“Go ye also into the vineyard”
With the ‘Gesima Sundays’ we are turned to the dust and ground of creation, quite literally, it seems, even if frozen and covered with ice and swirling snow. The Latin term gesima as in Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima belongs to pre-Lent; they already anticipate the quadragesima, the forty days of Lent excluding Sundays. The ‘Gesima Sundays’ recall different patterns historically about the numbering of the forty days of Lent in terms of not just excluding Sundays but other days which also marked a break from the fast of Lent. Septuagesima refers to the week of the seventieth day before Easter; Sexagesima, the week of the sixtieth day, and Quinquagesima, the week of the fiftieth day. Thus they orient us towards Holy Week and Easter.
But they do so in a preparatory way by providing a kind of treatise on moral life in terms of the classical virtues as transformed by the theological virtues, principally, charity or love. Temperance and justice are set before us today, then courage and prudence, on Sexagesima Sunday and, then, on Quinquagesima Sunday, we are launched into the journey of Lent as the pilgrimage of Love by way of the theological virtues highlighted most profoundly by Paul in his great hymn of love. The pilgrimage of our souls to God requires illumination, purgation and union or perfection. These ‘Gesima’ Sundays belong to that journey.
Just as Candlemas marks the transition from Christmas to Easter, so these Sundays mark a transition by adding to the Epiphany theme of illumination the themes of purgation and perfection or union that ultimately belong to the disciplines of Lent. But on all three Sundays, we are turned to the ground of our lives, first, in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard of creation; secondly, in the parable of the sower and the seed in its question about what kind of ground are we? and, thirdly, in the idea of going up to Jerusalem understood as the meaning of our lives in spiritual pilgrimage, a going up with Jesus in terms of the teaching or illumination about the end and purpose of our lives, the teaching about the purgation of all that belongs to the sinfulness of our lives, and the teaching about what belongs to our perfection, namely, our being with Christ in and through the drama of his Passion. “We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says.
What is wonderful about today’s readings is that they are really confessional. Paul is speaking about temperance or self-mastery of the things of the body and the need for self-control but with an awareness of the danger of hypocrisy – saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. Hypocrisy casts a wide net in which we are all entangled. This is a reminder of the imperfection and incompleteness of our own lives that should put a check on the forms of self-righteous judgmentalism so prevalent in our world and in which we are all complicit in some way or another. Deploring the problem of climate change and pointing fingers of blame at others, for instance, while remaining beholden to our devices in their massive consumption of energy and to our reliance and sense of entitlement about air travel, to take but two instances.
But it is the Gospel which should really trouble us. It challenges our sense of entitlement and our sense of justice, our sense about what we think we are owed as if God owes us everything. This contrasts with the way in which the Gospel seeks to open us out to the profound truth that life is a gift, that the vineyard is creation itself. It suggests, too, that human labour is about something more than a burden or obligation and points us towards the idea of work as a vocation and as such as belonging to our relationship towards the Creator in love and so towards one another.
Now you may be wondering, how do I get any of that from this Gospel? Well, the image of the vineyard is a profound scriptural image. Isaiah’s beautiful love song is about our misuse of the vineyard (Is. 5. 1-7). God, he imagines, sings a song about his vineyard and how “he looked for it to yield grapes.” “Why,” he asks in a kind of puzzlement, “did it yield wild grapes?” He goes on to make the important point that “the vineyard is the house of Israel, that the men of Judah are his pleasant planting,” but God “looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold a cry!” It is a moving indictment of our misuse of God’s gift of creation and yet shows us what God seeks for us in our labours with one another in the land. What bothers us about the Gospel parable is that it does not conform to our sense of justice; those who have worked long and hard “in the burden and heat of the day” receive the same reward as those who have worked “but one hour.” We sense the indignation and unfairness of it all.
But this is to miss the deeper theological and spiritual point, the point which counters our tendency to reduce God’s justice to human justice. In this case, justice cannot be measured simply according to a quantitative logic or for that matter to any kind of finite logic. “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive,” Jesus says, and even more directly, “is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” before adding the zinger, “is thine eye evil, because I am good?” The point is that the lord of the vineyard is doing something good for all and not privileging some over others. The complaint which we all feel is really two things: a sense of entitlement and a critique of God’s justice or mercy as being wrong and evil. The superlative goodness of God cannot be constrained to our assumptions. The Gospel challenges us, as it must, about the idea that God owes us and thus is to be held accountable to us.
This will not go down well with the social justice warriors of our day who are often quite right to point out inequalities and injustices but are quite wrong in reducing everything to their own limited economic and moral compass with very little sense of their own complicity and hypocrisy in the problems of our world. There is no view from nowhere and there is no position of superiority.
Thus the Gospel parable which brings out the question about justice needs to be balanced with the Epistle about temperance and the problem of hypocrisy. It is really a way to recall us to God as the Lord of the Vineyard who seeks the good of our humanity. As such it highlights the contrast between human justice in its limitations and divine justice or mercy which seeks the good of all and which will not and cannot be constrained to our little systems. There is more to our lives with God whether we come into his vineyard early or late in the day. The point is that we come into his vineyard and in so doing learn that our labours are, like God’s, to be labours of love, a love which is self-critical and which seeks the good of others. Thus it counters both our sense of entitlement and the complaining kind of judgmentalism that accompanies it. Our labours are to be labours of love in the vineyard; the love that seeks not to divide but to unite and perfect in holiness and service.
“Go ye into the vineyard”
Fr. David Curry
Septuagesima, February 5th, 2023