Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Reflecting on Matthew 20: 1–16
Oh, boy. It’s that irksome parable again. Those poor workers who show up at dawn, and work in the heat all day, end up getting the same pay as the guys who showed up at the last minute. I can feel their outrage even today.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. Isaiah’s words never hit so close to home as they do when we hear this gospel today, because that is NOT the way any of us would have handled that situation.
I’ve mentioned before that I can’t stop watching baby videos on you tube. These babies are SO adorable (and I suspect most of them are actually AI), but everything changes when the new baby comes. That’s when the videos turn dark, because they show the intense jealousy the older child can feel towards the new baby. Not all, of course. There are heartwarming videos of toddlers hugging and kissing the new baby, but there are others that show the deep betrayal some toddlers feel when they realize mommy loves the new baby, too.
WH Auden wrote:
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have:
Not universal love,
But to be loved alone.
As Abel was a threat to Cain, so it has ever been.
We don’t want to hear that our parents love us equally. We want to be taken aside and assured that the truth is we are loved more than all the others. But God’s gracious love brings us all into the Beatific Embrace, even those who call to God at the very last minute.
Have you ever been jealous of the gifts God has given to someone else?