Thirty first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 23:1 - 12

In the gospel we just heard, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of not doing what they were teaching, of laying heavy burdens on the people, showing off their status by how they dressed, and loving titles of honor given by people. In other words, hypocrites.

Matthew, of course, was composing his gospel at about the time Christians and Jews no longer recognized that they had a common faith. Christians had been kicked out of the synagogues and had to form their own churches. They had a new form of worship, the Eucharist; and they were rapidly developing an organizational structure. Christianity had become a distinct religion. But the Jews were not sitting still either. Their temple had been destroyed. Leadership now devolved to the Pharisees, because the leadership role of the priesthood could not exist without the temple. The Pharisees, now beginning to be called “Rabbi” took it upon themselves to refine and develop a new Jewish faith, the ancestor of the faith Jews practice today. It's a little known fact that modern Judaism is not quite as old as Christianity, and that the Jews of Jesus time would not recognize it.

The Pharisees were probably mostly good guys. They cared about their faith, they tried to live it, they preached it and taught it. When Matthew recalls these words of Jesus, he places them in a context where we could assume that Jesus is condemning the Pharisees, whereas it's probably Matthew who is doing the condemning.

Some of you may have heard about Father Thomas Weinandy, a brilliant theologian and the chief advisor to the United States Conference of Bishops on matters of doctrine. He wrote a letter to the pope and published it. He had several criticisms. The pope often teaches in a way that seems to be deliberately unclear. The pope seems to mock those who uphold traditional church teaching on marriage, referring to them as “Pharasaic stone throwers who embody a merciless rigorism”. The pope has appointed some bishops who support and defend views counter to Catholic teaching. The pope is pushing to weaken church unity by encouraging a more “synodal” governing structure, where local conferences of bishops make more decisions about litugy, among other things. The pope resents criticism of his pontificate and has moved to silence more than one critical voice. After the publication of his letter, Father Weinandy was asked to resign from his position with the United States Confence of Bishops, perhaps proving his point.

Father Weinandy did not just issue criticisms; he gave examples. He starts and ends his letter with heartfelt pledges of loyalty; he has no intention of leaving the church. I urge you to find a copy of the letter on line and read it.

Why do I bring this up? It seems to me that this priest who has devoted his whole life to studying theology, advising bishops, and writing books clarifying the truths of the Catholic faith is crying out to the Pope, “If you don't care about these things, then what will happen to the Church, which is supposed to speak for Christ on earth, which has spent two thousand years trying to steer a careful path between those who want no change, like the Pius X Catholics who think only the Tridentine mass is valid; and those who want the Church to get with the times and abandon opposition to same sex marriage, to abortion, and to other doctrines that seem out of place today.

I think the same thing is going on in the early Church, and that is reflected in the gospel today. Our ancestors, Jews and Christians both, were asking, “What do we do about the Law? On the one hand, it has kept our people together through persecution and enslavement and our tradition says that it comes from God himself. On the other hand, isn't it time we started thinking critically about the Law.. After all, some things just don't make sense anymore.

So what is the lesson for you and I? After all, Jesus isn't just doing another rant about the Pharisees. He is saying, the law is important – do as they say, because they know the law of Moses – that's what sitting on Moses seat means. But at the same time, remember you really only have one teacher, God the Father who speaks through His Son. Authority does not come about because of titles or garments or even having the ability to force or coerce people into doing something they don't want to do – of which Jesus accuses the Pharisees.

So Father Weinandy seems to be a humble man concerned about things happening in the Church. Pope Francis seems to be a humble man who is trying to push the Church in a direction that he thinks is more pastoral and more relevant to the people it serves. And they now are at odds with each other even though they both try to follow the same Lord.

And that's the point I think Jesus is making – for the Pharisees, for the Apostles, for Father Weinandy, even for the Pope. He who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. Sometimes being humble means that you really believe something but you know that you could be wrong; and sometimes it means that you really believe you have to correct your brother, who seems to be off the rails, even at great personal cost.

