25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A September 24, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
I… don’t often address politics and economics directly from the pulpit. I don’t want to encourage our American tendency to over-politicize everything. Still, it’s the Church’s job to give the laity moral guidance on politics and economics even if the specific policy-making is left up to the laity. Yes, people of good faith can legitimately disagree on specific applications so long as they don’t reject the principles. Of course, that presumes they know what the principles are. Today is a chance to learn one such principle.
Now, if you listen to this homily and think “Father Albert is saying we should vote republican or democrat or independent, for this person or that person,” then you aren’t listening. I’m saying that, whatever policy or economic system you support, your support is based on what the Gospel teaches and not your own selfishness or knee-jerk loyalty to something other than God. Be converted! Check and double-check that your social efforts are based on love of God and love of neighbor, not on love of money or love of power or love of security.
Today’s gospel is a good place to start. Jesus’ parable does have a spiritual meaning. Basically, he’s saying that even people who convert at the last minute get to go to heaven just like the people who serve him their whole life. We shouldn’t be envious or mad about that. It’s connected to last week’s message of forgiving 77 times and more. The serial killer converts on his death bed and spend the last 3 hours of his life praying? Awesome, glad you got there in time.
But Jesus uses an economic example here for a reason. This landowner promises “the usual daily wage” to the first people he hires. In scripture, the “usual daily wage” means paying enough money for the worker to feed himself and his family for the day and have some left over to save for things you wouldn’t buy every day, but would need to pay for every now and then. This doesn’t mean women didn’t work at all; scripture also describes the ideal wife as someone whose labors in and outside the home help to support the family. So, the daily wage wasn’t enough for luxury, but enough to live a human and balanced way of life so long as you worked consistently and spent carefully.
The first men in the story work a full day and get a full day’s pay. Fair, right? Then the landowner hires people a few more times, with the last ones only working one hour. Yet, all of them get the full day’s payment. The first men grumble, but the landowner quite fairly points out that his generosity doesn’t hurt them. To be sad or angry when someone else gets something good, even though their success didn’t hurt you in any way, is called Envy and it’s called a deadly sin for a reason.
Here’s the thing: these men, even though they only worked one hour, still need to live. This is the principle of the just wage, which is Church teaching. Depriving these men of a full wage might seem fair from a mathematical standpoint. Yet, how does letting a man and his children starve really help? He gets weaker, works even less, and spirals downward into destitution. It’s not like these men were gaming the system, either. He tells us that they were trying to work, that the only reason they hadn’t worked sooner was that they couldn’t find anyone to hire them. Presumably, the landowner would expect them to work a full day the next time since now they know where they can go to work.
Yes, the landowner describes his payment as “generous,” but when he hires the men at 9, 12, and 3, he promises them “what is just.” It looks generous to the guys who worked all day, but the landowner sees more deeply. He sees their humanity, their basic dignity and needs. To him, it is a matter of justice that these men make enough to survive even if they were only able to work part of the day and only did menial labor. Profit margins and cold logic are not a good reason to let these men starve.
The complaint of the first workers is revealing. They complain that the landowner has “made them equal.” That’s just it, regardless of how long they did or did not work, those men are equal in dignity to the ones who worked from the beginning.
Am I saying that everyone should always make the same amount of money? Of course not. The landowner is clearly much richer than the workers and there’s nothing wrong with that. Am I saying that we should pay people who refuse to work? No, the landowner only paid the people who worked. What I am saying is that human beings have a basic dignity that is more important than profit margins. It doesn’t matter how “low skilled” the labor is. If you expect someone to work for you for a full day, they should make more than enough to survive that day. Period.
If you want a world in which people serve you burgers or coffee, you must be willing to pay enough for those people to live a decent life while making burgers or serving coffee. Again, gaming the system, laziness, refusal to work – those are all sins in their own right and Jesus is not saying we should reward that. But those able and willing to work a full day should be paid at least enough to provide for themselves and their family for a full day with some left over. This also means that it is wrong to expect people to work excessive hours or on the sabbath day in order to make ends meet.
The specifics can get complicated. Cost of living varies from place to place. Some jobs don’t require a full day’s labor and so can’t pay a full day’s wage. People cannot give what they don’t have. Sometimes both the owner and the worker are victims of larger injustices. But we should be willing to live more simply so that others can afford to simply live. No billionaire or millionaire should have any full-time employees who can’t afford food, clothing, and a basic place to live. I’m not advocating a specific policy here, nor do I think we’ll succeed in doing this perfectly. I am saying that there is one argument which you cannot make as a Christian. You cannot say “if they want to make a living, they should find a better job.” No. If they are doing a full day’s work, they have a right to a full day’s pay. They deserve a just wage.
If that principle bothers you, you have either misunderstood what I’m saying or are in need of some more conversion. We all have areas in our life that are insufficiently conformed to the Gospel. Our faith should challenge our assumptions from time to time – that’s how we know it’s working. God’s ways are not our ways, as the 1st reading reminds us.
The Gospel is not a private matter, it is a radical revelation of God’s love for the world… all of it: personal, communal, political, economic, social. Jesus Christ calls us to a way of life that’s supposed to stretch us and the systems around us. Will we ever make the perfect society? Of course not, but that does not excuse us from the command to try to make it better, even when it hurts. Indeed, that’s why we look to the cross, because it is in dying to self that we are raised to eternal life.