by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace
Now, my guess is that some of us in the church are feeling like those workers and are ready to grumble a bit. It’s not really fair, is it, that the ones who work one hour get the same as those who work the whole day, and in the terrible heat of the day. Well, I hope by the time you leave, you’ll be ready to give up grumbling and really hear what God is trying to tell us today, because it’s all about God’s love.
The three lessons today instruct us in various ways as to what the love of God really is, and so we have to listen carefully to understand this. … But it does seem natural that we would grumble a bit, just as those workers did. But again, if we listen deeply to the Scripture lessons, all three of them today, we’ll understand better how God’s love is behind all of this.
First of all, if we turn to the lesson from Isaiah: Here is a passage where the prophet is urging the people to return from their exile, even though they’ve been unfaithful. They have fallen away from their Jewish practices. They’ve turned to pagan idols. They’ve taken up with foreign peoples against God’s rule, so they’re hesitant to come back because they’re afraid….