Terry Fitzpatrick Homilist June 18-19 2011
Matthew 20:1-16
20“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
This parable is more like a Zen Buddhist Koan, a riddle given by the Zen master to the student to focus the mind during meditation and to develop intuitive heart-thinking.
Of all of Jesus’ parables this is probably one of the hardest to understand. It seems as though the owner of the vineyard is being unjust in paying the last the same as the first.
Those who had toiled all day in the sun compared to those who sat around and did nothing all day. Should not there be a just and fair reward.
We are left puzzled if we approach this parable with what I spoke of last week, the dualistic mind.
The judging mind which is concerned with who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong. The mind which is weighing and measuring.
Jesus is inviting us to meta-noia often translated to “repent” ( to meta, to transcend; noia, the perceiving thinking mind) – to transcend the small mind and move into the larger mind, the mind of God.
I would like to use a metaphor from the world of computers to explain a little further, the small mind.
I am borrowing from the work of Cynthia Bourgeault, Jim Marion and Ken Wilbur, theologians, sociologists, scientists and spiritual teachers.
They say we come into the world with a certain operating system installed within us. Throughout our lives we have an opportunity to upgrade this system if we wish to do so.
We come into the world with what they refer to as a Binary operating system, an either or system, our egoic operating system. Built into our brain is a self reflexive consciousness which has the ability to stand outside ourself as an object.
This system is subject/object orientated. That is how it works. It divides the world into in/out; subject/object; me/it; inside/outside.
Our early childhood training teaches us to run this operating system. Illustrated well in the song and activity on Sesame Street “One of these things is not like the other” ……
The child is learning to think in terms of discriminating how everything is distinct from everything else. We learn how the table is not a chair; how a dog is not like a cat. This training helps us to operate the binary system. When we discover our identity through the binary operating system, we experience ourselves as a person with distinct qualities and differences. We experience ourselves in ways that we are not like the other. We begin to list all the things that make us different. “I am an Aries, I have red hair, I am an 8 on the Enneagram scale, and INFD on the Myer-Briggs personality scale, a Catholic, a Jew, a Protestant, a priest, rabbi, minister. In this operating system we experience others as outside ourselves and ourselves as distinct and fixed identities withdistinct and peculiar life experiences that go to make up who I am. And what does life look like when we use the Binary system we come with ? Well it thinks in terms of Good/Bad; Right/Wrong ; Before/After.
It gives us a solid sense of ourself as the one who is at the hub of all this Duality.
But really this identity we have constructed is a mere mirage. Modern science and all the great religious traditions have said this for centuries. The central teachings on the impermanence of life and with science we now know that all of matter is made up of rapidly moving atoms, coming into existence and moving out of existence. These outer forms are merely illusion- a bit like looking at a fast spinning propeller on a plane. When a light is shone through the fast spinning blades, the blades look solid like a golden solid circle. It looks like it has depth and dimension, density and solidity. One has to keep reminding oneself that it is a mirage created by a fast moving propeller. So is our sense of identity created by the binary operating system.
There is no small self or egoic being. Nothing is separated from anything else that has inside and an outside.
This is a symptom of this operating system that divides the world up into duality in order to perceive itself.
Jesus is constantly inviting us in the gospels to upgrade our operating system. Life is going to look a whole lot different when you do.
The operating system Jesus is inviting us to moves us beyond a mind which separates everything, to a mind which seeks unity – sometimes called the unitive mind , the non-dual mind, or as the mystics prefer, the operating system of the Heart.
This new consciousness does not make distinctions in order to Be.
In the wisdom tradition this operating from the Heart is not as we have classically understood it in the west.
We often pair it off against the mind. We say a person is in their mind if they are wedded to cerebral thinking and in their heart if they are emotional. We think of the heart as the centre of our emotional life. In the wisdom tradition, the heart is primarily an organ of inner alignment – a vast and highly proficient and powerful organ of perception of the world. The heart can pick up reality in a much deeper, profound and multi-spectrum way than our poor mind could ever hope to.
