one he had forgiven and has him tortured “until he paid” (however that might be done). “My Father,” Jesus concludes, “will treat you the same way.”

What happened to “seventy times seven times”? The king’s sentencing of the first debtor to torture doesn’t seem so very forgiving—especially after only one failing.

The key is that the failing is radical unforgiveness. It’s as if the refusal to forgive, by its very nature, locks us into a torturous circle. So tightly closed against pardoning the other, we have sealed ourselves off from the very experience of pardon.

Jesus is not recommending a mathematics of reconciliation.
It is hard to believe that God could forgive endlessly. We, for our part, surely would not. Forgive again and again and again? We think that if we forgive too easily, people will walk all over us—our children, our spouses, our friends, our enemies. We offer ourselves more “realistic” counsel. “I’ll forgive, maybe once, or if they forgive me first, or if there is some promise of change, or if they don’t do it again, or if they acknowledge their sin.”

But such a tactic leads to a tortured soul. The weight of unforgiven hurt bends and burdens us. We carry grudges like clinkers, burnt up and cold.

The great tragedy is that if we wish to exempt ourselves from the law of Jesus, the law of love and forgiveness; if we establish for ourselves a new reality; if vengeance and retribution are what we embrace as most true and reliable, then that is what we are left with. Hell is not so much the punishment by God as it is the result that our punishment of each other demands.

In the church, in our families, in our hearts, we have all experienced the logic of unforgiveness. Even at the age of five, a child might be heard to mutter, “I’ll never talk to them again.” If the judgment hardens, it is only the heart of the judger that grows cold. The words, “I will never forgive you,” can shut tight the heart of the one who utters them, definitively deadened and alone.

It is true, as the psalmist said, that “the Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion.” But in our refusal to accept the reality of Jesus, we enthrone the reality of resentment as the law of life. There is an unyielding recalcitrance about unforgiveness. It is a rejection of love. We refuse to give it; we make it impossible to receive it.

When the Lord answers Peter’s question, how often we should forgive, he says, “not seven times but seventy times seven times.” Jesus is not recommending a mathematics of reconciliation. He is using the extreme numbers to suggest the unbridgeable chasm between a forgiving and an unforgiving universe. His parable may be less about the retribution of God than it is about a state of soul so hardened that even a kind and compassionate God could not soften it.

The Accountancy of Forgiveness

Peter knew well what his master taught about forgiveness. It was especially clear in the model prayer Jesus had taught the disciples: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That was clear enough; yet Peter's question was a very human one: “How far do I have to go in this forgiveness thing?” As an outside limit, he suggests the round number seven. Jesus (teasingly?) responds with the fuller round number seventy times seven—or 490, to be exact. And of course the point was that, like the lawyer who asked Jesus to define “neighbor” (looking for some boundary around the love commandment), Peter is wrong to inquire into the limits of the command to forgive.

Seeing that Peter wants to quantify forgiveness, Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness using numbers whose proportions are absurd. (“You want to talk numbers? I'll give you some numbers to think about.”) Jesus tells of a king calling his debtors to account and dealing with one who owes him ten thousand talents. Now a single talent was a huge amount of silver, worth, our lexicons tell us, around 10,000 denarii (and a denarius was worth a day's labor). Thus, 10,000 talents would come to a hundred million denarii. If you like, you can estimate what a day's worth of labor is worth today in dollars and then multiply that by 100,000,000. But just trying to think of an amount worth the salary of 100,000,000 days' labor should be enough to help us realize that the NAB's paraphrase for “ten thousand talents”—“a huge amount”—while correct, is really an understatement.

When the king orders the debtor, along with his family and property, to be sold to recover a little of the debt, our debtor begs for mercy and make the absurd promise that he will pay the debt “in fill.” The king overlooks the absurdity, allows himself to be moved by compassion, and forgives the man outright.

Still in the flush of what we must imagine would be a feeling of unexpected good fortune and gratitude, this liberated debtor runs into a coworker who owes him a mere hundred denarii (which comes to one millionth of what he had just been forgive—in case Peter is still trying to imagine 490 instances of forgiveness). And the man has the gall to demand immediate payment. When the coworker pleads with our forgiven debtor in the very words he had just used before the king, the man has him committed to the debtors’ prison. Knowing of the first man’s recent benefit, the other servants are rightly enraged, as is the king, when he finds out.

Jesus’ (satiric) numbers game answering Peter’s (misguidedly serious) numbers game is there for us to contemplate, if we dare to measure how much the Lord would have us forgive one another.

Commentary by Augustine

The Lord puts the parable of the unforgiving debtor before us that we may learn from it. He has no desire for us to die, so he warns us: “This is how your heavenly Father will deal with you if you, any of you, fail to forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Take notice now, for clearly this is no idle warning. The fulfillment of this command calls for the most vigorous obedience. We are all in debt to God, just as other people are in debt to us. Is there anyone who is not God’s debtor? Only a person in whom no sin can be found. And is there anyone who has no brother or sister in his debt? Only if there be someone who has never suffered any wrong.

And so, every day we pray; every day we beat upon God’s ears with our pleas;
Do you think anyone can be found in the entire human race who has not in turn wronged another in some way, incurring a debt to that person? No, all are debtors, and have others in debt to them. Accordingly, God who is just has told you how to treat your debtor, because he means to treat his in the same way.

There are two works of mercy which will set us free. They are briefly set down in the gospel in the Lord’s own words: “Forgive and you will be forgiven, and Give and you will receive.” (Mt 6:14) The former concerns pardon, the latter generosity.

As regards pardon he says: “Just as you want to be forgiven, so someone is in need of your forgiveness.” Again, as regards generosity, consider when a beggar asks you for something that you are a beggar too in relation to God.

When we pray we are all beggars before God. We are standing at the door of a great householder, or rather, lying prostrate, and begging with tears. We are longing to receive a gift—the gift of God himself.

What does a beggar ask of you? Bread. And you, what do you ask of God, if not Christ, who said: “I am the living bread that has come down from heaven”? Do you want to be pardoned? Then pardon others. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Do you want to receive? Give and you will receive.

If we think of our sins, reckoning up those we have committed by sight, hearing, thought, and countless disorderly emotions, I do not know whether we can even sleep without falling into debt.

And so, every day we pray; every day we beat upon God’s ears with our pleas; every day we prostrate ourselves before him saying: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive those who trespass against us.”

Which of our trespasses, all of them or only some? All, you will answer.

Do likewise, therefore, with those who have offended you.

This is the rule you have laid down for yourself, the condition you have stipulated. When you pray according to this pact and covenant you remember to say: “Forgive us, as we also forgive our debtors.”

Sermon 83, 2. 4: PL 38, 515-516

Augustine (354-430) was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education, although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396. Augustine’s theology was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense. He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth century. Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual writer.

Reading I: Sirach 27:30-28:7

Sirach is one of the deuterocanonical (or in Reformation parlance, “apocryphal”) books. Until recently it was known only in a Greek translation, although we knew from the prologue that it was originally written in Hebrew. Fragments of the Hebrew original have been discovered at Qumran. The author was Jesus ben Sirach, who wrote it about 180 BCE.

It was translated into Greek by his grandson about 130 BCE. It is, therefore, a late book, not too far removed from the New Testament period. The teaching of our excerpt reaches a height not far from the New Testament in what it says about forgiveness (see the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and today’s gospel about the unforgiving servant). 
 
Responsorial Psalm: 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12

Slightly different selections of verses from this psalm are used on the third Sunday of Lent and on the seventh Sunday of the year in series C.

The reason for its choice today is that human forgiveness is meant to be patterned after divine forgiveness, as both the First Reading and the Gospel testify.

 
Reading II: Romans 14:7-9

The context of this passage is a discussion about the relation between the strong and the weak members of the Church. Recent work on Paul’s letter to the Romans suggests that this discussion was occasioned by tensions in Rome between Gentile Christians who were liberal in their attitude toward the law and Jewish Christians who were scrupulous about legal observances; they were the strong and the weak, respectively. Paul urges mutual toleration. The strong in particular should respect the scruples of the weak.

As so often, Paul moves from specific practical problems to the underlying theological principles. The fundamental principle here is that no Christian exists by himself or herself, but only in relation to the Lord (the risen and exalted Kyrios, that is, Christ), and therefore in relation to other Church members, who are equally related to the Kyrios.

This excerpt looks very much like a baptismal hymn. This is indicated by the “we” style common in hymns and by the way the hymn goes beyond the point immediately at issue, namely, the relation between weak and strong, to speak of the living and the dead. As Lord of the living, Christ is the Lord of both groups within the Church.

 
Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35

The parable of the unforgiving servant is found only in Matthew’s Gospel. We do not have to deal, therefore, with a redaction of a known source like Mark or Q. Matthew’s redactional contributions are: (1) attaching the parable to the saying about forgiving seventy times seven, with the connecting link “therefore”; (2) placing this whole complex at the conclusion of the community discourse, thus making the parable a moral exhortation for the community; (3) adding the final saying, which draws the moral.

Note the typically Matthean phrase “my heavenly Father” (Mt 18:35). Also note that the saying of verse 22 and the teaching of the parable do not really fit together. The parable does not inculcate repeated forgiveness but rebukes refusal to show mercy on the part of those who have received mercy from God.

