Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Today’s text

Matthew 20:1-15

'Now the kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day and sent them to his vineyard. Going out at about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place and said to them, "You go to my vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage." So they went. At about the sixth hour and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same. Then at about the eleventh hour he went out and found more men standing around, and he said to them, "Why have you been standing here idle all day?" "Because no one has hired us," they answered. He said to them, "You go into my vineyard too." In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, "Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last arrivals and ending with the first." So those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came forward and received one denarius each. When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. They took it, but grumbled at the landowner saying, "The men who came last have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day's work in all the heat." He answered one of them and said, "My friend, I am not being unjust to you; did we not agree on one denarius? Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the lastcomer as much as I pay you. Have I no right to do what I like with my own? Why should you be envious because I am generous?"

Reflection

I don’t know if I have ever heard a better reason to love what I do, Jesus, and to do what I love.

I don’t think the laborers loved their work. Perhaps this is little more than a romantic ideal, but when I love what I am doing, I surrender to it. I am there, one with the task. The totality of attention is given to one thing alone. No part of mind and heart stands back admiring what I see or imagining how others are looking at me.

My reward is the simple joy of doing, of feeling the miracle of my body finding the rhythm and flow in which body becomes one with the task. Freedom is found through absorption in the moment, the only time any of us really have.

Time disappears for a time. The past fades away; the future fails to distract. I am here, now, absorbed, given, surrendered, no part of me left over to be somewhere else.

In that moment, external reward doesn’t matter. It holds no allure. No: it ceases to exist, for I have the reward of pure givenness to motion of hand and mind.

Sure, the spell breaks soon enough, too soon, fracturing the unity of past and future in the present moment. And concerns about getting paid, paying the bills and how others see me intrude into consciousness.

But I emerge from the moment of oneness aware of the truth: The soul’s satisfaction lies not in any external reward but in the joy of giving oneself to the labor of the hour. So better find something you love in which one can lose yourself--and discover you are.

This is the way of joy in the Lord’s vineyard.

Pr. David L. Miller