Today we should look at ourselves. I know I have some of those characteristics Jesus identifies in the Pharisees. And the opposite of those characteristics is humility, which is not the same as being a doormat. Humility goes hand in hand with integrity – perhaps they are the same thing. And humility is one of those virtues we can develop in ourselves.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:34-40

We are all familiar with this short gospel; some of us could probably recite it by heart. But it's interesting to see how Mark, Luke and Matthew deal with this same saying of Jesus. For Mark, Jesus has just given an answer that everyone approves of, and in that context a teacher of the law asks Jesus which is the most important commandment – a straightforward question. In Luke, a man asks Jesus what must he do to be saved, and Jesus asks him how he reads the law, and he answers with these words, which introduce the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Matthew's account, which we've just heard, it says, “a scholar of the law tested him”. Last Sunday, of course, Jesus' opponents came to him with a coin showing the head of Caesar and asked about the census tax – and it says they did this to test him. Same word. So the testing of Jesus continues.

The scholar of the law undoubtedly had in mind the 613 laws that were supposed to have been handed down by Moses. There were two ways to answer his question. One was to say they are all equally important, because that was the official position of the Pharisees, who strove to keep all these commandments. On the other hand, there were several other schools of thought which argued that some laws were more important than others. If you lived in Rome, for example, you couldn't keep any of the laws having to do with sacrifice and temple worship, because you couldn't get to the temple, and the leaders of those congregations believed some laws were more important than others. And the Sadduccees and Essenes and Zealots and other parties all emphasized different laws. Jesus could not give any answer without offending someone.

But again, he calls their attention to the prayer that every good Jew recited every day, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One. You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind and strength”. That wasn't even counted among the 630 laws; it was sort of self-evident. Had Jesus stopped there, I suspect his listeners would have concluded that he had won the argument. But he went on to say, “the second is like it”. In other words, this next commandment, which actually was one of the 630 and came from the book of Leviticus, was being elevated by Jesus to the rank of number 2 instead of being there along with not boiling a kid in it's mother's milk and leaving some grain on the stalks so that poor people could come through and harvest a little for themselves. And the third thing is that Jesus doesn't just stop at loving your neighbor, he adds, as yourself, which wasn't in the Leviticus commandment.

So Jesus is actually giving a new teaching, and he goes on to identify these two commandments as the bedrock of everything that had ever been said by Moses, by the prophets, by all the teachers of Israel.

Perhaps we should ask what does it mean to love ourselves, or love our neighbor? We aren't talking about feelings of course. To Jesus, love consists of desiring that the object of your love reach his or her potential and being willing to do something about it. A starving person can't achieve his potential without at least being fed. To love your neighbor might mean to feed him. And I can't reach my potential if I am captive to any number of slaveries – like addiction, like detrimental habits like wasting time, procrastination, gossip, painful sarcasm, making excuses for myself. To love myself means that I recognize where I am not meeting the mark and do something about it. That is usually hard, because it involves change, and we have spent our lives telling ourselves why we can't change.

But loving God is another story. We can't desire that God reach his potential; he's there. No room for improvement. Communicating with God through prayer and keeping his commandments is certainly part of loving God, although one could argue that it's in our best interest to do these things and whether praying and keeping God's commandments springs from love or fear doesn't matter, so long as we do these things. But I think loving God means first of all, appreciating His creation as a reflection of Him, and part of his creation is of course, you and I. Second, it means taking seriously the Lord's prayer, in which we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In heaven there is no poverty, no estrangement, no prejudice, no war and in fact no sickness or death. When we are striving to align our world with heaven, we are loving God by bringing the world closer to its ultimate goal. Third, loving God means making a priority of the work we were given at baptism, to become more and more His son or daughter, to become more and more like Christ, like Mary, like the great saints – you pick one and model your life after that person, because the Church has held that person up as a model for you, someone who lived a life in imitation of Christ.

Loving God, as I think you can see, fits the definition of love – we can't hope that God will achieve his potential, but we can hope that his creation does, and then we do something about it consciously and making our effort a priority.

So Jesus' commandment is in a way, really just one commandment. You can't love God without loving your neighbor and loving yourself.

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:15 – 21

There was a woman sitting on the beach sunbathing. A little boy came up to her and asked, “Do you go to church?” She said she did. A minute later, he said, “Do you read the Bible?” She replied that she read some every day. A few minutes later he asked, “Do you pray every day?” She replied, yes, and often more than once. The little boy was silent for a while, then said, “I guess I can trust you to hold my quarter while I go in the water?” It's hard to find jokes about coins. But don't worry, the joke has nothing to do with today's gospel.

