Sometimes we can feel like we aren't good enough for Jesus or his Church. Perhaps we feel we've left it too late, or perhaps we have some personal demons (drugs, alcohol, immoral sexual lifestyles) which hold us back from Him: we can feel unworthy or like we wouldn't be welcome. But in today's Gospel, the vineyard owner goes out and hires even the worst workers; the ones nobody else wanted. To people outside the Church, struggling with all kinds of problems, Jesus is says "the last shall be first" - you are welcome, even if you come late in the day. To those in the Church, he warns "the first shall be last" - we must be willing to welcome and be kind, to be generous just as He is generous.
In the summer break of my second year at University, I got a job in a warehouse. The assistant director of my old youth theatre group was the manager, and used to offer out work warehouse work to those of us who needed it. Not having got my act together with summer internships, I took him up on the offer. Most of those he hired, being under 18 got to do the easy job; packing fruit-chew bars into boxes of 10 and shrink-wrapping them. Because I was over 18, I was the only one allowed to work in the factory section of the warehouse.
In the Factory area, we mixed up post-mix drinks. For those of you blissfully unaware, post-mix drinks are the bags of syrup that pubs and restaurants pass through fizzy water taps to make your soft drinks. In this factory, the drink was mixed up in a large vat, and then pumped into a smaller vat, before being siphoned into a third even smaller vat which was exactly the right volume to fill up a post-mix bag. My supervisor, Wayne, mixed the various ingredients of the drinks while I was set to filling up the bags with syrup.
Now, one thing I should mention, the big vat pumped liquid into the smaller vat quite quickly – and if you didn’t pay attention to it, it could very easily overflow unless you remembered to turn the pump off every few minutes. The other thing I should mention is that then, as now, I wasn’t getting a great deal of sleep at night. For those of you who haven’t got where this is going, one day, while Wayne was on his lunch break, I was quite tired and wasn’t paying attention to the vat and forgot to turn off the pump. I realised too late and switched the pump off just in time for an enormous amount of coca-cola syrup to come gushing out the top of the open vat and all over the factory floor.
My friend, the manager, was very good about it. He told me as he was hosing down the factory floor that I wasn’t the first person to flood the place, and I wouldn’t be the last. Wayne on the other hand was disconsolate: he was proud of his work, and how efficient he was, and he was upset that my inattention had cost them not a small amount of product. I have to confess, I wasn’t a very good employee, and yet I worked and got paid at the end of the day the same as everyone else. Anywhere else, I’d probably have been let go, and not hired again.
This little memory popped back up when I read through today’s Gospel, the Vineyard owner going out to find labourers. He goes out at dawn and hires labourers, then again at the third hour he finds men standing idle, then again at the sixth and again at the ninth, and again at the eleventh. The Vineyard owner obviously has a large crop to bring in and he’s desperate for the help, but there’s an interesting dialogue between the vineyard owner and the last workers, the ones hired at the eleventh hour, with barely any time left:
Why have you been standing here idle all day? [He asks,] Because no one has hired us, they answered.
Reading between the lines, these were not the best workers. The best workers were hired at dawn. Nor were they even the second or third best, those were hired in the early hours; these men were the worst workers, the ones nobody wanted to hire. Probably the weaker men, or perhaps the more quarrelsome, or difficult to work with. But the owner of the vineyard is generous, and he has a great crop to bring in, so he asks even the worst workers to join the others in the fields.
Whenever Jesus tells a parable, he is talking about salvation; the vineyard is the Church, He is the owner of the vineyard, and the evening wages being paid is the end of all things.
One of the ways the evil one deters people from coming back to Church, or coming here in the first place, is the feeling that they might be unwelcome; that they are too far gone to become Christians. Older people who have lived long dissolute or godless lives. Young people who have fallen into drug addiction, or alcoholism, or sexually immoral lifestyles. People who just feel like they aren’t good enough for Jesus or his Church. These are the eleventh-hour workers, the ones nobody has hired, and yet Jesus calls to them just as he calls to you or me, to come and labour in His vineyard.
The Gospel highlights two traps. The first is thinking that it’s too late, to which the Church must always answer: it is never too late. Whether you came at dawn, or at the eleventh hour, the calling and the rewards are the same. Jesus wants everyone for His Church, because he wants everyone to be saved.
The second trap is more subtle, because the second trap is how the other workers respond. “The men who came last” they said “have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” Sometimes, Churches can be judgmental places. Sometimes we don’t make people feel particularly welcome. Imagine someone came here with bright blue hair, or smelling of alcohol, or looking like they had spent the night sleeping rough on the street, and sat down on the bench next to you. Would you make them feel welcome? Would you introduce yourself? Or would you quietly move to another bench?
It’s natural, and it’s human, but it’s something we have to check in ourselves. The only Gospel most people outside the Church will ever read is the one written on your face and in your actions. The Gospel we have received is not that only good people belong in the Church, only the good workers, but that every down-and-out, even the gravest sinner or the worst dissolute, belongs to Christ, and belongs here.
‘The last will be first, and the first, last.’ – perhaps one of Jesus’ best known lines. It means the same as another line from Luke’s Gospel, ‘there is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner, than over a thousand righteous in no need of repentance.’ (15:7) Those who have come here by struggle, having to overcome a difficulty or a personal trial, are as worthy of heaven as anyone else, perhaps even more worthy. This is the challenge of today’s Gospel: by our loving kindness, by our actions, and yes by our words, communicating to everyone – you are loved by Christ, you belong in this Church, and I am ready to accept you and love you like a brother.
XXV Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16
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