Homily: Year A, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Note: Years ago, the deacons of our parish often preached at both daily and Sunday Masses, but like so many things in life, this changed, and we found ourselves preaching far less frequently. I accepted this change as I try to accept most of what happens in my life, especially that over which I have little or no control. But Fr. Kenny, our new pastor, has decided that we deacons should again preach at Sunday and Saturday Vigil Masses. And so now, on one weekend each month, the deacons will preach at all Masses. I applaud the pastor's decision because I believe deacons bring a unique perspective to our understanding of the readings from Sacred Scripture. Our working lives, our family lives, our struggles to balance the often-conflicting demands of faith, profession, and family mirror the same struggles faced by our parishioners. I hope we deacons all accept this challenge gratefully and, as always, call on the Holy Spirit to guide us during the preparation of our homilies.  

Anyway, here's my homily from yesterday, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time:

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Readings: Is 55:6-9; Psalm 145; Phil 1:20c-24, 27a; Mt 20: 1-16a

I was the younger of two sons. My brother, Jeff, was four years older, the smarter, better-looking son. Jeff got a lot of attention, far more than I. Now, believe me, I’m not complaining, for the benefits far outweighed the disadvantages. Because they focused on dear Jeff so much, they kind of left me alone. In other words, constantly measured and examined, Jeff’s life was under the family microscope, while I, on the other hand, had remarkable freedom.

For me it was a good life. But one day, when I was 17, a high school senior, I totaled my father’s car. It was a nice car, a very nice car, a French car. Approaching an uncontrolled intersection, I had assumed the cross street had a stop sign. It didn’t; and I plowed into the side of a taxicab.

As you might imagine, when Dad got home from work, he was upset. His first words:

“Your brother would never have done that! You’re grounded for a month, and that’s just the start.”

I was tempted to reveal some of Jeff’s secrets, but instead appealed to my father’s higher instincts. You see, on Saturday mornings Dad, "the colonel," conducted a family “staff meeting” as he called it. It included reading and discussing the Sunday Gospel.

And so, I told him, “You never would have grounded Jeff. You told us to treat everyone alike, to be merciful like that, that vineyard guy in the Gospel.”

Well, that was a mistake. He just said, “Two months,” and left. Yes, Dad was justifiably upset.

Now don’t get me wrong. My folks loved us both and were wonderful parents. And I probably deserved a greater punishment than I was given. But that little episode also showed me a couple of things: first, Dad was not God; and second, that, indeed, our ways are not God’s ways.

We hear this first from Isaiah, who takes on the role of opening act for Jesus, the warm-up act 700 years in advance, sharing God’s message:

“…my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

Jesus emphasizes this by spending an awful lot of time telling us how different God is from us. As we hope to enter His Kingdom, He urges us to look at the world through His eyes, not our own. That seems hard enough, but He not only wants us to see as He sees, but also to live as He lives. And in His Sermon on the Mount, He seems to demand the impossible: “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We know perfection is beyond us, at least in this life, but we struggle to be open to His Word and His gifts of grace, trying to see each other as God sees us.

Today’s Gospel parable shows us the difference between God and us about as clearly as any. It’s all about mercy; about striving for the holiness God wants for us; about entering a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus.

First, it’s a parable; it’s not a mini-seminar on labor-management relations. Today any employer who behaved like the landowner would probably go bankrupt because of his high labor costs. He’d also be accused of unfair labor practices and likely face a shutdown strike.

Of course, this just highlights the point that Jesus makes: God is different. God is so very different. Indeed, God is so different from us that if we actually acted as He acts, the people around us wouldn’t know what to make of us. That’s what saints do. They go against the grain of the world and upset a lot of people. Yes, they’re always scraping their fingernails on the world’s blackboard and driving people crazy.

Yes, saints and martyrs strive to act like God. It’s because they’re so different that they can make a difference. And because God continually raises them up from among us, we’ll never be at a loss for saints and martyrs, for these models He places in our midst.

Anyway, let’s get back to our parable.

