September 22 25 Sunday in Ordinary Time Mt 20/1-16

Background

The crowd that followed Jesus love stories. Who doesn’t love stories? They were often disconcerted and sometimes angered by his stories, especially when, as in today’s Gospel, he told stories with which they were familiar but gave them a different twist at the end. The crowd knew this story very well. They had heard it very often and were reassured by it. At the end of the story, as they knew it, those who came at the 11th hour worked so hard that they earned a full day’s pay. But Jesus threw them a curve ball: instead of the emphasis being on the hard work of the late comers it was on the generosity of the farmer. Those who went to work at the 11th hour hardly did any work at all, they were so busy trying to figure out what the farmer would pay them. By human standards the farmer was crazy. The parable, however, is not about labor-management relations, nor about justice in human relationships. It is rather about God. It’s rifle shot point is that God is so generous and so loving that by human standards he’d be judged to be crazy about human standards. It is a parable about the insanity of God’s love.

Story

Once upon a time, long, long ago there was a village up in the mountains In the early part of summer a young man came up the mountain playing a happy little tune on a flute. The kids followed after him. He played music for them and sang songs and told stories. Pretty soon the teenagers joined him and he taught them some new dances. That night he announced that he was going to produce a play and invited the villagers to try out for him. The next night he had a song fest, and the night after that a story telling contest, and the night after that a big dance for all ages. The people in the village never had enjoyed long summer nights so much. Husbands and wives stopped quarreling; kids stopped lying to their parents, lovers were gentle with one another. All the villagers were astonished by the charm and the talent and the generosity of the young man. But after a couple of weeks the people in the village who complained about everything began to complain about the young man. Who was he? Where did he come from ? Who was his family? Why did he have so much free time in the summer? What was he up to? What kind of trick was he trying to play on them? Soon the people in the village ignored him or insulted him. Parents forbade their children to go near him. Teens threw rocks at him. One night a bunch of young toughs beat him up and threw him out of town. Rumors spread that he was dead. But early in the morning the village heard the flute again, this time playing a sad little tune as the young man who was too generous walked back down the mountain.