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Ezechiel 34:1-11
Matthew 20:1-16
“Not Fair! Not fair!” We humans treasure a sense of fairness in sports, so we react loudly to umpires who make what we consider to be a bad call in baseball. We like people to get their just due. Of course, our judgment might be skewered by the angle of our vision, or the vested interest we have in our team’s chances of scoring the winning run.
When we get to the end of the parable of the vineyard workers, we might find ourselves murmuring like the workers who had responded to the call to work at dawn and had borne the heat of the day in the vineyard. They even have to watch as latecomers receive the same amount as the earliest group was promised for working the entire day. Wouldn’t it be natural for them to think that they would now receive more? But, no, they receive the same amount, which they had agreed was just for a day’s labor.
They could not applaud the vineyard owner’s generosity because mercy did not come easily to them. Fairness was what mattered. Indeed, Jesus’ audience must certainly have wondered, does it mean nothing that one has tried one’s whole life to be faithful to God when latecomers to virtue might well count on, and receive, the mercy of God at the end?
It might be hard to accept that God is more merciful than we are. But, in the long run, all is mercy. “ God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
Father Paul Zilonka, C.P. is Director of Formation for the Passionist Community in Chicago, Illinois.
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