Separation of Church and State. Religion doesn't belong in the public square. You can believe anything you want, as long as you are sincere and don't bother other people with your beliefs. I suspect these and many other ideas about the proper spheres of religion and politics, or perhaps religion and everything else, can be read into the words of Jesus: “Repay to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's”. It's interesting that during most of human history no one would have separated Church and State. In fact, in this year in which the world celebrates the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant reformation, it's not very widely known that Martin Luther was probably the first Christian to use these words of Jesus to proclaim that the State and the Church should be separate and independent of each other. Luther knew that as long as the people had to follow the religion of their ruler, there would be little hope for his reformation to take place. And even in the 19^th century, Pope Pius X's syllabus of errors, a list of things that he felt were not compatible with the Catholic faith, insisted that it was an error to say that a Catholic country should allow freedom of religion. And of course any Muslim majority country would laugh at this interpretation.

Jesus probably would have as well. Let's look at the story. The Jews didn't like taxes any more than anyone else, but most of them paid them, and their leaders didn't say they couldn't. After all, when the tax man came around with a few soldiers you didn't have much choice, and the rulers knew that there was only a certain amount you could extract from the population before you had open rebellion, so the system sort of worked, and a lot of the tax money did go to things that directly or indirectly benefitted the population – roads, irrigation systems, a standing army that kept the peace.

The problem was the census tax, or as the Greek has it, the tribute tax. If you were a male, you had to find a way to get a denarius – a specific coin worth about a day's wage, and you would bring that to the tax man who would write your name in his book. This was how every male in the Roman empire showed that he honored Caesar – and for the Jews, it was triple humiliation; – they had to pretend to honor someone who oppressed them and had taken away their independence; they had to do it with a coin containing a graven image and the words “Caesar Augustus, son of God” which was blasphemy through and through, and they had to take part in a census, knowing that this was forbidden by Mosaic law. Obviously the pharisees and herodians meant to trap Jesus, but they weren't asking about the morality of taxes or talking about the separation of Church and State.

Jesus answer, clever as it was, was not just clever. It was designed to make you think. What belongs to Caesar? Anyone who lives in a nation or state owes a minimum to that state. Obeying the law, paying taxes and voting come to mind. All Christians should be involved in politics but some are called to be much more involved than others; being a politician is a vocation, just like being a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman.

More importantly, what belongs to God? The Jewish answer, like the Christian answer, is everything. But in Jewish law, it was as though human beings could own things, could behave as though things belonged to them. So in Jewish law it is carefully spelled out what people owe to God. Everyone owes God one day a week, the Sabbath. Everyone is called to tithe, and in Leviticus how much you tithed of different things is spelled out in detail. And of course there are those called to give God more. Recall the rich young man that Jesus told to give up everything and follow him. Jesus did not make that request of many people, just a few. And in the Old Testament, the same could be said of the patriarchs and prophets – people who were called to give more to God than the rest.

The Pharisees and Herodians had been arguing over whether or not it was possible for a good Jew to pay the tribute tax. Some said it was totally against Jewish law, and other said paying it was the best way to go along and get along; after all, to not pay it might mean your life. But Jesus is saying, as he has said so often, the Sabbath belongs to man, not man to the Sabbath. The real issue is what you owe your political community, and what you owe God. Because if you want to follow Jesus, there are only two things that matter; how you love God and how you love your neighbor. Give to God what is God's, and give to Caesar what is Caesar's.

So perhaps rather than dividing the world into that which belongs to Caesar and that which belongs to God, the secular and the sacred, a division that leads to disharmony and forcing us to take sides, we should rather ask on this Sunday, how are we being good citizens? And should we do more? And how are we being good Christians? And should we do more? These are not opposites, they in fact often go hand in hand.

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:1-14

There was a little church in the poor part of town whose members didn't have much but very loving. A new family moved into the neighborhood and it was apparent that they had threadbare patched up clothing, so the pastor asked the congregation to have a clothing drive to help out the family. And they did. With smiles and well wishes, they presented the almost new clothing to the family, with the invitation that they would be welcome at the little church. The father of the family assured the membership that they would be there. The next Sunday came and went, and the Sunday after that. Finally the pastor went to the father and said, “you certainly don't have to come to our church, but I thought you were going to when we talked.” The father replied, “Well, we were, but when we got all cleaned up and dressed in those clothes, we decided we'd be more comfortable with the Episcopalians.”

