For Sunday, September 21, 2014 – Matthew 20:1-16
Within each of us, ready to serve, is a good worker, one who delights in diligent and faithful labor. We might think we prefer leisure. We save and plan and dream of all the not working we would like to do, but a core part of us loves the steady rhythms of work. We love participating in creation, feeling the cells of body and brain fire up in unison with each other. We seek callings, and people with whom to do them, not because we want to keep running madly on the treadmill of ‘success’ but to offer the gift of ourselves and receive sustenance in return. This is a part of the abundant life.
The reality for many of us is something else. Some of us are unemployed or under-employed, trapped in mind and spirit-numbing tedium. What must it be like to be deemed “chronically unemployable” due to addiction, illness, a history of incarceration, not enough job experience or sometimes, ironically, too much? In the meantime others of us are caught in the frenetic pace of long hours and too many tasks and not enough help. Either way the worker within us suffers. We start to compare our situation to that of others; our commitment and dedication, our compensation, to that of others. Our true worker, who longs to create and build up the common good, loses heart.
Jesus tells a parable. An overseer selects laborers for the vineyard. At 9:00, noon, 3:00 and 5:00, he hires them, all glad for the work. When evening comes, all are compensated—each receiving exactly the same amount. The early crews grumble and lose heart. No matter how important the work, how well we do it, how much we choose to do it, when we start to measure ourselves against others we lose the simple joy of giving what is ours to give. We get out of sync with our inner worker’s rhythms. Contentment lies not in counting the cost or the reward. We will do the task that is ours to do, for as long as it is ours to do. Bowing and bending to the work at hand will be its own reward.
