A Word Before the Homily
Before we begin, allow me to interfere with your Sunday plans.
If you belong to a church where Christ is preached, people are treated with dignity, and you can worship without fear, go. Go to Mass, Divine Liturgy, Sunday service, or whatever your tradition calls the gathering of God’s people. Put your body in a room with the body of Christ. Sing, even if your singing causes the angels some concern. Pray with people who did not choose the hymns you would have chosen. Receive the sacraments according to your tradition. Let somebody notice that you are there.
Christianity is a stubbornly embodied religion. The internet can carry a homily a very long way, thanks be to God, but it has never once shaken your hand at the church door, brought you Communion, or noticed that you looked tired and asked whether everything was all right. Though everything in me wishes I could, I can’t hug you on the way out the door after Mass.
Now, some of you cannot go. Some are homebound, caregiving, traveling, recovering, or searching for a church that will not injure you in the name of God. Some of you are not ready to try again after what Christians have done to you. I understand, and I am glad you are here. If you ever want help finding a congregation that is safe, faithful, and kind, I will gladly help.
For today, wherever you are, may the Lord who spent the whole day going out to find workers meet you there.
Your Brother in Christ,
Today’s Readings
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 133
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.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (18a) The Lord is near to all who call upon him.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
R. The Lord is near to all who call upon him.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The Lord is near to all who call upon him.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.
R. The Lord is near to all who call upon him.
Second Reading
Brothers and sisters:
Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.
For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.
If I go on living in the flesh,
that means fruitful labor for me.
And I do not know which I shall choose.
I am caught between the two.
I long to depart this life and be with Christ,
for that is far better.
Yet that I remain in the flesh
is more necessary for your benefit.
Only, conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Open our hearts, O Lord,
to listen to the words of your Son.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.
“Going out about nine o’clock, the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off.
“And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, the landowner found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’
“They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
“He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’
“When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’
“When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’
“He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’
“Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
The Homily
I have a hotshot friend out in LA who works for a very famous celebrity.
Very famous.
He is going to remain nameless. I’m also going to leave the celebrity nameless because I don’t want any trouble. I doubt either of them reads this, but still. We let sleeping A-listers lie.
Were you to meet my friend, you would never know that he works for someone important and famous.
Well, speaking of lies, there’s a whopper of one.
Every two seconds, it’s, “Well, ______ thinks…” or “______ was telling me just yesterday…” or “Guess who came by the house yesterday to see ______.”
I love him dearly, but good Lord sometimes he drives me so far up a tree that I’m sitting next to Zacchaeus.
Now, before I pick on him too much, I should tell you that he is one of the hardest-working people I have ever met. He is always available for the needs of our capricious music star. I would also prefer never to see my friend’s ratio of hours worked to take-home pay.
The joke, of course, is that I work for someone famous too, the most famous person in human history. My hourly pay is equally dismal, I assure you.
And, just like my friend, I could not be happier.
Does he get invited to better parties?
Yes. Absolutely.
But I get to be out here in this vineyard.
And that, oddly enough, is where today’s readings take us. We are going to miss what is happening in this vineyard if we spend the whole morning staring at the paychecks.
You already know the sermon everybody expects from this Gospel. Workers are hired at dawn, nine o’clock, noon, three o’clock, and five. At sunset, the landowner pays every one of them the same daily wage. The people who worked through the heat are furious. The fellows hired at five receive the same denarius after one hour that everyone else receives for the day.
From there, we usually talk about grace. God’s mercy cannot be earned by the hour. The person who comes home to God after a lifetime away is not issued a smaller portion of salvation. There is no economy section in the Kingdom of Heaven. Nobody gets half a baptism, three-quarters of a seat at the table, or an obstructed view seat of the Beatific Vision.
That is all true. It is also what everyone expects us to say.
But there is something every worker in that vineyard is missing.
While they till and hoe, plant and prune, water and gather, they are in the landowner’s vineyard. They have heard his call. They have been given a place in his work. The whole day has been spent tending something that belongs to him and will bear fruit long after they go home.
The workers who arrive at five o’clock receive the full wage. But I want to suggest that they really did miss something.
They missed the day in the vineyard.
That is not a judgment against them. When the landowner asks why they have been standing there, they answer, “Because no one has hired us.” They were not lounging in the bathhouse with tiny umbrellas in their drinks. They were waiting to be wanted. They spent the day wondering whether there would be food on the table when they returned home.
Some people are still outside the vineyard for exactly that reason. No Christian ever bothered to invite them. Some knocked on a church door and were told there was no place for someone like them. Others were run off by people inside who behaved as though they owned the land. When the Lord brings them in, even at five o’clock, God help us if our first response is to check their timecard.