There is no reason to doubt that this is an authentic Jesus parable. It fits in perfectly with the situation in his ministry. Jesus has offered God’s eschatological forgiveness to his hearers already here and now. If they do not share in this forgiveness with other people, God will revoke that forgiveness at the last judgment. This parable was told by Jesus, not as a moral exhortation about life in the Church, but to shame the consciences of his hearers.

From the Heart
Last week we reflected on sin as an interpersonal offense, something that divides members of the Christian community. When the sinner refuses to admit the sin, he or she is thrown out of community. When the sinner admits the sin, the community’s forgiveness reinstates him or her to membership. Reconciliation presumes and is based upon forgiveness from the heart.

Today’s reading proposes two ideas. Central to each is how “members of the church” (see the NRSV translation) are to behave toward each other. The first idea in Jesus’ reply to Peter’s question is that disciples of Jesus must forgive one another always (“seventy times seven”), without limit. The second idea, found in the parable, is the communal dimension of forgiveness.

Let us take a closer look at the parable (Matt 18:23-35).

Debts

First-century Mediterranean peasants understood sin, that is, interpersonal transgressions, after the fashion of debts. That is what Jesus taught his followers to ask of God: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12). For Westerners accustomed to a money-driven economy, debts almost always translate into “money owed.”

Since economics is our culture’s predominant institution, everything is viewed from an economic perspective. In drug arrests we hear not of people saved from potential addiction, but rather the dollar value of the drugs confiscated. In natural disasters we hear not so much of people’s misfortunes but rather the economic loss in terms of dollars.

The moral of Jesus’ story is that members of the community must treat one another as God has treated each of them.
Not so our peasant ancestors, for theirs was not a money-based economy. Their lives were based on interpersonal relationships even in what we, in our day, would recognize as “economic” transactions. In such a culture, the purpose of haggling is not economic but interpersonal. That the potential buyer will make a purchase is a foregone conclusion. The buyer haggles and the seller willingly goes along because both are building an interpersonal relationship called friendship (see Genesis 18:22-33; James 2:23). Friends will be faithful: the seller will always sell and the buyer will always get a good price.

The Parable

But the king is sensitive to his honorable reputation. If he deals harshly with a servant of his own household, his subjects will judge him to be shameless, a man without honor. So the king decides to act in “mercy” and forgive the debt. He gains more honor by this decision than he would by insisting on receiving full payment of the debt.

In behavior that is both shocking and sad, the forgiven slave turns toward a fellow slave in the same household and refuses to forgive a much smaller debt. He refuses to imitate the merciful behavior of the king-patron. If he gets away with this strategy the king will become a laughing stock. To protect his honor, the king-patron has no choice but to put this brazen slave in his proper place: jail!

The moral of Jesus’ story is that members of the community must treat one another as God has treated each of them. They must choose the more honorable path and forgive one another “from the heart.” Jesus’ instruction echoes Leviticus 19:17: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart … you shall love your neighbor [understood here as a fellow-Israelite, a member of your in-group] as yourself.” How well do Americans fare in forgiving or loving each other from the heart?

Just Imagine

I taught grade school religion for a short semester when I was about 22. By accident I discovered a great trick of teaching, one I needed very much. The class, you see, was in complete chaos each time I arrived in mid-day.

But if I told a story, even the simplest story, the pandemonium ceased. It morphed into rapt attention. You could hear a pin drop. Until the story ended, that is, and then anarchy resumed.

I never did find another way besides stories to reach these little cherubs, even though I memorized each name and each picture in the long list, and called different ones out for serious talks, etc. 

There must be a special part of the brain devoted to story-hearing.

It was only years later that I applied this insight. Why does the gospel get such special attention at Mass? Why do we hold the book up and parade it to the pulpit? Because it is a story, the story of Jesus. We are struck by the narrative about him, much more than we are by the sometimes complicated theology in Paul’s letters. Within the gospels, which are themselves stories, we find the parables Jesus told. 

Stories.

So take a good look at the parable in Sunday’s Gospel and let the story lead you. See if it works. Imagine the landowner hiring laborers for his vineyard as he shakes their rough hands and invites them to work. You can see their satisfied smiles, since they know they will get the usual daily wage.

The day gets hotter. And hotter. High noon has come and the owner walks back to town to go shopping for this and that. He glances around. Men are leaning on buildings, loitering really, bored but still hopeful. The owner crosses over to them and offers to hire them. They come to life and hurry off to his vineyard to earn just half a day’s wages. It is more than nothing.

Then the work day is about over. The owner is still in town for whatever reason, and what should he see but strong men lolling about in doorways, wet with sweat from the heat and from their dejection. To their surprise, he hires them too.

Day ends and “just wages” are handed out. It is the exact same amount for every worker, no matter how many or how few hours anyone had worked. Look at the faces. Anger in the ones who had slaved all day This is not fair! We demand our rights! We put in the time and these oafs did nothing. The late ones smiling sheepishly.

What does the story mean? You will find the answer if you sense the scene rather than just use brain power. Let your imagination see the kindness in the owner’s face. Call to mind the gloom of the ones hired so late. See their amazement now.

Obviously these wages are not a strict remuneration for hours worked. They more like a gift from a fond heart. How does this feel to you? Didn’t Jesus tell his parable to show how God’s caring heart works, how he gives a depth of love to each person in this world, especially to ones who suffer and are left behind?

If it is hard to see, ask for light.

Pre-Prayering

Google is actually a mathematical term, the number one followed by one hundred zeros. Why is Seven Up, the soft drink, not Six or Eight Up? Was there ever a real Dr. Pepper? There are questions which do have answers—some in physics, some in history. “Why” is pretty close to the first word children learn. The first is “No!” and the second is “Mine!” Answers to their “whys” do not seem to satisfy their little minds.

Some questions do have answers, but our adult minds desperately seek answers to much bigger questions than why blue-colored soap foams white. As long as we have experiences we will have questions. What we want is the security of certainty and ultimately of control. Seeking for answers is a wonderful human hunger. Being angry or disillusioned by our in-completion results from our arrogance. We hate the embarrassing encounters with a humbling discovery of our little minds.

“Quest” is the basis of our Christian faith and the gesture of extending our empty hands toward the reception of the Eucharistic presence of Jesus is a holy expression of our human poverty and God’s abundant accompaniment. As we “quest” along these days, we can pray with our ponderings and try to pray with smiles which change humiliations into celebrations of our truth. We are still children whether we like it or not.

Reflection

Our First Reading is from the last chapter of the Book of Consolation in whose sixteen chapters Israel has been encouraged to hope in and seek the Lord’s freeing them from exile. It seems to the people of Israel that God has abandoned them, and the first verse we hear from the prophet would indicate that God might not be around for a while: “ … while he may be found.”

The “scoundrel” and the “wicked” are those who have drifted away from their trust in the God, who seemingly has left them while they are in captivity in Babylon. The previous sayings of God in this Book of Second Isaiah are full of reminders that the God of the covenant is faithful and God’s mercy is forever.

The verses end with a reminder that God is not figure-out-able. While humans question and drift away when answers are not forthcoming, God is still the Seeker, the Finder, and the Ultimate Non-Answering Answer

The Gospel is a parable of apparent injustice. We think we should be given more for doing more. The owner made a deal with the early-morning workers and a deal with the noon-timers and the evening crew, one they did not understand: that all will be paid the same whether early or late.

This is a parable about God’s historical relationship beginning with Abram and continuing through the prophets and presently with the disciples to whom the story is told. Jesus is telling his followers that God’s love for Israel is constant and everlasting.

The disciples are the late-comers, with whom Jesus continues the original “deal” or covenant. The parable stresses the continuation of God’s (the owner’s) saving love for all the “owner’s” people. The entire group of workers will work together, because the owner has made an everlasting “deal” with them all.

This is an important parable for Matthew. In a poetic way it expresses the meaning of the Epiphany which begins the first part of Jesus’ public life. Salvation has come through the Jews, beginning with God’s call to Abram and Abram’s agreeing to the “deal” of the covenant. Jesus incarnates the “deal” by being the human presentation of that same eternal love of God.

It is so human of us to decide who belongs and whom we should exclude. Whom does God embrace and whom does God ignore? The comfort for us is twofold. We belong together under the bright umbrella of God’s seeking love and we are still called to go out into his “vineyard” to tend, cultivate and harvest.

We do not have to “seek” the Lord; rather we are to “seek” the ways of the Lord’s calling and sending us. Abram listened to the God who is “near” and abandoned his ways to walk God’s ways. The prophets listened and allowed God’s words to comfort and challenge on behalf of the God who is “near.”

The disciples are listening and being sent to continue establishing God’s kingdom—the one which is opposed by the kingdoms of our creation.

The “last” and the “first” are not better than each other, but better for each other and for the tending of the vineyard. What all this means for us is to listen to the goodness of God within us, because we are people of the covenant and meant to be sent to do what we are. God’s ways are as high as the sky, but the sky is raining his grace, which will not return to him until the earth becomes the kingdom of heaven.

