The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First, a few words about last week’s homily.

The first draft was cleaned up before Sunday arrived…clunky phrases were revised, cumbersome paragraphs were sent packing. If you wish to read the final draft, it appears on my parish web page (see link in sidebar; go to CHURCH, then HOMILIES).

The gospel reading for this coming Sunday is the parable about laborers hired at various times of the day all getting paid the same wage…an excellent passage for viewers of Blue Collar Preacher. I hope some of you will add your comments, suggestions and insights at the bottom of this article (please note: we’ve made it easier to get your comments on line by deleting the sign-in requirement).

So, how are our listeners going to react to what might be called “The Parable of the Broken Time Clock?”

I had a conversation a plumber friend of mine last night. His name is Tim and he’s about the most straightforward guy I know. He’s in his early thirties, married with four boys. He and three brothers run a plumbing, heating and air conditioning business in a small Ohio town.

Tim is a man with a strong faith, yet when I ask his opinion of this passage he was, in his usual manner, quite blunt:

“Don’t agree with it.”

“But it’s the Word of God.”

“So, what am I missing?”

I explained that Matthew’s gospel was, obviously, written for early Christians. Some of them were Jewish and some were Gentiles, that is, folks from other regions who were new-comers to belief in the One True God.

“When it comes to salvation," I continued, "no one group or individual has an advantage over another. It’s a free gift from a generous God. And, besides, we didn’t do anything to earn it to begin with.”

Tim nodded. “Okay, but it’s touchy…talking about how much a person makes on a job.”

“Can you think of any instance when you’d dole out the money this way?” I asked.

He thought a moment. “Well, if there was a storm coming and I was desperate for help, I’d pay a premium. Or let’s say a farmer calls—a valued customer—and several thousand chickens are without water…” He scrunched his face. “Yeh, okay. If it’s a situation of life and death, I’m not going to quibble. Maybe, if the regular crew didn’t put their back into the job and the others made up for it, it’d be worth paying them the bonus.”

So, readers, what do you think? Is the "life and death" angle the best way to connect this passage to everyday life of the work-a-day crowd?

Below is a midweek stab at a homily. Your constructive criticism is invited. Please feel free to post your reactions and suggestions.

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FIRST DRAFT OF HOMILY FOR THE 25th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

I was all set to talk about carpenters, roofers
farmer workers and brick layers and other folks
who perform manual labor in the hot sun.

Yes, I was all set to talk about how long hours
of back-breaking work
tends to make people tired irritable…
you know, edgy with co-workers
rough with the language
and angry with the boss.

After all, today’s gospel ushers us straight into the world
of conflict management, merit pay and overtime bonuses…
all things that anyone with a job can relate to in an instant.

That was my first impulse…to use this story about
workers, bosses, time clocks and job benefits
to help us understand something about ourselves.

But then I read, on Wednesday,
I read this news report in the morning paper:

A suicide bomber sparked Baghdad's worst day of slaughter since the fall of Saddam 30 months ago when he lured laborers desperate for work towards his van by offering them jobs and then detonated explosives that killed 114 and injured 156 of them.

Here you have a present-day situation of people
in a country at war
desperate for work…
and someone uses their desperation to lure them
to their deaths.

If God is love—and we believe that to be the case—
how can God’s heart not be shattered…at such a heartless act?
God’s own heart torn to shreds with the shrapnel of such a bomb?

This, you see, is the angle from which we are to view this parable of the workers…
and every other parable from the Bible
and every story of every life from today:

we are to view it all from God’s angle, not ours.

From God’s angle,
love is a gift…given freely to every man, woman and child.

That’s what we see when we view the world from God’s angle.

God does not spoon out his love.

Does it matter if you are an Iraqi or an American?

Does God measure out love
according to
color of skin
or country of origin
or years of schooling completed
or…as in today’s gospel…number of hours clocked in beneath the hot sun?

No.

In the final analysis, none of that matters.

He desires only to shower us with love.

Why it is so hard to see the world from God’s angle?
Why can we see it His way?