We need to make room. Hand them the tools. Thank God they are here.
Still, those lost hours do not return. The landowner can give them a full wage, a full welcome, and a full place among the workers. He cannot give them back the morning.
Meanwhile, the people hired at dawn have received something precious all day, and by sunset they can no longer see it. One look at the five-o’clock paycheck makes them forget everything that has happened since morning. They look back on an entire day in the vineyard and can remember only “the day’s burden and the heat.”
When did being in the vineyard with the Lord begin to feel like punishment?
Saint Paul gives us another way to see it. He writes to the Philippians knowing that his life may be nearing its end. He longs to depart and be with Christ, which he says would be far better. If the wage at the end were the only thing that mattered, Paul would be delighted to clock out.
But he is torn.
“If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.”
Paul still has people to teach, churches to encourage, quarrels to settle, and a Gospel to preach. Some of what he plants will not bear fruit until long after he is gone. He knows that. He wants the time anyway.
Paul does not begrudge the extra hours.
Paul knows the extra hours are a gift.
This is what I mean, as I so often say, that the Kingdom of God is the world turned upside down. In the world as we know it, work is a burden and the paycheck is the reward. You sell as many hours of your life as you must, hopefully for enough money to enjoy whatever hours remain.
Jesus turns the whole arrangement on its head.
In the Kingdom, the wage is grace. Nobody earns it, and nobody receives a cut-rate portion because they came late. The person who arrives at five o’clock belongs to God as completely as the person who arrived at dawn.
But the work is grace too.
You got to put your hands into the soil. You got to tend something that may outlive you. At the end of the day, even the dirt under your fingernails tells you that when the landowner called, you answered. You were here.
Too many of us were taught to imagine Christianity as an unpleasant shift we must finish before collecting our heavenly reward. Pray because you have to. Serve because you are supposed to. Go to Mass because it is an obligation. Forgive because Jesus put it in the handbook. Avoid enough sins, complete the assigned duties, and eventually management will process your celestial retirement package.
No wonder we keep checking everyone else’s hours.
No wonder someone else’s mercy feels like a reduction in our own wages.
So let me ask you something rather plain. How do you speak about the vineyard?
“I have to go to Mass.” We say it the same way we say, “I have to go to the dentist.” Is Mass one more obligation wedged between the errands and whatever game starts at one, or do I understand that I am going to meet the living God? He gathers us, speaks to us in Scripture, receives the needs we carry, and gives Himself to us at the altar. Then we get into the car and complain that it ran eleven minutes long and Father’s homily was dry.
I understand. I have celebrated liturgies during which even I began wondering whether the homilist planned to land the plane. Occasionally, I was that homilist. But think of what we are being given. God has called His people together, and there is a place of honor for us among them. The Eternal Christ is attending the banquet, and hoping that we’ll be there too.
Then there is service. Is volunteering just another Saturday taken away from doom scrolling, yard work, and Netflix? Or is it one of the ways your family learns what it means to belong to Christ? Children learn what matters to us by watching what we are willing to spend time on.
Or worse, has service become a chance to take a few photographs for Instagram? All too often, it seems the hungry cannot be fed unless it feeds our social media with likes and empty praise.
Now, there is nothing wrong with showing people the good that is being done, especially if it brings more hands to the work. But poor people are not scenery. Put the phone down after the picture and learn somebody’s name. Otherwise, you may leave with a lovely photograph and miss the vineyard altogether.
Discipleship is not like clocking in for a thankless job that exists mostly to improve shareholder value. God is not trying to squeeze a few more units of Christian productivity out of us before the quarterly Kingdom earnings call. He is making a people who can bear His presence in the world.
Saint Peter calls us “living stones,” built together into a spiritual house. One stone by itself is just a rock in a field. Set it beside another, and then another, and soon it can bear weight. It can become a wall, a shelter, perhaps even a sanctuary. Christ does that with us. He takes people who would never have chosen one another and fits us together until the world has somewhere to encounter God.
We can refuse Him. Plenty of people did it right to His face in the Gospels. He did not chase Judas down the road with an employment contract. So yes, discipleship involves duty. There will be mornings when duty is what gets you out of bed, and thank God for it. Feelings are unreliable little creatures.
But duty is not the whole of it. We have been given a place in the work of Christ. We get to pray, worship, serve, forgive, feed somebody, and welcome the person who was told all day that nobody wanted them. We get to become living stones in a Kingdom none of us could build alone. Heaven awaits us, thanks be to God, but life with Christ has already begun.
