Good Eye!

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year A

Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145; Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16

“Are you envious because I am generous?”
Matthew 20:15

We need to be careful in what sense we take today’s Gospel.  Jesus’ parable about the generous landowner should not be seen as an excuse to put off our wholehearted seeking after God.  Isaiah says in today’s first reading, “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near.
Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.”  That is the sense we should always have.

Nevertheless, our Lord gives us a wonderful parable about God’s enduring mercy.  In the parable a landowner goes out at the beginning of the workday around 6:00 a.m. to find laborers for his vineyard.  This was in keeping with the times in which men might seek out employment for a day, or even a season, in just such a manner.  As the story goes on, the landowner continues going out at various intervals of the day with his last foray around 5:00 in the evening; only one hour before quitting time.  This is akin to the heart of our Lord who has come to seek and to save the Lost.  He will continue His diligent search, even to the last hour.  At the end of the day, the landowner calls the laborers together to receive their payment.  He begins with those hired last and pays them an entire day’s wage.  Those who worked the whole day thought they deserved more even though their agreement was for a day’s wage.  So they received the same.  Outraged, they protest only to hear the landowner declare that it is his right to do as he wants with his money.  He has not cheated those who were hired first.  He has simply chosen to be generous to those hired later.

I think this story resonates particularly with us as modern Americans.  We instinctively take up the battle cry of those workers who worked the entire day.  One can hear calls to “Unite!”  Yet, that would be to miss the point.  Jesus isn’t trying to set a policy for corporate payrolls.  He’s getting at something much deeper, and I think it’s easy to miss.

It’s the line near the end of the story that tips us off.  “Are you envious because I am generous?”  This is a more colloquial rendering.  The phrase literally reads from the Greek as “Is your eye evil because I am good?”

What Jesus is getting at is the idea that we have a choice in how we will respond to God’s mercy and grace.  Will we recognize it for what it is- something wonderfully good?  Or will we become envious, jealous, or disgruntled and see it as evil?

Let me illustrate.  Last week we spoke of God’s mercy in forgiveness.  We recognized that we may have a tendency to be unforgiving, even in the face of God’s forgiveness of our sins.  This week’s Gospel goes one step further.  Here, we’re ok with God forgiving, but we still want to retain our right to have a better reward than the next guy.  To go back to my illustration from last week, it’s one thing to forgive the 9/11 terrorists, but to think they might inherit the same reward I do in eternal life- maybe not.  It’s at this point that I must discern whether my eye is good or evil.  What if, milliseconds before the plane hit the tower, one of the terrorists instantly saw the evil of his ways and cried out to God for mercy?  How would I feel to have him standing next to me in heaven?  This is exactly the scenario that Jesus has in mind.  Someone saved in the last seconds of the last hour could have equal standing to someone who bore the weight of the spiritual combat for a lifetime.

This is not the place to become a legalist.  I don’t think the parable is intended as a blueprint for the final judgment.  Nevertheless, it is intended to lead us to a place of considering what mercy really means.

Let me bring this to other matters closer to home.  How do we react to people who drive recklessly and frustrate us while we’re on the road?  What about similar occasions in stores?  How do we react to the family member who is always asking for a handout, or the beggar on the street corner?  Again, I’m not approaching this from a legal standpoint as if there’s always a particular response that is right, but the question we need to be asking ourselves is this: is my eye good or evil?  Am I joyfully choosing mercy, or bitterly choosing judgment?

Let’s go one step further.  I am greatly disturbed at what’s happening in our country- and in the Church, I’m sorry to say- over a small strip of cloth to be worn over the face as a mask.  We are truly divided in our response.  Those who choose no mask look down on the others and scoff that they are not as enlightened as they are.  Those who choose the mask look at those who do not as if they are selfish boors recklessly endangering the populace.  A little mercy please!  Rather than judge motives, let each be convinced of the rightness of their own actions and choose mercy for the others.  Doesn’t this seem to be akin to having an eye that is good rather than evil?

To have goodness in our eyes is to see through the same lens that God does.  How can we know that?  By what’s written in scripture.  How do we see Jesus?  What does He teach?  How does He act?  Then go and do likewise.  St. Paul refers to this in our second reading when he says, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.”  In other words, he is saying that to go on living is to live as Christ so that it is Christ who is clearly seen in us.  A life lived well in this sense welcomes death at the end for there is certainly an eternal reward.

To have evil in our eyes is to begrudge God’s mercy to others, even while almost expecting it for ourselves.  There is no joy in such a life.  One is eventually consumed with all the self-made rules for living.  In the end, it may well be that God’s mercy is shown to the others, but not for the one who has chosen judgment instead of mercy.

When we can rejoice in God’s mercy shown to those we consider the least deserving then we may know that we are at least on the path of seeing with good eyes.  May God grant us such heavenly vision quickly, and may we discover the joy that comes from the freedom of simply rejoicing in such mercy… wherever it is shown!