25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A – Are you envious because I am generous?

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time  Matthew 20:1-16
“Are you envious because I am generous?”

When Jesus teaches through parables, he expresses profound truths with simple stories and images that engage minds and hearts. In the Old Testament, the use of parables reflects an ancient, culturally universal method of teaching an ethical lesson applicable to everyday life, by using symbolic stories with concrete characters and actions.

While living and working as a lawyer in South Africa, as a young man Mahatma Gandhi got very close to Christianity and almost became Christian but something got in the way, as a man of the law he perceived the mercy of God, as revealed in the New Testament, as a profound injustice.
When Jesus teaches through the parables, he expresses profound truths with simple stories and images that engage minds and hearts and challenge us.
The parable of the workers in the vineyard in this week’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16) serves as a corrective to false notions of entitlement and merit. The parable is offensive to us and it challenges our sense of justice.

The radicalmoment in the parable is when those who were employed at the last hour of the day are paid as much as those who toiled all day under the hot sun. The parable reaches its crescendo in verse 15 with the question: “Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?”.
The owner of the vineyard reserves the right to pay his employees not on the basis of their own merits but rather on the basis of his own compassion.
A line taken from the first reading, taken from Isaiah can help enlighten this point;

“Yes, as the heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts”. Isaiah 55:9

What do we see of God’s ways and creation? We see only one tiny corner of it. Our vision is starkly limited. Both in breath and in depth. What strikes us as unjust and unfair must be placed in the infinite context of what God sees and knows.
What does God know? Every thing about everything. God sees into all minds, hearts and circumstances.

In a world where the only game in town seems to be the “reward and merit” system, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, a world where we have a very finely tuned sense of our rights, and are deeply offended by the slightest injustice done to us, its very difficult to even begin to understand that God loves us not because we are good but because He is good.
If we were depending on justice to save us none of us would be saved. Human logic is limited, but the mercy and grace of God know no limits or boundaries.

“Yes, as the heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts”. Isaiah 55:9

The jealousy of those in the parable who have worked all day is a form of sadness while blinds us, envy the Catechism tells us is “a sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to have them for oneself”.
Comparison is one of the greatest enemies to the spiritual life. To be envious first implies that we are blind to what we already have, and then blind to recognize and celebrate the beauty and uniqueness of the other. We already have all we need but the moment we forget that, what the other has becomes a threat.