TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

This Sunday we meet some day labourers in Jesus’s parable. These are people whom the disciples would have immediately understood: people who worked, day to day, to make a wage to feed themselves and a family. They are economically vulnerable and socially marginal. Most people in Jesus’s time would have known what it was like to be a day labourer, to depend on a day labourer, and to be at the mercy of a landowner. 

You know how the parable goes: The day labourers work for various amounts of hours yet are all paid the same. The grumbling occurs when the first-hired day labourers notice that the last-hired day labourers are paid the same wage as them. 

Here, discontent proceeds from those roots of comparison and our own hope that things will be fair. Those who worked fewer hours should not be compensated the same as those of us who have worked all day.  Who are they that should get what they got? Aren’t I more deserving?

Discontent feasts on the embittered morsels arising from comparison. We struggle to be satisfied when we see those around us with things that we want; we grow envious when we see others living the life we want or experiencing our long-sought dreams.  The windows into our neighbours’ lives—through social media and the internet—have amplified this temptation to compare and contrast our lives with others. Does everyone in the world have an updated kitchen ? Is everyone more fit than me? Does everyone have a higher income or better health or sturdier faith or—fill in the blank… Comparison robs us of our contentment; it holds our gratitude hostage, blinding us to the daily grace before us. 

Now might be a good time to name that there are different ways of being discontent, some holier than others. Take our discontent at hatred, stinginess, hypocrisy: That discontent might shake us out of our apathy and pull us toward the good work of the Gospel. Our discontent with the physical hunger and lack of shelter faced by so many of our neighbours? May God use such discontent for the provision of God’s numerous people. The discontent that comes with faith that needs a bit of sanctification? Well, God can use that, too. God can shape our grumblings in the desert; God can remind us of God’s provision in times past. God can help us recall that we live by God’s provision alone. Yes, some discontent can point us toward the essential work of discipleship. 

But that constant, nagging sense that we are not enough, that we’ll never be satisfied; that our realities are never enough; that perennial comparison with our neighbours… what to do about that? 

We must learn, as Christ taught us, to pray for daily bread. To lean on the provision of God, the provision that is enough for today. We might watch and wait for that manna that comes from on high. Those gifts that fill our stomachs  and our souls. We might, even, over time, learn to be content with the wage offered for the day, even if others have received more. We are called to practice the non-competitive life, as reflected in God’s own life. 

Contentment, at the end of the day, is a posture that trusts in the vast goodness of God and in the provision that flows from God’s own life and self. Contentment is the spiritual discipline of accepting reality, even while we pray for God’s kingdom to come. It is the fruit of gratitude – of realizing that everything we are and all that we have derives from God in the first place. We are beneficiaries of a life and love far beyond each of us.  Contentment realizes that it is God who has given us our breath and limbs and lives. It is God who has placed us in this world, who has   filled our lives with sufficient grace—with enough for the day. 

In the second reading Paul, in prison, sees clearly the meaning of his life: ‘Life to me, of course, is Christ.’ Jesus is our life too and the gift of himself is more than enough. He gives himself to us so we might give away to others what we have received. 

While the first reading from Isaiah speaks of God’s love for his people. God’s thoughts and ways are beyond our understanding, and yet God is close to us and rich in forgiveness. This is the ever-generous God who gives us everything we’ll ever need.