For all of us who spent a lifetime working hard preparing for our retirement, it’s easy to get caught up with the literal, human side of the parable, sympathizing with the workers who had spent a long, hard day in the vineyard. Even though they were paid the wages they agreed to…well, it just doesn’t seem fair, does it? For the others, though, waiting all day to be hired, the landowner’s a savior, a most kind and generous man. It all depends on our point of view, doesn’t it?

But we can put all that aside because this parable isn’t about agriculture or farm workers. It’s about the Kingdom of Heaven. And it just gives us a tiny glimpse, a narrow window through which we can view that Kingdom. And what we see is Jesus. He's out there, everywhere...He's out there looking for us, calling to us, and He does it early and late and in-between.

We need only respond in faith: “Yes, I’ll be your disciple, tell me what to do.” Whether we're early or late, the reward, the wages, will be the same: salvation and eternal happiness.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? The early workers suggest the landowner is unjust, not because he’s broken their agreement, but because he’s gone beyond it and been overly generous to all who come to him. By saying “Yes” all the workers agreed to His terms, and by saying, “Yes” we do the same. And His terms are quite straightforward.

God likes to keep things simple; we’re the ones who complicate everything, making our lives far more difficult than they need be. 

Not long after this, after Jesus entered Jerusalem, Matthew tells us how our Lord summed it all up, going back to the Old Testament, turning to Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and repeating what God had revealed to Moses:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? If we all did that, imagine what our world would be like. Yet the world's not like that, is it? Because we’re all sinners. But for a pack of sinners, we should be overjoyed that the rules of divine grace are not the same as human rules, that God’s justice is so far beyond our human justice. You see, God’s capacity for forgiveness exceeds, it just outdistances, any human potential.

We hear the early workers’ complaint: You have made them equal to us! And that, sisters and brothers, is Satan talking, Satan tries to convince us that God plays a zero-sum game, that it’s impossible for all to win, that God simply doesn’t have enough grace, enough love for everyone. As always, the father of lies is wrong. Jesus’ teaching on discipleship reflects the absolute equality within the Kingdom, and the freedom of its King to shed His grace as He sees fit. Of course, given our competitiveness and the calculating nature of our self-driven sense of justice, Jesus will always stir up resentment in the hearts of men and women.

God loves outrageously, asking us to do the same. And in doing so, He scandalizes the just, the good, the worthy. We see this in so many parables…in the merciful father when the repentant prodigal returns seeking forgiveness. Who is then scandalized? The elder son, the one who had done everything well but failed to understand both the mercy and joy of his father.

Yes, our God flaunts His love and mercy, and dares us to be as generous, as selfless, as merciful as He. Like the Good Shepherd who celebrates when he finds the lost sheep, Jesus turns our attention to the sheer delight that should accompany conversion.

God doesn’t forget the faithfulness of those who responded early -- like all of us cradle Catholics who, if we’ve been faithful, have also been out in the vineyard doing His work, bringing others to Him. That's what we've all been doing...right?

That’s right. You do know that we are all called to evangelize, that evangelization is the primary mission, the work of the Church. Where do we evangelize? In our families, our friendships, our neighborhoods, in our own little slice of God’s world sharing His unconditional love with the others He places in our lives. God never forgets the faithful. But He also rejoices and celebrates the arrival of those who were a little late in joining them.

For our God is the ultimate landowner. It’s good for us to remember that. You and I own nothing; all of creation belongs to God and our share is pure gift. It’s certainly nothing we earn. Once we let that really sink in and allow our lives to be motivated by thanksgiving for that generosity, we can get over our fussy little comparisons between ourselves and others. We can avoid the nasty and foolish rivalries that lead only to envious resentment and sin. And we can forgive fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters, and daughters and sons. Yes, we can forgive all, forgive as God forgives...for failing to do so is no way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

I've always thought St. John of the Cross said it best: 

“In the evening of life, we shall be judged by love.” 

Yes, indeed, judged both by a God who is love and by how much we have loved.

Progressing…to What?