First Reading

Isaiah, Chapter 55, Verses 6-9

1.“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near.” Can God always be near? Name some times in your day when it is easier to find God than at others. What helps you remember to “find God in all things” in your life?

2. Isaiah is writing about a call to conversion in this reading. “Let the scoundrel forsake his way.” For what ways do we need to ask for mercy, and need to “forsake”? What about environmental, or racial or immigrant injustices, and fixing the wrongs? Does God ever withhold mercy or pardon?

 

Second Reading

Philippians, Chapter 1, Verses 20-24, 27

1. Is there someone or some group who “magnifies” the Lord for you? Every time you are around him/her/them, do you feel Christ is somehow present. Why is that? What is it about them that “clears your eyesight”?

2. What did Paul mean when he said, “For to me, life is Christ and death is gain.” What do you think was the “fruitful labor” for Paul? What is your “fruitful labor”?

 

Gospel

Matthew, Chapter 20, Verses 1-16

1. This Gospel reading is not about strict justice but outrageous generosity. Are any of us ever worthy of grace, first hour worker or eleventh, no matter what? What is the message of this parable? What is the message for you in your everyday life?

2. How would grace be handed out if humans made the rules? What if God’s ways were like our ways, if God’s bountiful generosity did not exceed the level of simple distributive justice?

According to Pope Francis in Joy of the Gospel, paragraph 48, who are the “last” in “the last shall be first”?

If the whole Church takes up [the] missionary impulse, she has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, “those who cannot repay you” (Lk 14:14. …Today and always, “the poor are the privileged recipients of the Gospel,” and the fact that it is freely preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. May we never abandon them.

Pope Francis, A Mother with an Open Heart,

Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 48

http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#V.%E2%80%82A_mother_with_an_open_heart

The Power of Powerlessness

 

There are different kinds of power and different kinds of authority. There is military power, muscle power, political power, economic power, moral power, charismatic power, and psychological power, among other things. There are different kinds of authority too: We can be bitterly forced into acquiescing to certain demands or we can be gently persuaded into accepting them. Power and authority are not all of a kind.

Imagine four persons in a room: the first is a powerful dictator who rules a country. His word commands armies and his shifting moods intimidate subordinates. He wields a brutal power. Next to him sits a gifted athlete at the peak of his physical prowess, a man whose quickness and strength have few equals. His skills are a graceful power for which he is much admired and envied. The third person is a rock star whose music and charisma can electrify an audience and fill a room with a soulful energy. Her face is on billboards and she is a household name. That's still another kind of power. Finally, we have too in the room a newborn, a baby, lying in its crib, seemingly without any power or strength whatsoever, unable to even ask for what it needs. Which of these is ultimately the most powerful?

The irony is that the baby ultimately wields the greatest power. The athlete could crush it, the dictator could kill it, and the rock star could out-glow it in sheer dynamism, but the baby has a different kind of power. It can touch hearts in a way that a dictator, an athlete, or a rock star cannot. Its innocent, wordless presence, without physical strength, can transform a room and a heart in a way that guns, muscle, and charisma cannot. We watch our language and actions around a baby, less so around athletes and rock stars. The powerlessness of a baby touches us at a deeper moral place.

And this is the way we find and experience God's power here on earth, sometimes to our great frustration. And this is the way that Jesus was deemed powerful during his lifetime. The entire Gospels make this clear, from beginning to end. Jesus was born as a baby, powerless, and he died hanging helplessly on a cross with bystanders mocking his powerlessness. Yet both his birth and his death manifest the kind of power upon which we can ultimately build our lives.

The Gospels describe Jesus' power and authority in exactly this way. In Greek, the original language of the Gospels, we find three words for power or authority. We easily recognize the first two: energy and dynamic. There is a power in energy, in physical health and muscle, just as there is a power in being dynamic, in dynamite, in having the power to generate energy; but when the Gospels speak of Jesus as "having great power" and as having a power beyond that of other religious figures, they do not use the words energetic or dynamic. They use a third word, exousia, which might be best rendered as vulnerability. Jesus' real power was rooted in a certain vulnerability, like the powerlessness of a child.

This isn't an easy concept to grasp since our idea of power is normally rooted in the opposite, namely, the notion that power lies in the ability to overwhelm others, not underwhelm. And yet we understand this, at least somewhat, in our experience of babies, who can overpower us precisely by their powerlessness. Around a baby, as most every mother and father has learned, we not only watch our language and try not to have bitter arguments; we also try to be better, more loving persons. Metaphorically, a baby has the power to do an exorcism. It can cast out the demons of self-absorption and selfishness in us. That's why Jesus could cast out certain demons that others could not.

And that's how God's power forever lies within our world and within our lives, asking for our patience. Christ, as Annie Dillard says, is always found in our lives just as he was originally found, as a helpless baby in the straw who must be picked up and nurtured into maturity. But we are forever wanting something else, namely, a God who would come and clean up the world and satisfy our thirst for justice by showing some raw muscle power and banging some heads here and now. We are impatient with quiet, moral power that demands infinite patience and a long-term perspective. We want a hero, someone with the blazing guns of a Hollywood superhero but the heart of a Mother Theresa. The guns of the world, which are blasting away evil, that's what we want from our God, not the power of a baby lying mute and helpless against the cruel powers of our time. Like the Israelites facing the Philistines, we are reluctant to send a shepherd boy against an ironclad giant. We want divine power in iron, muscles, guns, and charisma.

But that's not the way intimacy, peace, and God are found.

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• kingdom of heaven
• landowner
• hire laborers
• usual wage
• grumbled
• last, first

To the point: This Gospel raises the question of who is first and who is last in the kingdom of heaven. Those laborers are last who shift their focus from doing the work of the landowner to grumbling about the amount of wages others are receiving. Those are first who do not labor in the vineyard because of the amount of wages, but simply because they are privileged to share in the work of the landowner. Indeed, simply being called to the privilege of sharing in Jesus' work of salvation is its own recompense. The kingdom of heaven is revealed by those who choose this work. Do we choose it?

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: While Isaiah is telling one truth, namely, that God's thoughts and ways are not ours, Jesus is telling another truth, that we are called to participate in God's thoughts and ways by working for the coming of the kingdom.
… to experience: Being completely lost in something we enjoy doing very much is its own reward. How much more so when we stay focused on following Jesus faithfully!

Envious Comparisons
It continues to amaze me that some people think God is a projection of humanity’s wish. That may be true of idols or false gods, but it just doesn’t work with the God of Moses and the prophets, the God made flesh in Jesus. This God doesn’t act or behave as we would.

It is not just that God is more merciful than we might be, or more forgiving; God seems not even to think the way we do. As Isaiah reminds us, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

Of course, God starts from a different place. Having all that is required, God’s actions do not spring from need, unless it be the need to give. The whole point of God’s love is in giving something to the other.

We needy creatures, however, act most basically out of insufficiency. It is understandable that we perceive all love in terms of fulfilling our lack. The other, whether God, human, animal, or thing, stands before us to serve our needs.

What is more, other beings stand as competitors. They, too, need. They want the same things we want. And their gain seems our loss. Not for nothing did Jean Paul Sartre, in one of his more rancorous moments, claim that hell was other people.

WH Auden wrote:

For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have:
Not universal love,
But to be loved alone.
As Abel was a threat to Cain, so it has ever been.

No one needs to teach us to compete for love. A child, little more than a year old, will scream at the telephone’s intrusion on a mother’s attention. At the age of two, the threat of the other becomes so strong that some toddlers will literally hold and turn the face of the parent to grab back the gaze momentarily given to someone else. By three, some children seem most interested in toys when someone else is in the room who might dare to touch them.

 “Who do you love best?” These are the words of a child who fears losing something when there are other children in the family. “I love all of you equally,” is never a satisfying answer. When the rest are out of the room, the question persists: “Now you can tell me; who do you really love best?”

  “Am I your best friend?” Teenagers are not the only ones who harbor the hope to be number one, to be the one and only. Sharing the love of a special friend with someone else is rarely an occasion for toasts. It is rather like the loss of a nonrenewable natural resource. A new friend, a third member to the group, is like an invading army. And when we ourselves were unwelcome newcomers to a dyad, how often have we felt like a useless “third wheel”?

“Why am I not enough for you?” One hears the refrain from adults. A spouse says to the beloved: “Why do you need to go out with your friends? Why do you spend so much time doing things I don’t care for? Am I not enough?”

And I have heard the answer to the crestfallen questioner: “No, you are not enough. I love you and you’re my ‘one and only’ and you’re good to be with. But you are not everything.” Such is the error “bred in the bone.”

In our more honest and alert moments, Christ’s parable of the estate owner and the hired hands might well distress us. Some hard-working and enterprising souls start laboring in the vineyard at dawn. Subsequent groups, no doubt less resourceful, arrive at noon, mid-afternoon, and late afternoon and are put to work by the landowner. Finally, at the moment of payoff, those hired late receive a full day’s pay—and get paid first.

