“Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive”
“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” we heard Mary say last Sunday in the story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, her imperative providing us with the form of her ‘yes’ to God in our lives. Now today, it seems we have another directive, this time from Jesus, in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. What does it teach us? Simply this, God is the master and lord – the householder of all creation. There is the freedom of the Creator in the ordering of his creation. Everything is subject to his will and purpose, to the divine justice, we might say. It is important to be reminded of this. And yet, here is a story which Jesus tells. Therefore, it is equally a story of redemption which picks up and carries forward the story of Creation through the story of the Fall, a story of the restoration of the divine justice for all, of the hope of heaven, we might say.
Ultimately, then, it is a story about the grace of God towards us but as within the higher justice of his purposes for his human creation in spite of sin and folly, in spite of indolence and indifference, in spite of a sense of entitlement and expectation. God desires our salvation in the freedom of his will and that is always something which exceeds the limits of human reason; it is always more though not less than what we think we know. The parable highlights the primacy and the rightness of God’s grace, the justitia dei. What God gives freely, he gives according to the perfect rightness of his will.
This collides with our sense of justice. The point of the collision is to open to view the freedom, the grace and the higher justice of God. There is the essential rightness of what he does according to the purposes for which he made us and that is all grace. It arises entirely out of the sovereign freedom of God.
As such, it is a story of the over-arching power of God which overrides the limitations of human justice, tainted by envy and resentment, self-pity and an heightened sense of injury and hurt, not to mention the all-too-frequent miscarriages of justice. At the same time, it shows God’s justice relative to human dignity, to our being made in the image of God.
What is wanted is that we all should work in the vineyard of the Lord and enter into the favour and reward of God, whether later or sooner. Our lives are lived in the vineyard of creation. The parable would have us recognize the Lord of the vineyard and see the world around us as God’s world, to see it as a gift, and to view each other, too, as a gift. Think of how that changes things! To see one another not as rivals for attention, not as competitors in a race, but as bearers of the image of God, to see one another as a gift given by God.
Our working in the vineyard cannot be measured by the yardsticks of quantity – how long and how much is not the primary question. What matters is that we enter into the labour willingly and completely, lovingly, we might say, with the whole of our being and find there the freedom and dignity of our humanity. “Why stand ye here idle all the day long?” is a strong indictment not just of our laziness but also of the expectation that others will provide for you. The implication is that work is beneath us regardless of what cloak of pretense we hide behind for our indolent ways or our sense of superiority.
We are constantly given the opportunity to work for God and for one another in our everyday lives and in our lives together as a Parish. It is not the arrogance of entitlement but the humility and joy of service. It doesn’t mean that it is always fun. It is about commitment to God. Work, too, undergoes a transformation. It is seen not as mere necessity but as our participation in the gift of creation and redemption.
It is all grace. God does not owe us what he freely wills to give us and yet, it is all his justice, too. “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.” It is about our being with him in the good order of his creation, according to the justice of his grace.
In the Epistle and Gospel for today, our lives are imaged as a race and a labour, a race which all run and a vineyard in which all labour. Does it matter whether we come first in the race or that we have worked from early in the morning until the eleventh hour? Yes and no. What is the reward? A penny? A crown? Those are the tangible and corruptible rewards that are contrasted with the incorruptible and the heavenly. Remember that the parable is a parable about the kingdom of heaven, not a parable about labour laws and athletic contests.
This challenges our sense of entitlement and opens us out to the profounder questions about our lives in the race of life and in the vineyard of creation. If only one wins, and you aren’t likely to be the winner, then why run? If only those who got in on the early morning call matter, then why not stand around idle all the day long? This was long before the culture of entitlement and dependency. The sad reality is that such a culture is not the realization of the meaning of this parable but its exact betrayal. How? Because the race and the labour are concerned about our hearts and our commitment to the things of eternal worth, things which cannot be measured by any kind of temporal yardstick. They can be only be known and measured by God. All run and all labour in one way or another; at issue is how we run and how we labour; in short, with what kind of spirit?
The stark contrast between our earthly sense of right and entitlement and what is presented here offers us the opportunity to contemplate the greater justice of God and to temper our expectations and desires accordingly. St. Paul recognises that the quality of “running the race that is set before us” means governing our appetites. Temperance or moderation is the virtue he names. It signals a kind of justice in the body. But for what end?
Designer bodies with atrophied souls? Ours is the culture of full bellies and empty souls but mere exercise of the body without regard to the primary exercise of the soul is not to run for an heavenly end, an incorruptible crown. We lose when we fail to commit to the spiritual principles which sanctify and dignify our lives. Ultimately, the justice of God in the parable is the charity of God which seeks the good of all. It is not to be taken for granted. The Lord of the Vineyard is the one and only one who determines that “whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.”
The Kingdom of heaven is opened out to us. It is all grace – all what God gives – and yet we must run and we must work with what God gives. Standing idle is about our refusal to see the world as God’s creation and gift and to see one another, too, as God’s gift. The emphasis in both readings is on human activity transformed by our participation in the redemptive grace of Christ. It counters at once the kind of fatalism endemic in the culture of dependency and entitlement, the kind of fatalism, too, which arises when we forget that grace is dynamic, not static. God will not save us without our wills but only through our wills.
Grace cannot be taken for granted. You snooze, you lose. These three Sundays with their Latin names prepare us for the pilgrimage of grace, for the journey of Lent. They do so by calling attention to the virtues or principal activities of our souls as transformed by the charity of God.
He is the measure and not us. We can only enter into the race that he has set before us, running in the way of his will for us, and entering with the whole of our being into the work which he has given us to do. We labour in the vineyard of God’s creation for his glory and for the good of his Church and people, knowing that he is the sovereign judge of all that we do. His will is right and just.
“Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.”
Fr. David Curry
Septuagesima 2013