I’ve often been accused of living in, or wanting to live in, the past, as if such thoughts were some kind of weird psychological aberration. After all, who would want to live in the past when the present is so very cool? And the future? Well, maybe we shouldn’t talk about that. Too many today expect to be overwhelmed by man-made climatic disasters. In truth, we face far worse man-made calamities resulting from our sinfulness. But that’s the subject of another time.

Anyway, I suppose this basic diagnosis of my mental state has some validity. The symptoms are there. For example, if you glance through my personal library, you’ll likely notice that many of my books were written before I was born. As of this week, I’m now 79 years old, so that cut-off date was a while ago. Then there’s my rather eclectic tastes in music. I listen to everything classical from Bach and Vivaldi and their Baroque buddies to Vaughan Williams and everything in between. And jazz? I’m locked into those remarkable early artists like the MJQ, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Byrd, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, and so many others. I’m also a fan of the big band music of the 30s and 40s, the doo-wop era of early rock ‘n’ roll, and even the folk music — Bud and Travis style — of the same period. I’m known as well for waxing eloquently about life back in the fifties and early sixties, when I came of age. 

All of this leads others to accuse me of being some sort of Luddite. Doesn’t technological progress translate to a better life? Is life with cable, satellite, and streaming TV, with the Internet, smart phones, email, Amazon, electric vehicles, and all the rest better than life without them? I think not. And this conclusion comes from someone with a couple of degrees in technological fields, who taught computer science at the U.S. Naval Academy, and piloted hi-tech military aircraft. Am I conflicted? Not at all. It all depends on how you define goodness. Is technology in itself a good or an evil, or is it neutral, inherently amoral? Does its goodness depend on application? Do the technologists even care about how their creatures are used? How did Robert Oppenheimer put it when reflecting on the development of nuclear weapons? 

“It was therefore possible to argue also that you did not want it even if you could have it. The program in 1951 was technically so sweet that you could not argue about that.” 

Yes, indeed, from the researcher’s perspective, the technological challenge is so “sweet” it must be pursued, even if it might blow up the world.

I won’t even try to predict how long it will take, but the next “sweet” challenge, one that’s progressing with remarkable speed, is artificial intelligence. Where it will lead nobody knows, but many of its developers believe we’ve already passed the point of no-return. Now, I’m not all that knowledgeable about the state of AI today, although I did play around with it 50 years ago. When I was teaching computer science at Annapolis I used to drop in on the ArpaNet (a Department of Defense network that evolved into the Internet). I was intrigued by a program called Parry, developed by someone, as I recall, at Stanford Research Institute. Parry simulated someone suffering from paranoia and responded appropriately to questions asked by the online user. I played with it on and off and as a lark decided to write a poem-generating program. When the first version went public on the Academy’s network, it became our most popular program. The midshipmen would run it, generate a poem, and send it to their girlfriends. My first attempt was rather primitive free verse, but the second used an iambic pentameter rhyming scheme and was even more popular. One English professor actually examined some of its images in class. I assumed it was all tongue in cheek because the words were generated randomly, and any resulting “images” were strictly accidental. I was amazed by it all, but quickly realized there would be a real future programming human activity and thought. In those days I was pretty good at predicting technological advances, at least in a macro way. I recall once, back in 1974, shocking the midshipmen in my advanced programming class by predicting they would one day have computers the size of a cigar box, computers more powerful than the Academy’s mainframe computer. They didn’t believe me. 

Today AI has progressed far beyond my stupid little poems, and some of its developers strive for a consciousness that replicates and surpasses that of the human mind. The debate, of course, will ultimately turn to consciousness with or without a conscience. Personally, I don’t believe true human-like consciousness will be achieved before God steps in an ends it all. This view contradicts those espoused by folks like Ray Kurzweil — agnostic, futurist, and computer scientist — who believes we humans will soon live forever. He also looks forward to a transhuman future when nonbiological intelligence will prevail and surpass human intelligence. He believes this Singularity, as he calls it, will arrive soon because technological change is…

“so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.” 

My-oh-my, let’s pray that God spares us from such a future. But what really bothers me today is the true source of AI and what it portends. I have a hunch it didn’t drop down from heaven.

Maybe in my next post I’ll turn to the past in search of intelligence far greater than anything encountered today.