Isaiah tells us to seek the Lord while He may be found and to call while He is near. The Psalm answers that the Lord is near to all who call upon Him. Then Jesus gives us a landowner who keeps going out. Dawn, nine, noon, three, five. He spends the whole day searching for people to bring into His vineyard.
Which brings me back to my friend.
Yes, he can be insufferably excited about working for ______. He will tell you what ______ thinks, what ______ said, who stopped by to see ______, and probably what ______ had for lunch if you remain trapped in the conversation long enough.
But here is what my friend gets right. He knows it is an honor to be asked. He is proud of the work, he is available when he is needed, and the long hours have not talked him out of believing that he is fortunate to be there.
And remember, he feels this way about a very mortal person. However famous ______ may be, a hundred years from now both employer and employee will belong to the dustbin of history, as will you and I.
My friend serves ______. We serve Christ Jesus, the Son of the living God.
Surely we can be at least a little insufferable about that.
I would like someone to roll their eyes once in a while and say, “Good heavens, Rich has found a way to bring Jesus into the conversation again.” I would like the people who know us to recognize that we consider it an honor to be called, and that we are glad to have some small patch of the vineyard entrusted to us.
If He comes for you at five o’clock, go. Do not waste another minute believing that you are unwanted or that it is too late for your life to bear fruit.
If He called you at dawn, thank Him for the hours. Do not let comparison turn a life of grace into a grievance. Stop staring at the coin in your neighbor’s hand long enough to look around.
The Lord is near.
The vines are heavy with fruit.
And we get to be out here in this vineyard…
Hopefully, together.
And Now It’s Your Turn…
-
What part of discipleship have you caught yourself describing as something you “have to” do? What changes when you remember that you get to do it?
-
Has anyone ever made room for you when you were beginning to believe that nobody wanted you in the vineyard? What did their welcome change?
-
What small corner of God’s vineyard has been entrusted to you right now? Where are you being given the privilege of doing fruitful work?
If you know someone who has begun to wonder whether their ordinary labor with God has any meaning, send this homily to them as a reminder that the vineyard is already holy ground.
And Let Us Pray…
Generous God,
You keep coming to find us,
even when the day is nearly gone.
Free us from measuring Your mercy,
resenting another person’s welcome,
or treating life with You
as a burden to endure.
Give us Saint Paul’s joy in fruitful labor.
Teach us to recognize Your nearness
in the planting and pruning,
the watering and waiting.
Bring into Your vineyard
all who have been left standing outside,
and make us glad to receive them beside us.
May Christ be magnified
in our living,
in our working,
and in our loving,
until the day we are gathered
into the fullness of Your Kingdom.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Today is the final day to receive 20 percent off a paid subscription to Message From the Margins.
I hesitate to call it an “offer.” I think of it as a small moment of grace for those who would like to help carry this work, but for whom the full subscription price is simply too much. I see you, and I want to make a place for you here.
I cannot keep the discount open forever because, frankly, this ministry is still finding stable financial footing. Those who are able to pay the full price help carry the actual cost of keeping nearly everything I create available to everyone. Those who need the reduced price can step in at a level they can manage. Each of us carries what we are able.
It is easy to imagine Message From the Margins as Father sitting at a computer and writing. There is certainly plenty of that.
But this ministry also requires software subscriptions, production equipment, website and distribution costs, Substack’s share, credit-card processing fees, our charitable giving, and all the ordinary expenses involved in producing articles, homilies, podcasts, videos, and pastoral resources week after week.
And there is scarcely a week when one of those companies does not email to announce that the price is going up, often by quite a bit.
Also, Figgy needs a treat every now and again. We run a serious operation here, but we are not monsters.
This work is not frivolous. I hear constantly from people who have returned to prayer, reconsidered faith, opened Scripture again, felt less alone, or found the courage to keep going because of something we created here.
Yet, as of this writing, only about 300 people are helping shoulder the financial cost of a ministry that reaches many many thousands of people each day.
I feel in my bones that more of you would help build this if you knew how much the work requires and how few people are currently carrying it.
So I am asking you, directly, to make today the day you say, “I am going to stop sitting on the sidelines and support something good in this world.”
An annual subscription costs less than dinner for two at many ordinary restaurants. Its impact here lasts considerably longer than dessert.
If the 20 percent reduction makes supporting this ministry possible for you, today is the final day to use it. I would be deeply grateful to welcome you as a paid subscriber and have you beside me in this vineyard.
With tremendous thanks,