Those who started working at the break of day are not pleased with such a sweet deal: “This last group did only an hour’s work, but you have put them on the same basis as us, who have worked a full day in the scorching heat.” But the landowner, claiming that no injustice was done or agreement broken, does not accept their complaint. “I am free to do as I please with my money, am I not? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

Now, just judge that I am, and aspiring lawyer that I have been since infancy, I think the complainers had a point. The arrangement just isn’t fair. (How many times have we spoken or heard this refrain?) Surely the full-day workers did more to win the rewards of payment and approval. Surely they should have some compensation to match their efforts and achievement. By any just comparison or calculus of effort, they deserve more.

But more of what? More love? More happiness? How could there be more of that, unless love and happiness were themselves in some way unsatisfying to us? This matter of grace, this life of the kingdom, is not a calculus of rationality. It is a bountiful gratuity.

St. Paul seems to have felt this mystery of abundance. Even the greatest goods of life no longer hold him in thrall. He loves them, true. But it is a love that has ceased to grasp or compare. It is finally a love that gives, that says “yes” rather than, “You have to be mine and mine alone.”

Good God, Evil Eye

In the parable of the householder and the vineyard workers, when the master pays the eleventh-hour people the same wage (a denarius, normal pay for a day's labor) that he pays to those who had borne the heat of the day, our sense of fairness is violated. We understand easily the grumbling of the full-day workers: if the one-hour workers get a full day's pay, should not they, in all fairness, get something like twelve days’ pay? The householder's defense seems lame. The fact that the full-day workers had agreed to a denarius does not really address the apparent lack of proportion in the eleventh-hour workers getting for one hour's work what they (“the heat of the day” people) had worked so hard to earn. The householder may indeed be “generous” with respect to the eleventh-hour people, but in this situation, the full-day workers experience the normal day's wage as decidedly ungenerous. “Generous” would be something like maybe ten or twelve denarii.

But despite most contemporary English translations of the adjective the householder applies to himself in verse 15, the issue is not generosity but goodness. For a literal rendering of Matthew 20:15b (reflected accurately in the King James and the Rheims versions) reads: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” The importance of the difference between “generous” and “good” becomes apparent when we consider the fuller context.

This is, after all, not a teaching about just wages but a parable that begins, “The kingdom of heaven is like … ” As readers of Matthew, by now two-thirds through this Gospel, we know that “kingdom of heaven” is not a name for the place where God lives but the realm of human persons responding to God's reign freshly inaugurated through Jesus of Nazareth. As in other householder parables, the master is of course God. And the issue of God’s goodness and what it takes to relate appropriately to that goodness is raised in the previous chapter, when a young man approaches Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” And Jesus answers, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.” In the ensuing conversation, Jesus says that following the commandments is doing “the good” but that full goodness, indeed “perfection,” comes with letting go of everything and following him, Jesus. Relating to the ultimately good One, in other words, is converting to a new way of looking at and living one's life—i.e., receiving the teaching of Jesus and becoming his disciple.

When Peter follows this with his question about how he and the rest of the disciples will be rewarded for giving up all to follow him, Jesus speaks of reigning with him, enjoying the hundredfold and inheriting eternal life. But then, as if to disabuse the disciples (and Matthew's readers) of conventional notions of accomplishment and reward, Jesus launches into our parable about the landholder. The parable flies in the face of normal expectations about accomplishments and reward, or work and wages. Perhaps the key lies in the master’s agreement with the third-hour (9 AM) people to pay them “what is just” (NAB; or “whatever is right,” NRSV). At this point in the story, we readers or listeners naturally take this to mean something less than the denarius promised the workers who started at dawn. Along with the eleventh-hour people, we bristle at the news that all workers will be paid equally, we hear Jesus say, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” In the Mediterranean world, one of the things that makes for an “evil eye” is to look upon someone else's goods with jealousy—to make invidious comparison. The very word “invidious” (from Latin invidere “to look at with envy”) derives from that understanding of evil eye.

As Isaiah reminds us in the First Reading, God's ways are not ours; God's goodness would create a kind of equality in the household of the kingdom that goes beyond our small sense of “what is right.” To the extent we make invidious comparisons—like Martha with Mary, or like the elder son with respect to his prodigal brother—to that extent our eye is evil and we are blind to the goodness of God.

Employer or Patron
 
What is God like? The answer to this common question always reflects the culture of the questioner or the one who answers the question. Today’s parable reports one of Jesus’ many answers to this question. It should be no surprise that in this parable God behaves in accord with Middle Eastern values.

Limited Good
In general, Americans believe that “there is always more where this came from,” whether it is oil, jobs, money, or whatever. This attitude makes it extremely difficult for Americans to understand concepts such as shortages, extinction, or anything similar.

Our Mediterranean ancestors in the faith believed “there is no more where this came from.” Everything (jobs, wealth, honor, or whatever one could imagine) was limited in quantity and already distributed. The jobs at the vineyard were already filled. How dare any worker think there might be more jobs?

Moreover, to ask for a job is to deprive the employer of something he owns. This is shameful. Instead, workers have to be invited by the owner to work for him. The owner in this parable goes out five times in one day looking for workers to invite, and each time he hires everyone in sight. Such behavior by the owner and the potential workers is very honorable, because it respects the cultural idea that all goods–including jobs–are limited.

Patronage
In America, workers look for jobs, employers hire the best qualified workers, they agree on a wage and respect a practice called “seniority.” None of this existed in the ancient Mediterranean world and none of these elements can be found in the parable.

Only to the first hired does the owner promise “the usual daily wage.” They agree to accept it. To the second (and presumably all subsequent groups), the owner says: “I will pay you whatever is right?”

At the end of the day, the owner pays the workers beginning with the last hired. This is an important narrative point without which the story would collapse because those hired first would have no reason to hang around if they were paid first. This point also indicated to ancient Mediterranean peoples that the owner wears two hats: he is an employer but can also be a patron.

A patron is a person of means who freely chooses to treat other people (always of lower status) “as if” they were family members. No one can bid for or “earn” such treatment, but everyone in the Mediterranean world of antiquity and the present seeks to have a patron.

The vineyard owner treats the last hired generously and graciously, “as if” they were relatives. They did nothing to “earn” such treatment. The owner gave them “what is right” for relatives. At the same time, the owner treats the first hired in accord with their agreement. If he chose to, the owner could disregard the agreement and treat the first hired generously, “as if” they were relatives. But he doesn’t so choose. To the first hired, the vineyard owner chooses to be employer; to the last hired, the vineyard owner chooses to be a patron.

Jesus’ lesson is not about economics but about God from a Middle Eastern perspective. Insinuated in Jesus’ explanation is that God’s choice for treating people may reflect how people deal with God. Such ideas clash with American economic ideas of equal opportunity, contracts, seniority, and the like. How should God behave from an American perspective?

Commentary by Augustine
 
Why are you jealous because I am generous?

The gospel story about the vineyard workers is appropriate to this time of year, the season of the earthly grape harvest. But there is also another harvest, the spiritual one, at which God rejoices in the fruits of his vineyard.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out to hire men to work in his vineyard.” In the evening he gave orders for all to be paid, beginning with the last corners and ending with the first. Now why did he pay the last corners first? Will not everyone be rewarded at the same time? We read in another gospel passage how the king will say to those placed on his right hand: “Come, you whom my Father has blessed: take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
If all, then, are to receive their wages together, how should we understand this statement about those who arrived at the eleventh hour being paid first, and those who had been working since daybreak being paid last? If I can say anything to further your understanding, thanks be to God. Give thanks to him who teaches you through me, for my own knowledge is not the source of my teaching.

To take an example, then, let us ask which of two workers receives his wages sooner, one who is paid after an hour, or one who is paid after twelve hours? Anyone will answer: “One who is paid after an hour.” So also in our parable. All the workmen were paid at the same time, but because some were paid after an hour and others after twelve hours, the former, having had a shorter time to wait, may be said to have received their wages first.

The earliest righteous people like Abel and Noah, called as it were at the first hour, will receive the joy of resurrection at the same time as we do. So also will others who came later, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those contemporary with them, called as we may say at the third hour; Moses and Aaron and those called with them at the sixth hour; and after them the holy prophets, called at the ninth hour.

At the end of the world all Christians, called at the eleventh hour, will receive the joy of resurrection together with those who went before them. All will be rewarded at the same time, but the first corners will have had the longest to wait. Therefore, if they receive their reward after a longer period and we after a shorter one, the fact that our reward is not delayed will make it seem as though we were receiving it first, even though we all receive it together.

In that great reward, then, we shall all be equal—the first to the last and the last to the first. For the denarius stands for eternal life, in which all will have the same share. Although through diversity of merit some will shine more brilliantly than others, in the possession of eternal life there will be equality. What is endless for all will not be longer for one and shorter for another. What has no bounds will have none either for you or for me. Those who lived chastely in the married state will have one kind of splendor; virgins will have another. The reward for good works will differ from the crown of martyrdom; but where eternal life is concerned there can be no question of more or less for anyone. Whatever may be the individual’s degree of glory, each one will live in it eternally. This is the meaning of the denarius.

(Sermon 87,1. 4-6: PL 38, 530-533)

 

Augustine (354-430) was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education, although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396. Augustine’s theology was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense. He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth century. Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual writer.

Reading I: Isaiah 55:6-9

The hymn contained in Is 55:1-11 was used as the fifth reading at the Easter Vigil. Here only the second of its three stanzas is used.

