We all have outer garments that point to our differences, but we all wear the same inner garment given to us by God.

 

Twenty Sixth Sunday in OT  A  2020

 

If you remember last week’s Gospel parable, it was rather shocking and seemingly unjust.  The landowner sent workers to work in his vineyard at different hours of the day.  The master then paid the workers who worked one hour the same pay as those who worked in the heat of the day all eight hours.  It wasn’t fair.  It is difficult, is it not, to give up the religion of merits and believe in the gratuitous love of God.

To repeat, it is difficult to give up the religion of merits and believe in the gratuitous love of God.

In today’s Gospel parable, a man had two sons whom he wished to send out to work in the vineyard.  The first said initially no and later changed his mind and then went to work in the vineyard.  The second son said yes but did not go to work in the vineyard.  Which of the two did his father’s will?

 Today’s Gospel parable is a conversion story.  A man said to his first son: ‘Son out and work in the vineyard today.  He said in reply, ‘I will not go,’ but afterwards changed his mind and went.  Saying yes to God means giving up one’s own thoughts and accepting His.  Conversion happens in our lives when we open ourselves to God’s plan for our lives.

Where do we find ourselves in this Gospel parable?

The scribes and the Pharisees were ones who said yes to the kingdom of God as the religious elite.  Their Achilles’ heel was their illusion of being saved by their pious religious practices, and yet Jesus in this parable is being very direct and confronting with the religious leaders of his day by saying the tax collectors and prostitutes were going to enter the kingdom of God first.  The kingdom of God welcomes unexpected folks.

 This parable challenges us as well:  what effect have our prayers and religious practices had on our daily life?  Do they put an end to hatred, wars, and abuses?  While continuing to profess ourselves Christians, do we easily resign ourselves to a life of compromise?  Do we live too easily with injustice, inequality and discrimination?

What are the ways we say no to the will of God in our lives?  For example, I can’t bother with religion. I’m too busy getting ahead in life.  I’m too busy having fun.  The Church has too many defects.  My sinfulness is saying no to God in my life. I can’t forgive myself.  How can I expect God to forgive me?

In today’s Gospel parable, the father told his two sons to work in the vineyard today.  As you pray over this gospel, into what vineyard is the Lord sending you today -- the vineyard of your family, of your neighborhood, of your parish?  Into what vineyard is the Lord sending you today?

Many of us are like the son who initially said no to God’s plan in our life.  The parable is a conversion story.  Our conversion story is a more convinced “yes” passes through no. What does that mean?  That was the conversion of the son who initially said no to his father but later changed his mind and went to work in the vineyard.

In the second Scripture reading, Paul begins his beautiful hymn to Christ by encouraging the Philippians to have the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose as did Jesus.  “Have in you the attitude that was also in Christ Jesus.  Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on a cross?”

What does it mean for you to have the same attitude as Jesus Christ?  Are you in touch with your own conversion story?  God calls us who are sinners, who have said no to God’s call in our sinfulness but yet we somehow open ourselves to receive the merciful love of Jesus.  Yes, our conversion story is a more convinced yes passes through no.  We always stand in need of the generosity and forgiveness of God.  More than that, we need to experience conversion many times, and we are called each and every day to say yes to the plan of God in life.

Many things divide us:  language, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, ideology, culture, personal history, temperament, private wounds, and moral judgments.  It is hard, in the face of all this, to see people as brothers and sisters, who are different from us, as equally important citizens of this world, and as loved and valued by God in the same way as we are.

And so, we often live in a certain distrust of each other, seeing danger where there is only difference.  We then either actively oppose someone or simply steer clear of him or her.

When we fail to realize is that these differences are really our outer garments, things that in the end are accidental and incidental to our real selves.

What is the meaning of this?

Are we able to look beyond the outer garment of a person and be in touch with their inner garment, the garment given to each one of us by God himself?

The inner of garment of each one of us is that we have all come from God and one day we will return home to God.  Our inner garment is the image and likeness of God inside each and every one of us.  Yes, we all have outer garments that point to our differences, but we all wear the same inner garment given to us by God.

When we are in touch with our inner garments, we can see each other as brothers and sisters, we can go into the vineyard of the kingdom of God and do the work Jesus has missioned us to do, and we can be transformed by having the same mind in us that is in Christ Jesus.

 

Have a blessed day.