A billionaire who owns a huge animal farm walks up to the Pope one day and says, “I’ll give you $100,000 if you change the word ‘bread’ with ‘chicken’ in the Lord’s Prayer, so that people will say “Give us this day our daily chicken.” The Pope replies, “Sorry, but I cannot do that.” The capitalist insists, “How about $300,000?” “Sorry, that is not possible,” the Pope reiterates. “$500,000?” the man tries again. The Pope thinks about it and says, “Well, okay.” Later, he goes to the cardinals and says, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is we just received $500,000 for our charity works. The bad news is that we lost our endorsement with Wonder Bread.”
There is good news and bad news, too, in today’s gospel. The good news is that God is infinitely generous; the bad news is He is generous to anyone, even to those in our estimation are less deserving.
Today’s parable is puzzling, to say the least. First, the Kingdom of God is compared to the landowner, not to the vineyard or the workers. Second, all the workers, regardless of the time they individually started working and the number of hours they worked, received equal remuneration, which is the usual daily wage. “Not fair!” complained those who came to work early in the day. And the landowner’s reply? “I am not cheating you,” he said. “Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. Are you envious because I am generous?” he further stated.
The lesson could be painfully obvious. It is not the number of hours, days, months, or years we have labored for the Lord that is important. What matters most is how well we do things for Him. In short, quality over quantity. Not everyone is as gifted as Mozart or Einstein. Not everyone can grow as old as Noah and Abraham who, according to Biblical tradition, died at the age of 950 and 175 respectively. Not all of us can work for extended time. But all of us are expected to offer our utmost and best effort to the Lord. People who work the longest are not necessarily the most hardworking. Productivity cannot be measured solely by time, but by the actual commitment and dedication we put into our work. A song captures a similar sentiment: “It’s not how long we held each other’s hand, what matters is how well we loved each other.”
As to those who started working early, what actually have they accomplished which the late workers did not? It is highly probable that those who worked for a few hours might have accomplished the same, more or perhaps less than those who worked longer hours. The case of the ‘early bird catching the worm’ is applicable only to, well, the bird—the landowner, in the case of today’s gospel. In truth, we are worms, earth crawlers—vulnerable to the predation of life’s pains and hardship, always at the mercy of the elements of nature, and perpetually dependent on the grace of the Lord. Hence, the gospel does not say why the other workers were hired late. What is stated is that the landowner found the workers at different hours, and they were hired at various intervals.
Someone wrote: “Noah’s ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals.” Jesus puts it this way in today’s gospel: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” In further underlining the finer points of todays’ gospel, we could consider the parable of the wedding feast (Mt 22:2-14; Lk 14:16-24), in which the person who responded to the invitation was taken away and thrown into darkness, because he came to the wedding venue not properly dressed, not appropriating himself into the occasion, and not appreciating the fact he was highly privileged to get invited.
A story is told of a 35-year-old lady who was having a bad day in a casino. Down to her last dollar and completely exasperated, she cried, “What in the world should I do now?” A man next to her said: “Why don’t you act your age and bet on it?” Moments later, the man was stunned to see the lady lying limp on the floor next to a roulette table. The operator explained what happened, saying: “Well, she put all her money on 27. When 35 came up, she fainted!”
We could think of our age and count the number of years we have been living as Christians. This perhaps is good news. But then we also have to take into account the depth of our commitment and the quality of our service to God. And this could be bad news. Regardless, we cannot use our achievements or failures, our riches or wants to determine our true worth and value as human beings and as children of God, just as we cannot quantify the kindness and measure the generosity of God.
soysi 
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