25th Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Deacon Brendan Brides

The workers in today's gospel, rather than focus on the good fortune that they had experienced by getting a day's pay, were more taken up with questioning fairness - towards themselves. Like the workers, do we look at what we have with gratitude or do we automatically compare what we have to what others have?

Imagine this: a property developer comes into your neighborhood - specifically, he comes to your street. His intention is to buy up all the houses on your street and then develop the land for another use. Since you are the first house on the street he comes to you first and tells you he is going to make a very attractive offer to everyone on othe street. He offers you THREE TIMES the market value of your house!You're ecstatic. you think of all the things you can do with this money, retirement home in Florida, money to send the kids or grand-kids to college, a cruise around the world..... just imagine how excited yo would be. At the end of the week the neighbors have a little party to celebrate  everyone's good fortune. You comment on how fantastic it is that this developer paid three times the market value for everyone's house. Suddenly the room goes quiet and all the neighbors look at you.
Finally your next-door neighbor speaks up and says, "he didn't give us three times the market value, he gave all of us five times the market value." Would you still be as excited?

The workers in the parable that Jesus tells about today had a similar experience. Rather than reflect on the fact they had received a badly needed week's wages, most important to them was the envious disappointment they showed toward the others who had done far less and yet received the same pay. In this parable the land-owner represents God. The workers represent some who have been committed to God all their lives, some who have brought God into they lives in later life and some who don't embrace God unit they are in the Autumn of their lives or even on their death bed.

If justice, as we know it, were to prevail; the justice would be solely based on merit. In other words those of us who have embraced God at an early age would have a much better chance of salvation and getting into Heaven than those who found religion much later in life. But God is more than justice. Our hope lies in the fact that God is also merciful. God's mercy is His justice. What if your child did something wrong? In correcting her would you follow justice to the letter of the law and call the police or would you forego justice as our world knows it and let your justice be a merciful correction with loving forgiveness? This is the justice that God offers to all of us.

In a material world jealousy and envy can make us blind to the wonderful gifts God has given us. Helen Keller was rendered blind and deaf at the age of nineteen months but yet graduated from Radcliffe College with a bachelor's degree and later went on to write a number of books. At one point in her life she expressed her thankfulness for what she had when she said "I cried because I had no shoes until I realized there was a man who had no feet."

In this coming week perhaps we could take the opportunity to identify and be thankful for the wonderful gifts that God has put in our lives. It doesn't have to be the fifty foot yacht you have docked at the local marina, or that ten million dollars you have stashed away in the Swiss bank account but it could be our health, our friends, our home, our sobriety, our freedom, our family, our knowledge of the risen Christ, the list is endless.

Coming first in a material world which is destined to end for all of us is inconsequential. Of consequence is coming first in a spiritual world with Jesus, a world that will last for eternity.