The Sufi teacher Kadir Kelmenski described the heart as such – “ We have subtle subconscious facilities we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities, intuition, wisdom, and a sense of unity. Asthetic, qualitative and creative faculties, image-forming and symbolic capacities, and though these faculties are many, we give them a single name, with some justification because they are operating best when they are operating in concert. They comprise a mind in line with the cosmic mind, this total mind we call Heart.”
For most wisdom traditions the heart is the organ of spiritual alignment and keeps us aligned with our innermost and what we truly know.
It keeps us aligned as we move beyond the obvious and what is accessible to us by our five senses – our limited Cartesian mind.
It moves beyond the Binary mind of separation, rather it perceives harmony. It sees from a point of singleness of non-duality, of oneness. No separation between God and human, human and human, human and creation. Separation is not factored into its operating system – a whole new way of seeing and being.
Many of us went to listen to the Dalai Lama in the Botanic gardens last Friday afternoon. For those of us who went when asked what do you remember of what he said, a few scraps of what he said remain, but what most overwhelmingly remember is the wonderful atmosphere of peace and harmony which he generated with his infectious spirit and personality.
During the question time, a woman became so distressed as she related the dreadful situation of her own life, and began to weep. The Dalai Lama left his chair and moved down into the crowd and embraced her with a deep compassion. Here is a man moving from that deeper place of the Heart.
Jesus wanted to move people into this new mind, to this meta-noia.
For those who heard this parable of the vineyard at the time of Jesus, Jesus wanted to challenge their small mindedness. He wanted to challenge the binary operating systems from which they were living their lives – who is deserving and who is not; them and us. In this new but ancient operating system which Jesus is challenging them to upgrade to, there is no separation, everyone is in, everyone is deserving, there is enough for everyone. The good of everyone can be tended to, all are equal, all are deserving.
Jesus wants his listeners to be catapulted into a whole new way of seeing and being.
For unless this unitive mind, this consciousness of the Heart takes hold, it is almost impossible to do the Gospel, to really live Jesus’ teachings.
26/06/2011 at 9:59 am Permalink
Terry strives mightily to shoehorn every gospel reading into a Buddhist framework.
This parable is not as mysterious as he makes out. There is a perfectly natural, traditional, Christian account of it (which anyone listening to a homily at a Catholic Mass that Sunday would have heard).
You don’t have to accept that interpretation, you may find another more appealing, but it would be dishonest to claim, as Terry does, that the parable remains utterly mysterious until viewed through the lens of Buddhism/nondualism.
29/06/2011 at 2:40 pm Permalink
This homily is not meant to be read deeply, it’s just the daily practical advice giving. Though a central reference, the Buddhist analogy is one among many in this homily. That pressure was ever on South Brisbane priests to say more than a simple homily cannot be understood without understanding the context of a Brisbane church community looking for something more than many local churches offered, which has led to confrontation, sensationalism, and St Mary’s skewed out of proportion in the scheme of things – for many years it’s been almost nothing more than a chapel – it doesn’t even have a community hall, or a school, attached. The poor administration of St Mary’s has benefited some who’ve used it’s facilities, but it’s left many slowly working through and moving on from our past whilst trying to collect together and preserve a fragmented history for future generations.
01/07/2011 at 2:19 am Permalink
I agree with Perry, although I might disagree with a traditional homily about the passage.
I think Terry makes some solid points about dualism and non-dualism and I even think that Jesus’ teaching is non-dualist. However, this is not the point of Matthew 20: 1-16. I am surprised that Terry describes this passage as “probably one of the hardest to understand” because, while it is very challenging, its meaning appears pretty clear especially in the preceding chapter on economics and “But many who are first will be last. And many who are last will be first.” (19:30)
Jesus has an economic message, of which Matthew 20: 1-16 is a part. Jesus is very explicit about his economic paradigm. He preaches the re-introduction of tribal communism. When Jesus first publicly announced his ministry he proclaimed the Jubilee year that restores land to traditional owners and abolishes debt.