This is the third parable Jesus addresses to the chief priests and elders. Two weeks ago it was the two sons; last week it was the tenants of the vineyard who refuse to give the owner what is rightfully his; and then we come to this week. And again, it's easy to read this as still another place where Jesus says, “You Jews had your chance! I'm going to hand over the kingdom to the gentiles!”

But before we jump to that, a little background. The king is planning a wedding feast for his son. Only the best people are invited. The king has told all the A-list upper class high society people that the feast will take place on a particular day, and they should hold the date. And the date comes, and he sends out his servants to invite the guests. So far, so good. Everyone listening to Jesus knew about those kind of parties. Probably none of them had ever been invited to one, though. And they had all heard this comparison before – there is more than one description of God's kingdom as a wedding banquet, or at least a banquet, in the Hebrew scriptures. And while it helped to be Jewish to be invited, it was no guarantee; you had to also be a righteous person.

Then Jesus starts to expand a bit. People are turning the king down! And for stupid reasons. The social event of the century, and you have to check out your farm? You can't take the day off? And of course even more shocking is the fact that the king's invitation is met with violence and even murder. Now we could pause here and say, if the king is God, what next? It doesn't sound like God when the king marshals his army and wipes out the city and its inhabitants; it doesn't sound like our God, at least. But put that aside for a minute; Jesus does not imply that the king is God. And the next thing is almost as shocking. The king throws open the banquet to everyone his servants can round up, and finally the banquet hall is full. It doesn't appear that it matters whether you are upper class or lower class, even good or bad – you are invited.

And then those who were listening heard the most shocking statement of all. A man is thrown out, bound hand and foot, because he isn't wearing a wedding garment. They knew that the people who had come to the banquet would have been given a simple white tunic to wear over their clothing – the wedding garment.

Now if you were invited to a wedding today you might have been given a card with your name and assigned seat on it. Lets say you showed up in jeans and a t-shirt, tossed the card on the floor and went up and sat at the head table. You might get thrown out also, and that's kind of what the man in the parable was like.

So what do we make of all this? How does it apply to us? And really, it has nothing to do with the Jews and the Gentiles. Matthew wrote at a time where this division was just beginning, and some communities of Christians still considered themselves to be Jews.

I think it's like this. Jesus is still answering the question, what is the kingdom of heaven like? And he starts with a familiar image – its like a wedding feast; and only the right people are invited, people who had the right status, the right friends, the right amount of money. And it really helped to be a relative of the king.

But Jesus goes on to say that actually, everyone is welcome, good or bad. Everyone is invited to the banquet. So Jesus is saying that there are no preconditions to the invitation; you don't have to pray a certain way or live like a Pharisee, or have Abraham as your ancestor. And you can reject the invitation. If you ignore it, that's up to you. If you actively oppose the kingdom, there will be consequences.

But if you do accept the invitation, you will have to change your life, you will have to, as Saint Paul tells us, “put on Christ”. Every time we baptize someone in our church, he or she puts on a white garment to symbolize this exact thing. The man who was thrown out accepted the invitation but refused to change, refused to be led by the Spirit of Christ.

If we put on Christ, that means that we make a conscious effort to put God first in our lives. Jesus was a man of prayer, and the reason he prayed was to learn what God wanted of him, not to ask God for favors. And his prayers were often prayers of thanksgiving, because he had seen the Father at work in the world. And that should be our goal – to learn what God has in mind for us and to be grateful for what we've been given.

But if we put on Christ that means we make a conscious effort to notice the people who God puts in our path – to notice that they, like us, are beloved of the Father and that Jesus died for them. It's our task to see their need and try to do something about it – and everyone needs something if only a sign of connection and solidarity, like a smile or compliment or a serious inquiry such as “How are you?” And if they haven't heard the invitation to the wedding banquet, we may be the messengers that have been sent out by the king.

