How many of the 10 Commandments encourage you to avoid comparing yourself with your neighbor? One? Two? By my math, at least six. Don’t long for your neighbor’s possessions nor steal them (the 10th and 7th Commandments). Don’t long for your neighbor’s body nor act on any such longing (the 9th and 6th Commandments). Don’t lie about your neighbor (8th Commandment), even if it would be beneficial to you. Don’t kill your neighbor (5th Commandment), even if your neighbor makes you really angry.
In other words, you’re not supposed to think about how much more money your neighbor has, or how much better sex your neighbor has, or how much better your neighbor’s life is than yours. If you truly have faith in God, then it just doesn’t matter; the riches that God offers are beyond anything the mortal world can provide.
I started thinking through this as I reflected upon today’s readings. In the gospel selection from Matthew, Jesus tells the parable about laborers in a vineyard. Some workers started at noon, some at nine in the morning, some at noon, and some who started as late as 5 o’clock. All of them were paid the same wage – the wage they agreed to – and those who worked all day felt taken advantage of compared to those who worked less.
Of course, as I mentioned above, what your neighbors are doing should have no bearing on how you feel about your life. If your neighbor didn’t exist and you considered yourself happy with what you have, then why would your neighbor having more money or better looks than you make you upset?
I suspect that, upon hearing this parable, many of us immediately place ourselves in the shoes of those who have worked all day. But it ignores all the times in our lives when we’ve been the laborer who started work at noon, or at 5 o’clock. I’ve heard it said that we want God to be infinitely merciful and infinitely just . . . infinitely just for everyone else and their misdeeds, and infinitely merciful for us and our misdeeds.
The fact of the matter is that none of us deserve Heaven. We cannot earn our way into heaven merely by doing the right things, or making the right sacrifices, or saying the right prayers. God wants our hearts. He wants our souls and our thoughts. Our deeds should be the manifestation of that oneness with God we feel . . . or, barring that, our deeds should be an earnest attempt to build that love for God in our hearts, in the same way we train young children to say “please” and “thank you” in an effort to mold them into polite, considerate people.
It’s quite likely that, in the grand scheme of things, none of us are the workers who started at dawn. If the rewards of the landowner are the Kingdom of Heaven, then none of us deserve them at birth, for we are all tainted by original sin. No, I suspect that practically all of us are the worker who started at 9 a.m. Or noon. Or late in the day. And many of us are workers who drifted away from the vineyard for a time, or leaned on our hoes for overly long breaks, or who weren’t as efficient as other workers regardless of how many hours we were present. And none of us want to be judged as wanting against those who have done better than us; we only want to hold up our noses haughtily at those we perceive as doing worse.
I do not deserve the Kingdom of Heaven. It is only by the mercy of the Lord that I may ultimately gain entry, like the generosity of the vineyard landowner. I pray that my heart grows ever closer to God, so that He may overlook my faults and failings when the time comes. May the Sacrament of Confession rid me of that which would divide me from God, and may Holy Communion literally make Christ part of my being. For those who have labored longer and more fully in the vineyard, I thank them for the example they serve and the efforts they put in. For those who have entered the vineyard later than me, I am grateful for the mercy and love of our Lord that may make the Kingdom of Heaven available to them – the same infinite reward that may be open to me, undeserving though I am.
Because, ultimately, it isn’t about what our neighbors have, or how much better they’re doing. A longing for more – at the expense of our relationship with God – is what caused our fall from Eden. It was important enough to fill over half of the 10 Commandments. It was important enough for Christ to emphasize in this parable and elsewhere. The second great commandment that Christ gave us was to love your neighbor with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. May I continue to love everyone who works in the vineyard, regardless of when we started working together. The Kingdom that awaits has room for us all.
Today’s readings: Ez 34:1-11; Ps 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6; Mt 20:1-16