The reason for its selection is indicated by the caption that calls attention to the last two verses: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”

These words underline the teaching of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in today’s gospel.
 
Responsorial Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18

A somewhat different though overlapping selection of verses from this psalm is commented on for the fourteenth Sunday of series A and the thirty-first Sunday of series C. The second and third stanzas, especially the latter, match both the Old Testament reading and the gospel today.

Again, as we shall see, the difference between God’s thoughts and our thoughts, according to the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, is that God’s justice is not a quid pro quo affair but is characterized by mercy and forgiveness.
 
Reading II: Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a

This week we turn from Romans, which we have been reading for the past several Sundays, to Philippians. The latter was written while Paul was in prison. Traditionally this imprisonment was identified with that at Rome (Acts 28:30-31).

There is, however, a growing consensus among scholars today that the imprisonment in question must have occurred during Paul’s stay at Ephesus (ca. 52-55, though the absolute chronology of Paul’s life is somewhat conjectural).

It was during this supposed imprisonment (of which there are hints in some of the letters, for example 1 Cor 15:32) that the great controversial letters were probably written: Galatians, 1 Corinthians, much of 2 Corinthians, and Philippians.

The view is also gaining ground that Philippians, like 2 Corinthians, is a compilation from two or three short letters written by Paul to the community at Philippi over the space of several months. These fragments were subsequently put together when they were edited for the later use of the Church. The letters may be identified as follows:

• Letter A, Phil 4:10-23. Paul’s thank-you for the “care packet” sent by the Philippians to him in prison by a messenger from Philippi named Epaphroditus.
• Letter B, Phil 1:1-3:1; 4:4-7. News about Paul’s welfare and prospects in prison. Epaphroditus’ recovery from illness while with Paul; Paul’s desire to send Timothy to Philippi soon; and warnings against the possible arrival of false teachers.
• Letter C, Phil 3:2-4:3, 8-9. An attack on the false teachers after their arrival at Philippi.

Today’s reading thus comes from Letter B. Paul faces the possibility of martyrdom. If we are right in placing the imprisonment at Ephesus in 52-55, we know that his worst fears at this time did not come true: he was released and was able to visit his churches once more before he was arrested again, this time in Jerusalem, and transported to Rome.

Our reading consists of the Apostle’s vivid meditation on the prospects of life and death. He is in a state of tension, pulled both ways. Whether he lives or dies, Paul is convinced that Christ will be honored in his body, that is, either by Paul’s labors for the gospel (see the catalogues of sufferings in 2 Cor 12, etc.—that is what being an apostle meant for Paul) or by actual martyrdom.

In either case, it is not Paul’s own personal salvation that is at stake. He does not simply want to escape from his labors into personal bliss with Christ; rather, he believes that his martyrdom will in some way contribute, perhaps even more effectively than his apostolic labors, to the fulfillment of God’s purpose in salvation history.

“To live is Christ”—the great Pauline saying highlighted in the caption to this reading does not mean simply the enjoyment of mystical communion between the believer and the Lord but the execution of the apostolic mission.
 
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a

As we have noted in previous discussions of our Lord’s parables, there are three possible levels of exegesis: (1) the parable as taught by Jesus; (2) the parable as modified in the oral tradition; (3) the parable as presented by the evangelist in the context of his Gospel.

At the level of Jesus’ own teaching, the parable of the wicked husbandman must have concluded with the question “Or are you envious because I am generous?”

The context in which it was originally told must have been a complaint of Jesus’ opponents that he was paying more attention to the outcast than to the respectable members of society.

Jesus takes a situation as familiar in daily life then as now—long lines of unemployed waiting for a job. But he depicts the behavior of the employer in a quite surprising way. Out of pity for the unemployed and their families, the employer generously gives a full day’s wages to everyone.

That is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in his kingdom. Obviously, the parable is not a moral lesson about labor relations!

At the level of the oral tradition, the proverbial phrase “the last will be first, and the first will be last” has been added. This looks like a reapplication of the parable to the situation of the post-Easter community. Israel has rejected the gospel, so Gentiles have been drawn in.

The evangelist shows his own understanding of the parable by appending it to the discourse, Mt 19:23-30. Here Peter, as the spokesman for the Twelve, proudly claimed that they, unlike the rich whom Jesus was criticizing, had left everything to follow Jesus.

They will indeed be rewarded, for they will sit on twelve thrones with Christ, receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But then comes a warning: “many that are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mt 19:30).

In Matthew, this does not mean that the disciples are the last who will turn out to be the first, whereas the rich are the first who will turn out to be last. What Matthew means—or makes Jesus mean—is that those who forsake all and follow Jesus, and who are therefore the first, may turn out to be the last.

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard follows right upon this as a warning to the Christians in Matthew’s church not to hanker after rewards. Rewards are not denied, but they are not the purpose of toil for Christ and his kingdom. They always come as a surprise. Paul, in the second reading, exhibits precisely the kind of attitude Jesus is enjoining in Matthew’s presentation.

Motivation

Sometimes God appeals to people’s self-interest to get them to do what is right. Many of us need it, so that, through self-interest, we can overcome our self-interest.

We are shown this in the First Reading, where we find a straight-out argument between the people and God. They claim that “The Lord’s way is not fair!” They quote the famous saying, “The parents eat sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ez 18:2). Apparently their argument is that sin belongs to their fathers or mothers, not to them. So, God is punishing unjustly.

God’s reply in this reading is as follows:

The house of Israel says, ‘The Lord’s way is not fair!’

Is it my way that is not fair, house of Israel?

Is it not your ways that are not fair?

Then he shows them that punishment comes to those who actually commit an iniquity, not to those who just happen to be born of sinful parents. It is your own actions that matter. If you sin, it is fair that I punish you. If you do virtue, it is fair that I give you life.

Jesus’ parable in the Gospel takes it one step further. There we hear about a man whose father asks him to go work in the vineyard. The man says, rudely, “I will not.” Surely he would be counted as one of the sinful people described above. Or maybe he just had a headache, or was not a morning person, or whatever. But when his father leaves the house he changes his mind and goes out to work hard on the vines.

He has a brother. This one says in effect, “Yes, of course I will go out and do your will!” Isn't this exactly what God had been telling the people in the First Reading? I am sure the father in the present parable was pleased, especially after the rude reply he had gotten from his first son. Of course, as we know, this brother changed his mind and did not bother to go at all.

This second brother’s selfish interests were served by saying “yes, yes” to his father. It made him look good. But he did not trouble himself to actually do what he had promised. Self-interest did not get him to do good, but only to seem to do good.

So finally God decided to show us motivation that cannot be reduced to self-interest.

If we want motivation, as well as encouragement, solace in love, participation in the Spirit, compassion, and mercy, St. Paul says to look at what Christ did (Second Reading). Then you will not act out of selfishness, but will serve others humbly, as Christ did. This is the ultimate motivation in Christianity.

Have in you the same attitude

that is also in Christ Jesus,

Who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.

Rather, he emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

coming in human likeness;

and found human in appearance,

he humbled himself,

becoming obedient to the point of death,

even death on a cross.

Because of this God greatly exalted him.*

Self-interested motives are not the only ones. Just look at Christ—when you are at prayer and at Mass—and let him form you in humility.

Let God make you good.

____________

* These lines are thought to have been an early Christian hymn which Paul quotes and adapts. Unfortunately, 

if your parish chooses the “short version” of the Second Reading, this part is omitted. Be sure to spend time with it on this page if that is the case in your parish.

Pre-Prayering

C. S. Lewis once wrote that the most emphatic noise is the one you are trying not to listen to. The TV is on very loud next to my room, dogs are barking across the lane and you expect me to write something profound? If the program were a ball game and the dog was mine it would not be noisy, but just delightful sounds accompanying my spirits.

The more important noises are those already bouncing around inside of us all. We are invited to listen to and acknowledge those bangings and clangings. We actually can pray with not only the noises, but whatever is the origin of them. When we are at peace deep-down, sounds are less of an annoyance.

As we live from one Eucharist to the next, we will hear noises and perhaps they are invitations to receive the truths and falsehoods which those barkings promote and reveal.

Reflection

The fourth verse of Exekiel, chapter 18, the chapter from which our First Reading will be taken is a bit of a proverb. All life, the father’s and the son’s, belong to God. If one sins, that person must die. The next verses contain a list of sins reflective of the Ten Commandments. Briefly, sin will lead to death and righteousness, which is refraining from the sins listed, will lead to life.

It is within this context that the verses for our First Reading are set. God assumes, through the words of the prophet, that the people of Israel will think God is not fair in deciding who lives and who dies. The prophet lays it out pretty clearly on behalf of God. It had been thought that if the father sins, then the son must die too. That question has been answered as well in the previous verses.

What is important is that a life of sin and inequity can be reversed and a true life will follow. A virtuous life can also be reversed and death follows. This is God being fair, and the prophet is speaking to the people of Israel who want to have it both ways, sin and life together. God says in these verses, “not while I’m God!”

The Gospel is a parable directly aimed at the Scribes and Pharisees. There is a previous discussion with the Pharisees on Jesus’ authority and what is its source. Jesus will ask them a question before answering theirs.