Twenty seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:33-43

One of my facebook friends is a minister in another Christian denomination. Every now and then I'll see a post about how awful it is that there are people who oppose same sex marriage, or bigots who oppose gender assignment surgery for children who don't feel comfortable with their biologic sex,

or people who feel that we should have no barriers to immigration or citizenship. Needless to say, my friend is pro-abortion, pro-gun confiscation, anti-police – you name the left wing cause of the day, my friend embraces it. My facebook friend is very passionate and vocal about these positions. And my friend claims all of these positions are based on gospel values. My friend is a tenant in the vineyard.

When I read one of Jesus' parables, I try to look for the challenge that is there. This is one of those where it's hard at first to see the challenge. It's hard to read this parable and not think that Jesus is talking about the Jews, who rejected him, and us Christians, who have inherited the privilege of working in the vineyard, because we haven't rejected him.

The Church does us a favor here, though, in having us listen to the Old Testament reading and the Psalm, both about vineyards. In Isaiah, the prophet is reflecting on the history of the people of Israel, who have been so carefully protected and built up by God, and who continue to rebel. Now God has had enough. He is going to quit taking care of the vineyard and let it go to ruin.

In the psalm, the writer is reflecting on what seems to be God's withdrawing his protection from his people. This is one of those psalms of lamentation, which ends with the prayer that God will restore his watchful care.

The people who were listening to Jesus probably knew these two writings by heart; they heard them read every year in the synagogue, and if you were a Jewish man, you made an effort to study scripture and understand it. The people listening were quite conscious that they had become the neglected vineyard, the vineyard in ruins. They were subject to the Romans, they were ruled by a tyrant – and if you lived in Jerusalem, you could always see some poor soul hanging from a cross. The people listening to Jesus longed for the God who had abandoned them to return.

Jesus tells a vineyard parable but this time with a twist. The vineyard owner has put his property in the hands of tenant farmers. These tenants would work the vineyard and then divide the crop according to the formula that had been agreed upon; usually they would get one third and the landlord would get two thirds. Not a way to get rich, but certainly you could raise a family and have a little left over. If you made your share into wine, you could probably make even more money.

But these tenant farmers decide to take the whole crop, and very foolishly, it seems, beat and kill the messengers of the owner, and ultimately kill his Son.

But if you think about it, the real fool here is the owner. Who in his right mind would send a second delegation when the first had been treated in that way? And who would then send his Son into that situation, thinking, “They will respect my Son.” Probably you and I wouldn't.

Now in the gospel it says Jesus addressed this parable to the chief priests and the elders. But when he asks the question, “What will the landowner do to those tenants when he comes?” who is answering the question? Jesus preached to crowds; he didn't pull the chief priests and elders into a room where only they could hear. In fact, I suspect there weren't any chief priests or elders in the crowd. Jesus probably addressed the parable to them, but they were not the ones who answered his question. The crowd did. And when he replies, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you” he is still rhetorically addressing the Chief Priests and the elders. It is their failure he is pointing to, not that of the people who are following him, who, after all, are mostly Jews from the lower classes – farmers, fishermen, tradespeople – even tax collectors and prostitutes.

I think this is important, because then the condemnation becomes a lesson for us as well. The leaders of the people had been given ample time to lead the people into the kingdom of Heaven, but had failed over and over again. From what we know, the priestly caste was pretty corrupt, in contrast to the Pharisees, who were misguided, but very sincere. The priests tended to be Sadducees, who rejected the idea of resurrection and were favored by Herod. They were simply preying on the people and playing at religion.

As we will learn further in the Gospels, Jesus explicitly promises his apostles that they will be the ones who will rule over the people who are in the kingdom of heaven. But the coming of Jesus is something the apostles themselves come to realize is tied up in a new kind of priesthood – a priesthood of the whole people. It's no longer the job of the leadership to cultivate the vineyard; it is the job of, as St Peter says, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession...”

God did not take the vineyard away from the Jews and give it to Christians. God took the vineyard away from the chief priests and the elders, and put it into our hands. And not just our hands, the hands of everyone who wants to do God's will upon the earth. The real message is that no human being can blame someone else for the destruction of the vineyard, for the failure of the vineyard to yield fruit. The parable is telling us that human beings are meant to bring about God's kingdom; we all are tenants, and if we decide we should be the owners and that is our mindset, then we too have killed the son and deserve the punishment the landowner will mete out.

