A Vineyard, a Labor Dispute and Envy

Readings for the 25th Sunday 
in Ordinary Time

Before he converted to the Catholic faith, Aurelius Augustinus who we know as St. Augustine was repulsed by the Catholic faith of his mother. He understood the pagan cults around him as childish notions of the divine. The pagan gods behaved like the most badly behaved, self-important do nothing celebrities. In his mind Christianity was just one more cult that worshipped an angry, jealous God, who has eyes and fingers, a God that needed to be appeased by the death of his own son. He had heard it all before. The man who brought St. Augustine into the Church was Bishop Ambrose of Milan. The key to Augustus’ mind was the hermeneutics of scripture. A hermanueutic is, essentially, a rule or guideline to understand the proper sense of scripture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church par. 118 describes the different senses of scripture by reference to a medieval rhyme.

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses: The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;  The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny. (Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.)

 
The Gospel today about the vineyard, the owner and the labor dispute is a particularly apt example of how to read scripture learning about what God intends, how we are to believe and to live, and what awaits us at death. That is the four senses of scripture. Lets look at this gospel from four different but related perspectives.

The Literal Meaning of this parable – the mission to the Gentiles

CCC par. 116 The literal sense (of scripture) is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83

Given the first century situation made evident in the rest of the sacred scripture you can be reasonable assured that the point the Lord is making concerns the acceptance of Gentiles into the Jewish Jesus Messiah movement, that is, Christianity.

The Gentiles were, according to Jews, disgusting people. Even by modern standards Rome is a violent, abusive culture. Beautiful art and interesting philosophy for the rich. Grueling poverty and abuse for most of the rest. Augustine, a Roman, would write at length about this in City of God 400 years after this parable was delivered. The Jewish and, later, Christian criticism of pagan gentile culture, was that they worshipped idols, they had abominable sexual practices and their families, by Jewish and Christian standards, were a mess. Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians clashed in the first century over how much of Jewish law was to be observed by the Christians in order to clean up the gentile mess. The shared the same critique of the larger pagan culture. The book, The Didache, which is available online to read was probably produced by Jewish Christians because it sounds like Mosaic scripture:

There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the two Ways.

The way of life is this:" First, you shalt love the God who made thee, secondly, thy neighbor as thyself; and whatsoever thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not thou to another."

But the Way of Death is this: First of all, it is wicked and full of cursing, murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, witchcrafts, charms, robberies, false witness, hypocrisies, a double heart, fraud, pride, malice, stubbornness, covetousness, foul speech, jealousy, impudence, haughtiness, boastfulness. The Didache (Late First to Early Second Century, Anno Dominum)

It is as it were lifted from the book of Deuteronomy This parable was told and was written in the middle of a contentious fight between Jewish Christians, Gentile Christians and Jews. The parable is intended to explain to Jews and Jewish Christians the apostles’ mission to the Gentiles as an invitation to work for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the vineyard of the Lord, that is, the whole world. How do we know this is the literal meaning?

The Spiritual meaning of this scripture: The allegorical – the vineyard
How do you discern the literal meaning of the parable? You have to understand the allegorical use of the term “vineyard.” The allegorical sense of scripture as described in the Catechism allows us to “acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of Christian Baptism.”84  CCC 117.1

In the parable, it is quitting time in the old vineyard, allegorically speaking. Whenever, the Old Testament or the Lord tells a parable or a story about a vineyard, they are talking about Israel, the land and the people. The vineyard is a metaphor, an allegory, for Israel. So, consider the audience of Jews listening to this story. The Jews know that their father is Abraham who was promised a land, countless descendants and that he would be a blessing on all nations. Their families had worked the land of Israel for countless generations. They fought and died for it and their ancestors were all buried there. They were taught to trust that God would come and save them from the Romans. All of that was just about to occur, the big payday was close at hand. In the first century Israel was buzzing with Messianic expectations.