In the sacrament of marriage two human beings vow publicly to be perfect in loving, honoring, and being faithful in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, all the days of their lives. Now that is a big “Yes”! Everyone attending that public ceremony knows each of the newly covenanted couple is going to violate that promise rather soon. So is that empty-promising again and their marriage is dissolved as a sacrament? Are they hypocrites and their marriage is a pretense?

Jesus is the divine “yes!” to our human “we’ll-see,” or “kind-ofs.” It is the relationship to which Jesus has said and does say “Yes!” that allows us to keep trying to live with our inconsistencies. Actions do speak loudly and words are whispers of hope. We will eventually do what we know ourselves to be. Jesus continues to come to give us ourselves so that we can give him to others. We say “NO!” to self-condemnation by saying “yes!” in our reception of the Eucharist.

What Jesus did in his life was perfect, what we do in ours is try and live peacefully with the difference.

First Reading

Ezekiel, Chapter 18, Verses 25-28

1. When we turn away from wickedness we are turning toward God. Spiritual writers call this “conversion.” Are we converted just once or do we experience conversion many times in our lifetime? If so, in what sense?

2. What do you think the Pope means when he refers to the “difficulty of daily conversion”?

We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give

Pope Francis, World Youth Day, 2014

 

Second Reading

Philippians, Chapter 2, Verses 1-11

1. The reading says “ … humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.” Who is doing this now where you live? Are there people marching for racial justice? Or health care workers? Or those trying to change the climate crisis?

2. Paul begins this reading with, “ … if there is any participation in the Spirit … ” Do you ask the Spirit, who lives in you, for help in situations where you find yourself in a quandary? Do you always get help when you ask for it?

 

Gospel

Matthew, Chapter 21, Verses 28-32

1. Using the idea of “conversion” from above, discuss the two sons from this Gospel reading. Which one needed to change and turn toward his father? Are you presently in need of conversion in any area of your life? What counts more in building community, saying some good words, or actually doing some good deeds? At which one are you better, words or deeds?

2. Jesus told the chief priests and elders, “when John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him.” Why didn’t they believe John the Baptist? Was it hard for them to change their minds and think in new ways? Is it hard for you?

Prophecy—Challenge and Comfort

 

A while ago, at a church conference that I was attending, the participants were divided into discussion groups and each group was asked the question: “What is the most important thing that the church needs to be saying to the world today?”

There were a many answers, each stressing a different aspect of the gospels. Conservatives tended to stress the importance of challenging the world towards sounder teaching and of pushing it to pay more attention to the issues of family, marriage, and private morality. Liberals tended to put the stress on social justice and the issues of peace and poverty. Both agreed that the world needs to be challenged in the area of consumption and greed.

The issues of challenge that were named are valid and important, but I had a nagging thought that perhaps we, the churches, need to speak something else to the world before we speak these other challenges or certainly concomitant with them.

I also had the nagging impression that, albeit for different reasons, both the liberals and the conservatives were deriving a secret glee from the fact that the world wasn’t working very well, that it was paying a heavy price in terms of sadness, despair, and dissipation for not listening to us, the churches.

What, beyond the challenges of truth and justice, should we be speaking to the world in this day? Words of understanding, consolation, comfort.

One the major tasks of the churches is to console the world, to comfort its people.

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” I heard this echo from Isaiah from a wonderful old priest shortly after I was ordained: working for a summer in one of our Oblate parishes, I was living in the rectory with an elderly priest, a fine, saintly man. He had been ordained for more than 50 years and had, during all those years, been exemplary, honest, faithful, and generous. He was deeply respected. Now, in his late 70s, legally blind and semi-retired, he celebrated mass every day, heard occasional confessions, and spent most of the rest of his time praying. I was taken by his goodness.

One evening, sitting with him, I asked him: “Father, if you had your life as a priest to live over again, would you do anything different?” Given his obvious goodness and fidelity, I was expecting him to say no. His answer surprised me. He said,

I would be a gentler with people the next time. I would console more and challenge more carefully. I was one of those people who was taught and who deeply believed that only the full truth can set us free, that we owe it to people to challenge them with the truth, in season and out. I believed that and did it for most of the years of my ministry. And I was a good priest, I lived for others and never once betrayed in any real way my vows and my commitment.

But now that I am older, I regret some of what I did. I regret that sometimes I was too hard on people! I meant it well, I was sincere, but I think that sometimes I ended up laying added burdens on people when they were already carrying enough pain. If I were just beginning as a priest, I would be gentler, I would spend my energies more trying to lift pain from people. They are in a lot of pain. They need us, first of all, to help them with that!

He’s right. What the world needs first of all from us, the churches, is comfort, help in lifting and understanding the world’s complexity, its wounds, its anxieties, its raging restlessness, its temptations, and its infidelities and its sin. Like the prodigal son, the world needs first of all to be surprised by unconditional love. Sometime later, and there will be time for that, it will want hard challenge.

And our comfort must be offered not on the basis of what is best inside of human understanding. The comfort we offer rather must be the product of what we ourselves feel when we come to know for ourselves the ineffable, all-empathic, all-embracing, all-forgiving heart of God.

We will comfort the world­—and it will be comforted—when we show it that God sees the world’s heart with the eyes of the heart, that God feels for it more than it feels for itself, that God never feels frightened by the assertions of human freedom, that God always opens another door when we close one, that God is not put off by all the times when we are too weak to do what is best, that God understands our complexity, our weaknesses, our anger, our lusts, our jealousies, and our despair, that God never stops loving us even when we put ourselves in hell, and that God descends into all the hells we create, stands inside our muddled, wounded, and guilty hearts and breathes out peace.

Beyond Words
 
Two sons were asked to work in the vineyard of their father. One said he would do so, but he didn’t. The other said he wouldn’t, but he did. It was this second son who did what the father wanted.

God, our Father, invites us all to work in the vineyard, preparing the world for the coming of the kingdom. Some of us talk about the work that needs to be done, calling attention to the social ills that divide us: the poverty and hunger, the discrimination and oppression, the militarism and war.

Others of us do something about these problems: challenging the systems that produce poverty and hunger, struggling to overcome discrimination and oppression, agitating for peace and an end to militarism.

The challenge of Jesus Christ is to look to others’ interests rather than to one’s own. It is to look beyond one’s small world, which may be filled with satisfaction and fulfillment, to look out into that world where people suffer and die. And it is to go beyond talk and become involved in action for the transformation of the world.

Two sons were asked to work in the vineyard of their father. One of them did what the father wanted.

“It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustices and utter prophetic denunciations; these words will lack real weight unless they are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of personal responsibility and by effective action.”

Pope Paul VI, Octagesimo Adveniens (1971) 48

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• chief priests and elders
• tax collectors and prostitutes . . . before you
• way of righteousness
• change your minds

To the point: This seemingly simple parable upends the world of the chief priests and elders.

They thought they were models of holiness—now they must learn the “way of righteousness” from tax collectors and prostitutes.

They thought they already had a foot in the kingdom; now they must stand in line behind notorious sinners who converted their lives.

This is what conversion does: it upends our world and challenges us to change our minds. our hearts, and our lives and to do the Father’s will.

Connecting the Gospel...
...to the last several Sundays: Many of the narratives and parables have described the graciousness, generosity, and mercy of God toward us.

This Sunday highlights the importance of our response to God: whether we do God’s will or not is our choice.

...to our experience: Change is difficult for everyone—house, job, schools, marital status, etc. Even more difficult is change of self—values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors.

As difficult as change is, it defines Christian discipleship.

Understanding Scripture

Radical change of mind: Chapter 21 of Matthew’s Gospel begins with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday.” There, Jesus enters into controversy with the “chief priests and elders” (21:28) who have the home court advantage: Jerusalem is hone to the Temple, the primary seat of their authority.

In this Sunday’s parable, Jesus employs the image of a father and two sons—it is a familial and personal image, and thus different from previous images such as king and servant (18:23-33) or landowner and hired laborers (20:1-15).

As Jesus makes clear, the first son who initially refused the father’s command but then “changed his mind” represents the tax collectors and prostitutes; the second son who said “yes” but disobeyed represents the chief priests and elders.

Note the implication of the parable’s use of the father-son image: the chief priests and elders are brothers to the tax collectors and prostitutes! Just making them members of the same family was insulting!

Tax collectors and prostitutes were despised by the religious leaders for two reasons. First, their conduct was sinful: tax collectors were suspected of cheating people, and prostitutes violated moral laws.

Second, both were viewed as collaborators with the hated Roman occupiers: taxes were collected for the Romans, and prostitutes largely serviced Roman soldiers. Yet these sinners have the same father as the religious leaders.

Just as the religious leaders have had their world upended by the teaching of Jesus, so have tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners They had been conditioned by the social and religious mores of their culture to view themselves as somehow outside the world of the righteous.

Trapped by their need to make a living, they had embraced a life of public sin. Yet it is to these that Jesus has come preaching a Gospel of hope and redemption. Repentance is possible for anyone.

The first way in which these public sinners needed to repent was to change their minds about themselves: they were not beyond redemption. They, too, were beneficiaries of the blessings Jesus brings.

