Last week, our Religious Education Director registered two little sisters for class. She asked them how old they were. One sister replied, “We’re both seven.”
The other sister quickly added, “My birthday is April 8, and my sister’s birthday is April 28th. The director smiled and asked, “How is that possible?” The other sister spoke up and said, “Because one of us is adopted.”
“Oh, which one?”
The two sisters began to giggle, and one said, “We asked our dad that question a while ago, but he just looked at us and said, “I can’t remember who was adopted, because I love you both equally.”
Isn’t that the way God loves us? God loves all of us equally. We are loved not because we have earned God’s love but because God is generous with His love to everyone. God’s ways are different from our ways.
It was back in 1994 that an American family of four was driving on the highway south of Naples, Italy, enjoying their vacation. Suddenly someone shot at their car in an attempt to rob them. While the parents and daughter were unharmed, the robbers fatally wounded their 7-year-old son, Nicholas, who was sleeping in the back seat. For two days, he lay in a coma, without regaining consciousness, before he died.
The incident is not remembered because of the killing but because the parents and daughter donated little Nicholas’ organs to those who could benefit from them. Seven people, five of them teenagers, received Nicholas’ corneas, kidneys, liver, heart and pancreas. The family’s story prompted a surge in interest in donor registrations, especially in Italy. Prior to the Green’s generosity, organ donations were not a common occurrence in Italy.
Margaret Green, the mother, said of her son, “I would have liked him to live a long time. Now I wish the same thing for all his tiny yet healthy organs.
The Green’s generosity was both shocking and amazing to the Italians because, despite their loss, the family wanted something good to come of such a tragedy. That is not normal. It is not natural. The family did not react the way many of us would have reacted.
The Green’s behavior was more like the behavior of God. This is what truly made their story so impressive. Isn’t there always the element of astonishment and surprise when one of us acts or thinks like God?
In the first reading today from the Book of Isaiah, we heard, “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.”
Obviously, the Isaiah reading was chosen to complement Jesus’ teaching about the generous landowner. To illustrate how God’s thoughts and ways are extraordinarily different from ours, Jesus tells the disciples a story about the owner of a vineyard. This is not a story about God’s justice. It is a story about God’s generosity and love.
It’s like a parent loving all their children equally or a family donating organs of a deceased loved one in the midst of an unforeseen tragedy. Generosity and love.
But seriously, what in the world was Jesus thinking, telling a story that runs against the grain of most of societal values? No matter how many times I read or hear these passages from Matthew about the vineyard owner who pays all the laborers equally, regardless of how long they worked, I find myself shaking my head in disapproval. Why does the Johnny-come-lately get the same pay as those who began working at the dawn of day?
It is easy to understand the irritation of the workers who spent all day working in the hot sun. It just does not seem fair.
How many of you who have people working for you would dare pay your employees that way? It is financially unsound, and besides, you would have a grievance or some other type of lawsuit brought against you for preferential treatment.
My sense of justice helps me to identify with the outraged workers; I think they should have received extra payment, or the Johnny-come-lately should have received less pay.
But here is the catch: the laborers all got what they agreed to work for. The laborers who worked the most hours assumed that they would get more than those who worked fewer hours. In reality, they got exactly what they agreed to work for.
I know it does not seem fair. But this story is not about justice; it is about generosity, and particularly God’s generosity.
Remember, God’s way and God’s thoughts are not our ways or our thoughts.
I admit that my opinions are often hopelessly shortsighted and likely to be very egocentric. But God is not that way. God is generous in love and forgiveness. For just as the vineyard owner dealt generously with each of the workers, so also does God deal generously with each of us as sinners.
I am personally grateful that God does not deal with me according to strict justice, but with generous mercy. That generous mercy is God’s grace, and that grace is the break I get when I don’t deserve it but really need it.
It is especially important to recall the purpose of telling this story. Do you remember the first verse of today’s gospel? “Jesus told his disciples this parable: The kingdom of heaven is like …” Jesus is once again describing the Kingdom of Heaven.
We are told what we have to do to gain eternal life, just as the laborers are told what they have to do to earn their wage. Like the vineyard owner, who goes out and invites everyone, so too God invites all people into the Kingdom. And, like the vineyard owner who goes out at all hours to look for workers, God is continually on the lookout for us, at all hours of the day or night.
The culmination of this story occurs when the landowner asks the question, “Are you envious because I am generous?” And maybe, just maybe, we are resentful and green with envy because God is generous to all people.
There is a story about two eagles, one very envious of the other, because the other could soar higher and more elegantly than he could. So, the envious eagle began to pluck out his strongest feathers from his own body and shoot them as arrows, trying to kill the other eagle.
It was his own undoing. He could not hit the high-flying eagle, and he was eventually grounded by his lack of feathers. Envy destroyed this eagle.
Why be envious if God is generous to someone else? Envy will only destroy us. We are all God’s adopted sons and daughters. God loves all of us equally.
© Copyright 2026 All Rights Reserved