Jesus economics, especially the preceding chapter. (Mat 19)….. “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor” and “it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom”…. has been euphamised away into a meaningless spiritual paradox (koen) by the institutional church. My plea is for the radical christians and theologians to rediscover the radical message of Jesus, including his economics, rather than replicating the institutional church’s dumbing down of the gospel.
The bible is not a supernatural oracle like a Ouija board or magic mirror. It is a record of stories that have meaning in and of themselves. While it is true we may not be able to fully understand the stories over the chasm of time and culture, our non-understanding of the story is no mystical doorway into any hidden meanings.
Terry of course is not alone on these matters. Greg Jenks also appears to be proposing a magic oracle mode of understanding the bible, whereby it means anything we want it to mean.
The bible has a very particular meaning written by and for particular people. J.D. Crossan and others have taken theology light-years forward by articulating a political, historical and archaeological context of the new testament. The bible has specific meaning which we can learn more about through more study, but if for whatever reason we do not feel comfortable with the clear and obvious meaning of the bible or simply do not understand it then we should abandon it as significant rather than re-configuring it to align with our own opinions. Same with any other tribal indigenous dreaming story.
John Tracey
01/07/2011 at 5:05 pm Permalink
Thankyou Terry for a thought provoking homily. Thanks also to Perry Mason for his comments above.
“The Text This Week” lists 38 commentary’s on Matthew 20:1-16. Two I like, which I think also align somewhat with Terry’s homily, are:
1) The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself, Daniel B. Clendenin.
“As he so often did, his punch line shocked his listeners with a radical reversal that subverted conventional wisdom. If we listen carefully today, it should shock us too.”
2) Matthew in the Margins, by Brian McGowan, Anglican priest in Western Australia.
The parable isn’t about work practices, labour relations, or any of that kind of thing. It’s all about the topsy-turvy Rule of God. I see three qualities of that Rule here: i) God is maddeningly generous. ii) His justice is mind-boggling. Even late starters can be winners because God’s Rule isn’t competitive. Everyone who genuinely wants to comes first! iii) Under God’s Rule, it’s always Now. No long term deals or promises. They don’t need to be long term, ‘cos God is always the God of Now. It’s always Now under God’s Rule, & it’s always Now that God goes looking for me to ‘sign me up’.
03/07/2011 at 12:12 pm Permalink
John Tracey’s ‘Jesus economics’ when spoken in the 1st century and certainly in many contexts today are valid – where I think the issue is today though much more is economics on a much larger ever invisaged than a first century church. What is a church building in the scheme of China or EU or Asia Pacific economics? Minescule.. yet for a local group in South Brisbane, these huts provide a community’s memory and fabric – the are our nexus points where perhaps once a rock was – though certainly natural landmarks still abound – Musgrave Park is one.
This is why it disturbs me that there is not the administration at SME that says “We need a permanent home NOW, then perhaps fill in some of the [minor] details later”. I want to shake Terry, but I can’t because I do respect the guy – he’s an outstanding pastoral worker. However, I question his administration skills – I wonder if he’s really up for the job.
I feel 2011 SME has possibly almost let a media opportunity slip by – when the spotlight was on, to gather a quarter mil deposit and make an investment in real estate – in a community centre… has that time past?
But I know why – I was there at St Mary’s in the 2000s and saw the strong social justice – welfare focus which had great validity, yet the practical administrative issues seemed beyond the grasp of the social workers, or was not even in their agenda at St Mary’s South Brisbane – Micah’s charter drawn up in the 1990s made it not part of the Catholic church – i.e. always the possibility they would move on from the premises.