The parable tells us that the landowner, Our Father, has a great deal of patience, patience beyond what any human being would have. But even God's patience runs out. So the question we should ask ourselves this week is, “What will we have to show the vineyard owner when he comes to collect his share? How are we building up the kingdom of heaven?” ,

Twenty sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:28 – 32

There was a rich man who became very ill and his doctor told him that he might not survive. “Doctor,” he said, “there is so much I want to do with my life. If you save me I'll donate a million dollars to this hospital.” After a while he recovered. Weeks went by. One day the doctor ran across the rich man and reminded him of his promise. The rich man laughed and said, “I must have really been sick to say something like that!”

In one translation of this gospel reading, Jesus asks, “Which of these honored his father?” To the surprise of missionaries to certain African villages, about half the people sided with the brother who said “yes” but did not do the work. And we know from studying the times when Jesus walked the roads of Palestine, the people there would probably feel the same way. Because people would imagine these scenes taking place in the pubic square – everyone would hear the dialogue between the father and the son, and for a son to publicly refuse a request from his father was dishonorable and insulting to the father. To these people the son who, though he had no intention of doing the work, answered his father with respect for his authority, was the one who honored his father.

And that's probably why modern translations have Jesus asking, “Which of these did the will of the father?” And of course we all agree with the pharisees that it was the first son. And Jesus goes on to compare the first son to the tax collectors and sinners, who were changing their lives in response to the preaching of John the Baptist, as opposed to the Pharisees and Scribes, who were diligently carrying out the letter of the law but forgetting that according to the prophets, God desired mercy, not sacrifice.

But I wonder what Jesus really said 2000 years ago in the Aramaic language he spoke? Because all we have are english translations of an ancient document written in Greek about 80 years after Jesus had ascended in to heaven. And the author of Matthew may not have even understood Hebrew, let alone Aramaic. Many of Jesus other parables make you stop and think. The translation we just heard doesn't seem to do that. Maybe Jesus was a little ambiguous when he asked the question; maybe he wanted everyone who heard him to ask, “which son am I?”

And we are probably both sons. I know I am. There have been many times in my life when I said I would do something but didn't, or made a promise that I didn't keep. There have been times when I've said something I didn't mean, because I didn't want to start a fight or get in a long argument. I remember a time when I was at a party and someone I knew approached me, having had a bit more to drink than he should have. He began insisting in a loud voice that radiation therapy was poison, that it did more harm than good, that doctors who used it were charlatans. I made a few statements in defense of radiation therapy, but he just got louder and angrier, so I ended up agreeing with him and suggesting he should go tell the doctor over there who actually was a radiation therapist.

And of course I'm the first son as well. Like you, I've had moments when I really didn't want to do something, it didn't matter who was asking; it was easier to just say no. But then after prayer, after second thought, I go ahead and do it. If you are a deacon or a doctor or a husband or wife or in fact anyone, you will have many moments in life when you will initially resist doing something you should do, but then end up doing it. An interesting difference between the two sons is that the first son did not have to struggle with himself to act as he did – he just lied. The second son, on the other hand, had to change his mind, had to repent, which is always a struggle.

But both sons have something in common; they say one thing and do another. It's secondary whether one does the will of his father and the other honors his father. When Jesus compares the tax collectors and sinners to the first son, he notes approvingly that these individuals have changed their lives in response to John's preaching, but what he doesn't point out is that those who have changed their lives in doing so have said yes to the father they want to serve. And when he compares the Scribes and Pharisees to the second son, he does not say they will not get into the kingdom of heaven, but that they were lagging behind those others and they should now change their minds and begin carrying out what they already knew and taught.

I think a final lesson can be learned from this parable, and Jesus lived his life demonstrating it. That is, authenticity should be a virtue we strive for. Whenever we say one thing and do another, even if we are like the second son, it speaks to division within us, and that is always something that holds us back. Jesus showed us a truly authentic life and that was part of his appeal to the crowds who followed him. His words and actions were always in alignment. He was the one who said, “My food and drink is to do the will of my Father”. And he was the one who told his disciples that the Son of Man had to go to Jerusalem to be tortured and killed and rise again, and he did that.

