How many of us have experienced that someone mistreated us? Almost all of us have experienced trauma when our dreams and ideas of human justice were destroyed.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents the kingdom of God as the kingdom of God’s justice, not necessarily human justice or fairness. These words of Jesus best express it: “Are you looking at me because I am good?”
This parable may seem to describe a purely imaginary situation, but that is far from the truth. In addition to the payment method, the legend tells what happened in Palestine at a particular time of the year. The grape harvest ripened at the end of September, and the autumn rains were approaching. It was destroyed if the crop was not gathered before the rains, so processing the harvest was a big race against time. Every worker was welcome, even if he could only work for an hour.
The men standing in the marketplace were not street idlers wasting their time. The first man arrived in the morning, carrying his tools and waiting for someone to hire him. The men who stood in the marketplace were waiting for work, and the fact that some of them stood until five o’clock in the evening proves how desperately they needed the work. Why? They also needed to support their families. Pay: a denarius or a drachma was the average daily wage for a working person. The one who worked shorter was supposed to get less money. The human and market logic is evident here. But Jesus wants to present the values of the Kingdom of God. And there, the reason is a little different.
Before God, we cannot insist on a fixed ratio between performance and reward. We cannot claim a calculable reward based on our performance. God leaves no effort unrewarded. But God retains his own sovereign freedom and can bestow abundantly out of his free goodness – regardless of all merit. Human action and human merit are never insignificant, they still retain their value before God. But they cannot impose any standard of retribution and cannot limit the freedom of his sovereign action and his goodness. It can also be summed up like this: justice rewards according to merit, but goodness gives according to need. And even the latter have a great need to support their families. God’s goodness wants to help them out of love. The owner of the vineyard cites goodness, not justice, as the reason for his actions towards the last hired workers. They got full pay not because that they would have earned it by their work or that they would be entitled to it, but because the lord of the vineyard is good. He wants to give gifts and help. With this parable, Jesus exhorts us that we should not calculate in advance and prescribe to God what he should give us and others. We are not to compare God’s gifts and then complain to him that we think we have come up short. We are to faithfully fulfill our tasks and gratefully accept everything that God bestows on us. We are to respect God’s freedom and goodness and rejoice in every sign of his goodness, even if it does not concern us personally. The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” excludes envy and demands that man, according to God’s model, give his neighbor the same advantage and undeserved gift that he himself would wish. With this parable, Jesus exhorts us that we should not calculate in advance and prescribe to God what he should give us and others. We are not to compare God’s gifts and then complain to him that we think we have come up short. We are to faithfully fulfill our tasks and gratefully accept everything that God bestows on us. We are to respect God’s freedom and goodness and rejoice in every sign of his goodness, even if it does not concern us personally. The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” excludes envy and demands that man, according to God’s model, give his neighbor the same advantage and undeserved gift that he himself would wish. With this parable, Jesus exhorts us that we should not calculate in advance and prescribe to God what he should give us and others. We are not to compare God’s gifts and then complain to him that we think we have come up short. We are to faithfully fulfill our tasks and gratefully accept everything that God bestows on us. We are to respect God’s freedom and goodness and rejoice in every sign of his goodness, even if it does not concern us personally. The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” excludes envy and demands that man, according to God’s model, give his neighbor the same advantage and undeserved gift that he himself would wish. what God gifts us with. We are to respect God’s freedom and goodness and rejoice in every sign of his goodness, even if it does not concern us personally. The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” excludes envy and demands that man, according to God’s model, give his neighbor the same advantage and undeserved gift that he himself would wish. what God gifts us with. We are to respect God’s freedom and goodness and rejoice in every sign of his goodness, even if it does not concern us personally. The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” excludes envy and demands that man, according to God’s model, give his neighbor the same advantage and undeserved gift that he himself would wish.
Goodness is more important than just human justice. They brought a thief to a certain abbot caught in the act. “Why are you stealing?” The abbot asked. “I’m hungry,” answered the thief. “Give him food whenever he needs,” the abbot told his monks. Before long, he was brought in again. “Your kindness didn’t help; he stole again; we’ll have to punish him somehow,” complained the disappointed monks. “Why do you steal when you have something to eat?” The abbot asked. “I don’t know what else to do,” replied the thief. “Give him a job and a place to sleep,” the abbot commanded the astonished monks. This is the third time they brought the man. “There is no leniency for that! We caught him stealing again; can we punish him?” the monks asked. “Why did you steal now?” The abbot asked. “I am a thief,
In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the style of God’s action is described, which also appears in Jesus’ activity, which is focused on the search for the “last.” The parable’s purpose is to overthrow the general logic of fair thinking about performances and corresponding rewards, borrowed from economic reasoning – and to think about the relationship with God. The salvation that Jesus preaches is the fruit of human effort and an undeserved, magnanimous, and generous gift of God.
