An invitation to extravagance

Psalm 145 this Sunday proclaims the awesome magnificence of our God, who is gracious, merciful, of great kindness, compassionate toward all, just toward all, near to all who call! Yet, even more unfathomable is the proclamation of the prophet Isaiah, who reminds us that all these ways of the Holy One are beyond our limited understanding, in excess of our imagining. “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Is 55:9). Thus, what we understand as mercy, compassion, nearness, responsiveness or justice in human terms woefully pales in comparison with the extravagance of these manifestations by the divine. This Sunday’s Gospel will provide one example of this in regard to God’s version of mercy, compassion and justice.  

In this Sunday’s Gospel passage from Matthew, we hear Jesus delivering a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. A landowner had a vineyard and needed laborers. One day at dawn he hired some, who agreed to work for their normal daily wage. Then at nine, the landowner saw others idle in the marketplace. So he hired them as well and assured them he would pay them what was just. As the day wore on, the owner hired even more workers, some at noon, others at three and at five. A short time later, when the workday ended, the owner instructed his foreman to pay the workers, beginning with the last and ending with the first. When the earliest hired workers saw that all received the same wage, they protested. 

From our sense of justice, their objection may seem understandable. After all, they had worked the longest, “bearing the day’s burden and heat” (Mt 20:13). The landowner, however, responded to their protest saying, “My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?” This is one of those parables that at first glance can offend not only the laborers hired at dawn but perhaps our own sensibilities about justice.  

Some have understood that Jesus told this parable in response to Peter’s request, at the end of the preceding chapter, of a reward for following Jesus. The story Jesus tells suggests that no matter when one begins work in God’s vineyard, the work of all will be similarly rewarded. Yet, there are other challenges that this Gospel parable suggests, especially as we hear it in our own time.  

God, the landowner in this tale, offers to pay a usual day’s wage to the early group, which to another group he simply defined as a “just wage” (Mt 20:4). At the end of the day, everyone is provided the same day’s salary. Thus, justice for the landowner has nothing to do with payment according to the number of hours each laborer has worked. It does not depend upon what we may define as what workers deserved. In fact, it is the landowner himself who takes the financial hit by paying the same to all the workers though some worked less for him. Therefore, justice for this landowner is about securing wellbeing for all. He takes the loss, or goes without, in order to provide his workers according to what they need (a day’s pay), not according to what they deserve. Thankfully, God’s mercy, compassion and justice toward us is meted out accordingly. Yet the parable also challenges our ways of justice with others. 

Might our common flourishing as both the Christian community and, ultimately, as the human community depend upon similar expenditures of mercy, compassion and a justice that begins to dismantle the extremes between the “haves” and the “have nots?” If so, does it require that we imitate our God’s extravagance as defined in the psalm and in this Sunday’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah? Or do we privilege instead the other idolatrous extravagances of our world – unchecked desire for an excess of goods, the accumulation of private properties, and the deification of money itself?

In the spirit of the early Christian communities, and especially in the teaching of Jesus, we are summoned to find ways to advocate for equity, not only across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, etc. We are also called upon to advocate for equity by crafting lifestyles that witness to resource-sharing. Indeed, the constant love of God, as revealed by Jesus, issues forth in deeds of God-like extravagance like an excess of compassion, an excess of mercy, and an excess of a kind of justice that secures the well-being of all.