Now, at quitting time, when the Chosen People were ready to enjoy a warm Maccabee beer, the beer the Chosen People choose, this rabbi from Hicksville, the land of the lost ten, apostate tribes of Israel, was telling them that at 5 pm quitting time, a new group of visitors who had not shared their burdens were coming to claim the same reward promised Abraham’s children.  So, in this parable, there are three essential rules presented by the Lord:

Rule One: God’s ways are not our ways.
Rule Two: God is opening the doors of Israel’s exclusive relationship with God to the whole world and it will be messy;
Rule Three: When in doubt, please refer to rule one

The Spiritual meaning of this scripture: The anagogical – the daily wage (denarius)
St. Augustine, as you might expect, focused on the spiritual meaning of this scripture specifically, the anagogical sense. The Catechism explains the anagogical sense of scripture like this: “the anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, "leading")  is to view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a (anagogical) sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.” CCC 117.3

St. Augustine, in meditating on the anagogical meaning of the story of the Labor dispute in the Lord’s Vineyard offered this explanation:

“In that great reward (that is, heaven) then, we shall all be equal—the first to the last and the last to the first. For the denarius (that is the daily wage) stands for eternal life, in which all will have the same share. Although through diversity of merit some will shine more brilliantly than others, in the possession of eternal life there will be equality. What is endless for all will not be longer for one and shorter for another. What has no bounds will have none either for you or for me. Those who lived chastely in the married state will have one kind of splendor; virgins will have another. The reward for good works will differ from the crown of martyrdom; but where eternal life is concerned there can be no question of more or less for anyone. Whatever may be the individual’s degree of glory, each one will live in it eternally. This is the meaning of the denarius. (Augustine, Sermon 87, 1.5-6; trans. E. Barnecutt)

St. Augustine’s point about eternity is that 50% of eternity still equals eternity and eternity times two and one/half still equals eternity. What does this story teach us about heaven? Heaven is heaven for everybody, Jew or Greek, slave or free.

The Spiritual meaning of this scripture: The moral - Justice and Envy
The landowner says that he is not unjust because everyone agreed to the wage that was, at the end of the day, paid as promised. He is free to do what he wants with his money. This sets up the moral punchline of the story. The Landowner says, “or do you begrudge me my generosity?” or literally in the Greek, “is your eye evil because I am good?”

Envy kills our sense of gratitude because, no matter how great our own gifts, let us say eternal life, we always want more and better than what others have. Envy doesn’t mean we wish others harm. Envy, instead, is our desire for more of whatever good thing the other guy has. Envy is being appreciative of another person’s success as long as I have more of the same. Envy gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. People are not proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking. “They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.” (Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis) That is envy in a nutshell.

In the gospel today, Jesus talks about envy.

Take what is yours and go.  What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?  Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ Matthew 20:1-16

Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke? The older brother complains to his father that dear old dad gave his no account, loser, corn husk munching, prostitute loving brother gold rings and a big party when he came home. The older brother never got so much as a goat. Luke 15:11-32 As with most of Jesus’ stories, all roads lead to the Book of Genesis and the fallen nature of all humans, Jew and Gentile.

In Chapter 4 of Genesis, Cain grew envious of Abel because God liked Abel’s sacrifice more than he liked Cains; Murder to follow.  Envy is always evil because it destroys the happiness of our souls and is, in essence, diabolical. Evil, in Augustine’s analysis, is a lack of the good. Envy then is the failure to properly appreciate the goodness of my own life.  Why is envy diabolical? Because Satan fell from grace out of envy of the gifts God gave humanity. Hell is full of people complaining that the fire burning others is more comfortable than the fire afflicting me; why can’t I have their tortures. As St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, envy is sorrow at the good of another or rejoicing at the misfortune of another. Two friends infected by envy cannot become one heart and one mind, because the good of one necessarily results in the sadness of the other.

What do we do with all of this? How do We Overcome Envy?
God has given us the gift of salvation when his Son sent the Jewish apostles into the world to bring us to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The gospel is intended for the outlier, the person on the peripheries. God always sends us out to the edge.  As for how we do that, obviously with gratitude.  The proper response to God’s generosity and the lens through which we understand the gifts he has given us, even in times of pandemic and distress is gratitude. Gratitude for what we have is the antidote to envy. God has given us meaningful work in his vineyard and the pay is out of this world. Envy is a loser’s game. The world gives us all reasons to envy if we are so inclined, but gratitude, on the other hand, is to live in thanksgiving for what we have. The Eucharist, after all, is Jesus sacrifice of thanksgiving on the eve of his betrayal, passion and death. Gratitude is life-giving.