The call to repentance upends everyone’s world—the righteous and sinners alike! 

Love’s Labor
 
“Not something to be grasped at.”

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky tells the tale of Madam Holakov’s confession to the monk Zossima. The old woman, doubting her destiny in the face of death, presumes her crisis is of faith. Father Zossima, however, sees the problem as one of love.

When he advises Holakov to labor at loving her neighbors as a way to dispel her worries, she realizes he has struck a nerve. There is no doubt, she thinks, that she loves humanity; but the actual doing of it, the living of it, gives her pause.

The old priest, concurring with her, recounts the story of a disillusioned doctor who had great dreams of universal love but bitter disappointments in dealing with the real thing. “I love humanity,” he said, “but the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people in particular.”

While his dreams portray visions of saving humankind, in his daily life the good doctor can’t stand the people around him.

“I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together…. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom.” The slightest irritation rattles the poor man’s nerves. He bristles at the way someone talks, sneers at the way someone walks or wheezes, and can barely tolerate the manner of someone’s dress or bearing. “In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men . . . . I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me.”

For most of us, God is not the problem. The problem is those humans that God created, especially the creeps who don’t deserve to exist, or at least those who bother us. When people draw near, they bring trouble. Anyone close to us sooner or later restricts our precious freedom.

St. Paul had a great sense of this paradox: the best indication of our highest reach for God is the person within arm’s reach. That is why relationship in community or family is so inextricably woven into our relationship with God. It is not just that the two “great commandments”—wholeheartedly loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves—are similar. It’s that our very relationships to each other embody our relationship to God.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians is well known for its great hymn to Christ Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness.” It was in Jesus’ serving, in his “emptying” of himself, even his acceptance of death on the cross, that he found fullness and the everlasting praise of history.

But this exalted hymn is the application of a way of life that Paul has recommended in our relationships to each other. The hymn exemplifies the “mind” of Christ that we must “put on” when we face each other. We will find joy and consolation only when we die to ourselves: an unwelcome prospect.

The reason why people avoid parenting (not just making babies) is the cost. The reason we avoid community life is the challenge it makes to our narcissism. In authentic relationship, the love we dream about is tested and purified by the actualities of “this particular person at this particular time.”

The problem of Dostoevsky’s frightened old lady and cynical doctor is that they both want love, but not its cost. They know they are in trouble, but they do not have the will to labor at the solution. For love is more than logic, proofs, or rationality. It is a risk of the ego, an emptying of the self, a desire to serve rather than to be served. This risk is the crux of the Christian belief in the mystery of love: first, that God would love us; second, that we, graced by such bounty, might generously love others.

St. Paul is inescapably direct: “in the name of the encouragement you owe me in Christ, in the name of the solace that love can give, of fellowship in spirit, compassion, and pity, I beg you, make my joy complete by your unanimity, possessing the one love, united in spirit and ideals. Never act out of rivalries or conceit; rather let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves, each of you looking to others’ interests rather than his own. Your attitude must be Christ’s.”

But that is the very attitude we resist. We live on rivalry, we cherish our conceits. Our rarest concern is the other’s good—unless it is hard won through arduous relationships of covenant and trust.

In the story Jesus told to the chief priests and elders, one son mouths the words but does not act; the other son resists at first but eventually labors in the vineyard. The second child actually does God’s will. Words are not enough. That is why converted tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom before those who merely talk of righteousness.

We jabber of love. But the living of it requires a great winnowing of our lives, a shaking down of our pretense. Love in dreams, Dostoevsky wrote, is easy; but the reality of it is a dreadful assault—not on our deepest longings, but on those tawdry delusions that pose as solutions to them.

Doing the Will of the Father
 
A Christian missionary in the Middle East used to share this parable about the two sons (only verses 28-30) with villagers that he visited and ask: “Which was the better son?”

The vast majority answered that the son who said yes to his father even though he did not go to work in the vineyard was without doubt the better son. The son’s reply was honorable and respectful. It was what the father wanted to hear. That he never went to work in the vineyard is beside the point, which in the Middle East is always honor.

Remember that life in the Middle East is very public. Honor, the core value of this culture, requires such publicity. The dialogue between the father and his sons in this parable takes place not in private, just between two at a time, but rather in public, within view and earshot of many villagers. Like their modern-day descendants, the Middle Eastern villagers in this parable favor the respectful but disobedient son over the disrespectful but obedient son.

THE IDEAL AND THE REAL

All cultures distinguish between the ideal and reality, but the gap between these two is greater in other cultures than in the ancient Middle East, generally speaking. Westerners generally believe that the ideal is the norm by which reality should be judged. If reality does not measure up to the ideal, it is flawed.

Some Middle Eastern cultures prefer to blur the line between the ideal and the real. Like modem Middle Eastern respondents to Jesus’ parable, the ancients too would believe–against reality–that giving an honorable answer is enough. In their mind, conforming to the ideal of speaking respectfully is sufficient to fulfill the commandment to “honor one’s father [and mother}” (Deut 5:16).

JESUS’ CHALLENGE

Jesus did not ask which son behaved honorably. He asked: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” (v. 31). Modern Middle Easterners would certainly echo the judgment of Jesus’ listeners: “The first,” that is, the one who ultimately went and worked in the vineyard as he was directed by his father. They recognized the importance of obedience, but the honorable appearance was more important.

THE EXPLANATION

Jesus addressed this parable to the chief priests and elders (v. 23) who approached him while he taught in the Temple and asked for his credentials: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” “We, the legitimate Temple authorities, didn’t commission or license you.” They challenge Jesus’ honor.

The parable of the two sons serves Jesus as a master strategy for defending his honor and presenting a counter-challenge to his adversaries. The point of the parable was quite clear to the listeners. With his explanation, Jesus rubs salt into the wound his parable has opened.

The toll collectors and harlots are like the first son. Initially they said no to God, but hearing John the Baptist’s preaching they converted and are doing what pleases God.

The chief priests and elders are like the second son. They too heard John’s preaching and saw the responses of the toll collectors and harlots. They feigned acceptance but refused to accept John as a messenger from God. They gave an honorable word, but that is not enough. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the reign of God, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt 7:21).

Is this what Americans mean when they identify some religious people as hypocrites?

Reading I: Ezekiel 18:25-28

Ezekiel is well known for his insistence upon individual responsibility for sin. In earlier days Israel had barely recognized a distinction between a person and the community. The overall picture was one of communal solidarity, with emphasis upon the corporate consequences of individual guilt (e.g., “visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children to the third and fourth generation” in the Decalogue).

The destruction of Israel’s national institutions during the Exile accelerated a new emphasis on the individual, though it had begun to appear even earlier: “Every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut 24:16; cf. 2 Kgs 14:6).

The change must, of course, be understood precisely as one of emphasis—not as a denial of the older idea of solidarity but as a corrective.

Both aspects —individual responsibility and corporate solidarity—have to be held together in tension, and it requires a finesse to know just when one or the other aspect has to be given priority.

These verses bring out another aspect of Ezekiel’s doctrine of responsibility. This is that a person is free at any time to turn from wickedness to righteousness and vice versa. In each case, that person will be judged by the new life to which he or she has turned, not by his or her previous life.

This is perhaps an oversimplification, but it fits in with the parable of the two sons in today’s gospel.
 

Responsorial Psalm: 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14

This psalm is an individual lament. The psalmist is oppressed by his enemies but is equally aware of his own sin. He calls upon God to deliver him from his enemies by remembering not his own sins but God’s own mercies, and to lead him in the right way after deliverance.

This psalm forms a suitable response to the reading from Ezekiel. Both passages view a person’s life as bisected into past and future by the present moment. The past is characterized by sin, the future is filled with hope for righteousness.

In the present moment a person is thrown utterly upon the mercies of God—an aspect of the matter that Ezekiel, in his emphasis on personal responsibility, tends to overlook. The psalm corrects this.

The refrain, “Remember your mercies, O Lord,” calls attention to the very important biblical conception of remembrance. In modern parlance, to remember means simply to recall mentally an event of the past.

In the Bible, when God remembers, he does not merely recollect a past event but brings it out of the past and makes it effective in the present. Thus, the mercies that God performed in the past become renewed as present realities.

This concept is very important for our understanding of the Eucharist. “Do this in remembrance of me” means not only that we recall in our minds the messianic sacrifice, the supreme act of God’s mercy, but that in response to the Church’s action, God will make present that sacrifice.

As was well said by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission in 1971:

The notion of memorial as understood in the passover celebration at the time of Christ—i.e., the making effective in the present of an event in the past—has opened the way to a clearer understanding of the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and the eucharist.

The eucharistic memorial is no mere calling to mind of a past event or of its significance, but the church’s effectual proclamation of God’s mighty acts . . . .

In the eucharistic prayer the church continues to make a perpetual memorial of Christ’s death; and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering (reprinted in Worship, January 1972, 46:3-4).

The refrain “Remember your mercies, O Lord” is thus a highly suitable chant for the Eucharist.

 
Reading II: Philippians 2:1-11 (long form) or 2:1-5 (short form)

The longer form of this reading includes the great Christological hymn which, following ancient tradition, is read on Passion Sunday (the reader will find comment on the hymn there).