I've been the first son and I've been the second. And rather than beat myself up because I have shown myself to be inauthentic those times, I look at them now as opportunities for self examination, so that I can live a more authentic life, where my words and my actions are aligned, where I walk my talk, where I say what I mean. And it is a wonderful feeling to have moments when there is no division in my spirit, where, for a brief moment at least, I am in the kingdom of heaven.

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 20:1 – 16

Many years ago I used to take two grandchildren on my Saturday errands. They were pretty young, about five and three. I would of course try to bribe them into being good by promising a treat. Once I let them pick out penny candy. After we got back to the car the three year old began crying; it turned out that she had grabbed two fistfuls of the candy and could not hold any more, and was very bothered by the fact that her brother might get some.

A lot of sermons on this gospel passage leave you to think that Jesus is telling us not to be jealous. That's a good message. But there is a lot more here than that. Before this passage is another which I'm sure you remember. It is about the rich young man who chose not to follow Jesus because he had many possessions. Jesus comments that it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Then Peter asks, “We have given up everything to follow you; what then will there be for us?” And Jesus promises that they will receive a hundred times what they have given up, and eternal life besides.

And that is when Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man, a land owner...” The parable we hear today.

So Jesus is expanding on what he has just told Peter, about the reward for giving up everything and following him.

So we need to see this parable like Jesus' audience did. First of all, landowners, especially rich ones, were suspect. Part of the Mosaic law was that every fifty years land which had changed hands would be returned to it's original owner. The Jewish people, needless to say, stopped doing that fairly early on. People who were rich, and rich meant land, were considered to have done something dishonest to acquire their land. One thing they often did was try to pay their workers less than the usual daily wage. But this landowner agrees to the usual wage. The usual wage was enough to keep your family fed and have a little extra; it was sufficient, it was all you needed. So those first workers went away happy.

Then at the end of the day, seeing that those hired last are getting the usual daily wage as well, the first workers think they deserve more, but they don't get it. And that's the point Jesus is making to Peter. He is saying, you will be rewarded, Peter, you will receive all you can handle. But when you asked that question, your premise was wrong. In the kingdom of heaven, everyone will receive all they can handle. There is no finite pile of stuff to fight over, to be jealous about. God has no limits and wants to give you everything you need. There is no such thing as more or less in the kingdom of heaven.

So a lot of us might sympathize with the workers who bore the heat of the day; we might sympathize with Peter After all we come to church, we try to live good lives, we pray, we treat others with human decency. And we know there are people out there who don't. And the natural inclination is that we should get more than they do. But hard as it is to understand, that's not the way it is in the kingdom of heaven.

So why is Jesus telling us this parable? Maybe it's a little disappointing to know that Saint Theresa and John Paul II and I and my uncle Louis who drank heavily and had been married three times and had been sent to jail twice but had a deathbed conversion and received the sacraments – all of us are going to receive from God all that we need to be perfectly happy for all eternity. But the kingdom of heaven is here, now. We don't have to wait till we die. And God gives his children, whether Catholic or Muslim or atheist, all that they need to live, and live comfortably. He gives them what they need to be happy in this life and in the next. And those of us who are trying to bring about the kingdom have to turn away from that idea that God's gifts are finite and some of us deserve more than others. Those of us who are trying to bring about the kingdom have to remember that God wants everything good for everyone, and we are God's instruments in this world.

A man died and went to heaven. He had lived a very holy life, dedicating himself to helping the poor and disadvantaged. He had worked tirelessly for justice. He lived a life of prayer. And when he stood before the judgement seat, he was assured that he would have a wonderful mansion, a porche, lots of great friends – anything he wanted, for all eternity, because God wanted him to be happy. And the next person in line was a man who had lived on the margins. He got to church Christmas and Easter; he threw a dollar bill into the collection plate. He grudgingly gave a few dollars to the Saint Vincent de Paul society, but only when asked. And his temper tantrums made the lives of his wife and children miserable. And at the judgement seat, after weighing the good and the bad, he was told that he would begiven a wonderful mansion, a porche, lots of great friends, anything he wanted for all eternity, because God wanted him to be happy. And the first man's heart was filled with gratitude and he welcomed the second person with open arms.

Go and do likewise.