The lawyers, accountants, and administrators who have the role in securing a community’s longetivity.. that’s what the SME people left behind when they walked down the road, and it’s a potential tragedy for our community’s modern history 1980-2009 say, in 20 years’ time when we want to remember..
Tim
04/07/2011 at 3:02 pm Permalink
Hello Christians,
Buddhism was the teachings of Rabbi Jesus in Buddhist societies, Christianity was the teachings of Buddha in Christian society and the same is true of Judaism and Islam. Now it all does not matter; these are dead stories. The prison gates have burst open and we can all take the walk to freedom. Or, we can be like Bishop William and go on about prison reform. Bill wants women to share his cell; they too can share the delusions of being a “priest”. God save them!
Back in the early days of the Great walk Out, back in the early 70’s, many good people did go to the Buddha, or at least they thought they did. In fact they didn’t: they simply went from one grand delusion to another. Their imagination needed the cartoon character heroism. No great harm was done eventually they grew up. Terry and Peter, who have just recently joined us in the Great Walk Out, are now going through this spiritually immature phase. And they too will grow up. They are still on a milk diet, as St Paul would say.
I do not know why Terry bothers with the Dalai Lama; the man is just a pope without real estate for father figure seekers. Terry does not see the true spiritual teachers standing right in front of him: the homeless people who use his social justice service. That’s why the Brisbane congregation is still Christian, contrary to what Perry Mason and other contributors say; they have “remembered the poor”, as St Paul says.
Love Fosco
07/07/2011 at 1:47 pm Permalink
Hello Christians,
I must publicly apologise to Terry. I have been a savage critic (although not an enemy) of Terry but it now seems that I have got the man wrong. Tim, who knows such things, says that Terry is an “incompetent administrator”. For me, as one who cannot organise a chook raffle, that makes Terry a really top bloke. There is always a glass of wine at my table for such a person.
Tim does not quite get it. The battle of the Big Ideas is not about property development; it’s about hearts and minds. The warriors needed in that terrain are not lawyers and accountants it is poets dreams and romantics. The Rabbi Jesus Story must be rebuilt in our imagination – a place alien to organizational people. Of course any person can enter there; it’s just that when we do we have to leave our certainties s at the door.
The one most needed by the “new Church” (if there is be a new Church) is the wounded person who has journeyed the night to experience the new day breaking. Maybe the broken people using the social justice service can show us the way there.
And what happens if there is no new day? Oh well, we can all go back to property development!
Love Fosco
14/07/2011 at 1:17 am Permalink
To Perry Mason:
I think it is highly unfair of you to attack Terry. This is a deeply moving lesson representative of how the Hand of God was and continues to be at work in our lives and greater society today.
That you cannot see it also presents a serious dilemma.
Reread what Terry wrote and ‘wait upon the Lord’ to give you guidance, to open your heart and eyes…
We are each on the path, and that’s the main point.
We strive for the unitive mind – not – as much as I enjoy Descartes – the duality of the Cartesian mind..while at the same time we need also to respect differences amongst us.
Cheers,
Jane
15/07/2011 at 10:45 pm Permalink
Hi Jane. Thanks for your comment, but honestly and with great respect I think it is you being unfair in claiming I ‘attack’ Terry. I simply pointed out what I think is a mistake in his talk, namely his idea that there is no explanation of the gospel parable other than via Buddhism. I’m sure that Terry, if he were to read my and others’ comments, and recall his seminary years, would be the first to admit that there is a perfectly reasonable Christian exegesis. Not that he would still accept it – but that is beside the point.
I have the greatest respect for Buddhism, and for Catholicism, but they can’t both be right at a fundamental level. Buddhism teaches that the world is an illusion and to be shunned. Catholicism teaches a world which is an objective reality, created by a good and rational God, with a rational creature, mankind, capable of exploring how the world works. With such radically different world views it is no surprise that the modern scientific enterprise began in the Catholic west rather than in the Buddhist east.