Whether we opt for the longer or the shorter form, it seems clear that today both comment and homiletical treatment should concentrate upon the ethical exhortation that it is the purpose of the hymn to reinforce.

But we cannot ignore the hymn entirely. Apart from the interpretation of the hymn itself, there is a controversy among contemporary exegetes over its relation to the exhortation. Does the hymn merely present Christ as an example?

In that case, the drift of thought is: Let your relationship with other Christians be marked by unity, love, humility, consideration for the interests of others. In so doing, you must display the same attitude that Christ showed when he humbled himself to become man and to die on the cross.

That is the way in which the passage has normally been taken. Karl Barth, however, popularized—at least among the Germans—another interpretation.

It depends upon a different rendering of the final phrase in the short form of the reading: instead of “which was in Christ Jesus,” it reads “which you have in Christ Jesus.”

Such a variant rendition is possible because there is no verb in the Greek for “was” or for “you have”; it simply reads “which in Christ Jesus,” allowing the reader to understand either “was” or “you have.”

If we understand “you have,” it gives a different meaning to “in Christ,” namely, the characteristic Pauline sense of “in Christ,” sometimes called “mystical,” though Barth himself would have repudiated the term.

In this interpretation the pattern of Christ’s life, namely, the pattern of humiliation-glorification, is not a model for Christians to imitate but a pattern with which Christians are brought into conformity by their incorporation into Christ and their life in him.

It is difficult to decide which is the correct interpretation. Barth’s at least has the advantage of giving to “in Christ” its normal Pauline sense of treating Christ not merely as an external example but as the source of redemptive life.
 

Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32

The second part of the saying (v. 32) is paralleled in Luke 7:29-30, and therefore it must have become attached at some stage in the tradition to the saying about the tax collectors and prostitutes (v. 31b).

It is clear that the latter phrase, which occurs in both sayings, attracted the saying about John the Baptist to the comment on the parable. Then coalescence of the two sayings must have taken place prior to Matthew, because Matthew is responsible for placing the whole pericope in sequence with the question of authority (Matt 21:23-27), connecting them by means of the catchword “John the Baptist” (vv. 25, 32).

We thus have three levels of exegesis: (1) the Jesus level, consisting of the original parable of the two sons with Jesus’ comment, 21:28-31a; (2) the oral tradition, consisting of the parable with an extended comment, 21:28-32; (3) the evangelist’s understanding, indicated by his combination of the parable plus extended comment with the pericope about the question of authority, 21:23-27 + 28-32. The exegete has to try to interpret the parable on all three levels.

Jesus evidently told this parable (some have thought that this was the original nucleus of the parable of the prodigal son) to vindicate his proclamation of the good news of the kingdom against his critics:“The tax collectors and prostitutes who receive me now will enter into the kingdom of God at the last judgment rather than you who criticize me for consorting with them.” The parable is a proclamation of God’s mercy for sinners.

The addition of the saying about John the Baptist gives the parable a surprising and not altogether apt twist. Matthew, however, has straightened out this awkward state of affairs by sandwiching the pericope between the question of authority and the wicked husbandman.

By doing so, he makes it one of a series of three comments upon the Jewish authorities’ response to God’s purpose throughout salvation history. This response was one of constant rejection, from the time of the prophets through John the Baptist to Jesus himself (and of course also, in Matthew’s own perspective, to the post-resurrection mission of the Church).

For Matthew, it justifies his own Church’s abandonment of the mission to Israel and its concentration on preaching to the Gentiles (Matt 28:16-20, and see especially Matt 21:43, added by Matthew to the third of his three pericopes in 21:23-45).

Do It!

Which of the two did his father's will? (Matt 21:31)

To whom does Jesus address this sharp little parable of the two sons? In the preceding episode, Matthew states that they are the chief priests and the elders. On the day after Jesus' dramatic action in the Temple precincts, these high officials have come to challenge Jesus' authority for "doing these things," apparently referring to Jesus' clearing the Temple area and continuing to hold teach-ins on the Temple grounds (the officials’ turf, so to speak).

Jesus turns the tables on his questioners. He asks “Where was John's baptism from? Was it of heavenly or of human origin?” Was Jesus dodging their question? No. He was exposing his questioners’ hypocrisy. They were not making an honest enquiry in order to take a stand. Matthew makes this clear by telling us what the chief priests and elders said among themselves. “If we say, ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say to us, Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet.” So they say to Jesus, “We do not know.” Thus Jesus' question has exposed the fact that these men are not really concerned about divine authority; they are simply maneuvering to protect their own power. Had they really been concerned about divinely given authority, they would have recognized it in John the Baptist.

Against that background, the parable of the Two Sons is clear. In the Scriptures, a vineyard is an image for Israel itself and the owner is God (e.g., Isaiah 5). If anyone is commissioned by the Owner to “go out and work in the vineyard,” it is surely the religious leaders. When the chief priests and elders affirm that the one who did his father's will is the one who, though he initially said no, later goes to work, they condemn themselves, as Jesus spells out in his application (Mt 31b-32).

“When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did.” In this, the tax collectors are like the first son (the no/yes one); for in their former way of life, they were naysayers to the will of God, but they eventually did the will of God by responding in repentance to the preaching of John the Baptist. In one way, the leaders seem to reflect the performance of the second son, in that, as religious leaders, they were ostensibly keepers of the law of God. But, since the immediate context entails the responses first to John and now to himself, they are “none of the above.” That is, the chief priests and elders have been closed to God's authority both when it was mediated by John and also now as it is mediated by Jesus. So they are worse than either of the two sons in the parable. Intent only on holding on to their own human authority, they have become hard of heart, unresponsive late and soon to God's mediators. Yet, Jesus' confrontation does not slam the door on his listeners. He says that the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God “before you”—not instead of you. Conversion is always possible.

This parable gives us an insight into why “the poor” are congratulated in the first Beatitude. The religious leaders became distracted from acknowledging the authority of God and doing his will because of their attachment to the power of their human authority. Tax collectors and prostitutes, on the other hand, despite whatever minor financial and erotic power they may have possessed, were sufficiently aware of their limitations to be open to the power and authority of God when they encountered it in John and in Jesus.

Very likely, most of us feel we would have been among those who responded well to Jesus’ exercise of authority, had we been alive in early first-century Galilee and Judea. It might be a good meditation for us to try to imagine how we would have responded to John the Baptist. Would we have given a good listening to that strange man of the wilderness, dressed in animal skin, snacking on locusts and inviting people to a dunking in the Jordan? Though John and Jesus were very different men—one a dedicated to fasting and the other dining regularly with tax collectors and sinners—those who were drawn to Jesus were the same ones who gave John a hearing.

Commentary: Clement of Alexandria

He went out moved by regret. The tax collectors and prostitutes will precede you into the kingdom of God.

The doors are open for all who sincerely and wholeheartedly return to God; indeed, the Father is most willing to welcome back a truly repentant son or daughter. The result of true repentance, however, is that you do not fall into the same faults again, but utterly uproot from your souls the sins for which you consider yourself worthy of death.

When these have been destroyed God will again dwell within you, since Scripture says that for the Father and his angels in heaven the festal joy and gladness at the return of one repentant sinner is great beyond compare. That is why the Lord cried out: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.

I desire not the death of a sinner but his conversion. Even if your sins are like crimson wool I will make them as white as snow; even if they are blacker than night I will wash them as white as wool.

Although only God has power to forgive sins and cancel transgressions, the Lord commands us also to forgive our repentant brothers and sisters every day.

So if we who are evil know how to give good gifts, how much more generous must be the Father of mercies, the good Father of all consolation, who is full of compassion and mercy, and whose nature it is to be patient and await our conversion!

Genuine conversion, however, means ceasing to sin without any backward glances.

God pardons what is past, then, but for the future we are each responsible for ourselves. By repenting we condemn our past misdeeds and beg forgiveness of the Father, the only one who can in his mercy undo what has been done, and wipe away our past sins with the dew of his Spirit.

And so, if you are a thief and desire to be forgiven, steal no more. If you are a robber, return your gains with interest. If you have been a false witness, practice speaking the truth. If you are a perjurer, stop taking oaths. You must also curb all the other evil passions: anger, lust, grief, and fear.

No doubt you will be unable all at once to root out passions habitually given way to, but this can be achieved by God’s power, human prayers, the help of your brothers and sisters, sincere repentance, and constant practice.

(Homily on the Salvation of the
Rich 39-40: PG 9,644-645)

 

Clement of Alexandria (c.150-2l5) was born at Athens of pagan parents. Nothing is known of his early life nor of the reasons for his conversion. He was the pupil and the assistant of Pantaenus, the director of the catechetical school of Alexandria, whom he succeeded about the year 200. In 202 Clement left Alexandria because of the persecution of Septimus Severus, and resided in Cappadocia with his pupil, Alexander, later bishop of Jerusalem. Clement may be considered the founder of speculative theology. He strove to protect and deepen faith by the use of Greek philosophy. Central in his teaching is his doctrine of the Logos, who as divine reason is the teacher of the world and its lawgiver. Clement’s chief work is the trilogy, “Exhortation to the Greeks,” “The Teacher,” and “Miscellanies.”