Matthew 20:1-16a; 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Did you know that clocks here in Manila run more slowly than in Baguio or in the mountains? That’s because massive bodies warp space and time. And so GPS satellites that keep time and location have to be tweaked every so often because the time up there is different from time down here. Want to know something more mind boggling? As you go near a black hole, which is really like some gravitational sinkhole, space and time get so warped (curved) that time practically stops.

We often think of time and motion as always together. But here inside a black hole (assuming you don’t get ripped apart first), you can move about and time stays the same. When you walk from here to there, there is no before or after. There is only always now. You never grow old. A span of one second near a black hole is equivalent to more than a thousand years outside it.  

The words of the Psalmist (Ps 90:4-6) come to mind:

“A thousand years to you are like one day; they are like yesterday, already gone, like a short hour in the night. You carry us away like a flood; we last no longer than a dream. We are like weeds that sprout in the morning, that grow and burst into bloom, then dry up and die in the evening.”

This is not to say that God probably lives in a black hole. (God is everywhere, we learned when we were small.) This is just to affirm that God keeps time differently. Ibahin mo ang Diyos. Lest we be tempted to cut God down to size, the prophet Isaiah in the first reading today (Is 55:8-9) impresses upon us the utter otherness of God:  

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.

The height of God’s ways above our ways is how we are to understand today’s Gospel story of the generous and “unfair” landowner who gives the eleventh hour laborers the same compensation as those who worked the entire day. We will not grasp this story if our ways stay low, if our love is limited, or if our hearts are small.

The story’s point is simple: God’s love is infinite. Our little cups for measuring love cannot compare with those of God, if God uses measuring cups at all. Many of our cups quantify the volume of work we do, the amount of time we spend laboring in vineyards that may not even be God’s own. God’s love will not be so contained. God’s love is beyond measure. 

God’s love is infinite. In the language of math, you cannot add one or 10,000 to infinity to make it more than infinity. Nor can you subtract one or 10,000 from infinity to make it less than infinity. In the language of faith, Bishop Desmond Tutu said it well: “There is nothing you can do that will make God love you less. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. God’s love for you is infinite, perfect, and eternal.”

And to this I might add: There is nothing you can do to make God leave you. Nothing you can become or fail to become to make God give up on you. God’s love is not measured in person-hours. You cannot bundy clock God’s love. 

I suspect some of us, including myself, tend to be disturbed by this parable which seems to encourage exploiting God’s generosity or standing idle till the last hour. Why work 12 hours when you can get the same pay in one hour? Why be good now when you can be good later and still make it to the gates of heaven? 

Missing the point of the parable, we forget that the latecomers were idle not because they were lazy or biding their time or bent on gaming God’s generosity. They were still there in the marketplace because no one had hired them. They were willing to work but no one had called them.

And so God calls them. God calls us. God invites us to his own vineyard. God hires us for the rewarding, if backbreaking and heartbreaking work of bringing God’s infinite love to bear on the conversion of our lives and the world. 

In truth, we are the latecomers. Often late to confess, late to realize the timelessness of God’s love for us. We can be slow to awake and come to our senses. We keep time for things we think are consequential but may not be so in the eyes of God.

This may be the eleventh hour. But no matter. Just like time near a black hole, God’s time works differently. God’s ways are not our ways. We may be the late starters, but God does not give up on late starters.

God’s vineyard awaits us. Time now to get going.