25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092026.cfm
How would you feel if a rich and powerful person said these words to you? “My ways are above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
Two weeks ago, an individual (named Stan Kroenke) bought the Los Angeles Angels, a Major League Baseball team, for $4 billion. This is the man’s sixth pro-sport team. In addition to these teams, he is the largest private landowner in North America, owning 2.7 million acres, and his net worth is $27.6 billion. I can imagine him or others in his orbit saying: “My ways are above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” And he would be right; I have no idea what his world is like. I cannot justify buying a $100 jersey for my favorite sports team, much less conceive of buying the team itself.
In another recent development, some of the wealthiest Americans have been exploiting accounting loopholes that allow them to avoid paying income taxes. These loopholes are not available to middle- and lower-class Americans. In fact, the poorest in our country are subject to IRS audits at a rate five times higher than for everyone else. For all of us who pay our taxes every year, we can imagine a wealthy elite saying to us and to the poor, “My ways are above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
These words, of course, are not from a human being, but from God. God is NOT speaking to us like an American fat cat. When He says these words, He is condemning the excesses of the rich and powerful and attacking our greed, possessiveness, and hardheartedness toward other people. God draws a contrast with this human sinfulness and identifies His thoughts and His ways with generosity and grace, especially towards the weakest, poorest, and forgotten.
In the first reading, the Book of Isaiah, God is addressing the Jewish people who had been forced into exile in Babylon for decades. At last, their long captivity is over. He invites them all back to the Promised Land with a great banquet. In beautiful and memorable language, he calls to those who are poor,
“All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat; Come, buy grain without money, wine and milk without cost!”
And to undeserving sinners, he offers forgiveness and mercy without question if they turn to him. What a great reversal from the ways of the world. It is the unworthy and the unfit who are called to the feast because “My ways are above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
This is the context for the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, in which a landowner offers a full day’s wage to all his laborers, regardless of how long they worked. The workers who did the most work complain to him, not so much because of the pay, but because “you have made them equal to us,” in their words. We might agree with these workers. This parable offends our sense of fairness and our human measure of justice, particularly in America where we value individualism and personal responsibility and condemn people that we call the undeserving poor.
Yet the landowner says, “Are you envious because I am generous?” And also, “Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?” This is another way of saying, “my ways are not your ways.” God thinks differently about what human beings deserve.
In our culture, we tend to be very transactional in our relationships with other people and with God. We think that if we work hard, try to be good people, and go to church on Sunday, God will have to give us good things in return. This is a quid pro quo, tit for tat, and I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine way of thinking.
But God does not do quids, tats, or back scratches. God does not owe us anything. [Repeat]
Why not? Because everything that we have is a gift from God. Everything in our created world exists because of Him. And God gives it to us freely, pouring out graces like the water flowing in our baptismal font. Our very lives are gifts that we have done absolutely nothing to earn or deserve. All the stuff that we have, the money in our bank accounts, the cars in the driveway, the degrees in frames on the wall, our families, everything, everything, is a gift from God. Though God does not owe us anything, He gives us everything.
Now, I want to be clear here that the LORD is not calling us to deprive ourselves of the things that we need and enjoy. But neither is it okay to own six sports teams or to destroy our planet in an unsustainable cycle of greed. God is calling us to think more like he does. We might look to Wendell Berry, the recently deceased Kentucky poet-farmer, as an example of a person in tune with the mind of God.
Berry understood that we are called to be caretakers, and that our gifts are to be used in service to the world. He wrote, “…the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”
In this month, the Church celebrates the Season of Creation, which invites us to reevaluate our relationship with the created world. You might consider attending the Green Mass that our archdiocese is celebrating in two weeks to observe this season. The mass is on September 30th at 6:30 pm, at Epiphany Catholic Church.
Today, we celebrate the baptisms of several young people, and we come to the altar to receive God’s freely offered grace. May we seek the LORD while he may be found and pray that the LORD might make our thoughts and our actions more like His.
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