Why Teach in a Catholic School? – Homily for Catechetical Sunday

Today is Catechetical Sunday,
a day we pray for and bless those who instruct our children in the faith.
Some of them do this for a living, as teachers at our parish school.
Some of them do this as volunteers in the religious education program,
giving up hours of their personal time each week.

We might ask ourselves, why would someone choose to do this?
Why do the school teachers work for less than they could make
in a public school?
Why do the volunteers spend their own time working as volunteers
when they could be doing something else with their time?

Let’s broaden the question:

Why would we choose to give up our personal time
to gather here today?

Why come to Andi’s book study every week?
Why come to a class on the Reformation or attend Theology on Tap?
Why is a member of the Good Samaritan Guild
spending hours each week
taking care of a fellow parishioner with a broken ankle?

Why do some of us help at the House of Charity?
Why are so many people signed up to give blood this weekend?

Let’s broaden the question even further:

Why does the Church in Spokane have a House of Charity?
Why is there a St. Margaret’s Shelter,
a St. Anne’s Children and Family Center?
Why do we spend money, time, and resources
on sending relief to other countries?
Why do we speak out
in support of immigration reform and the rights of unborn children?

Why do we do all of these things?

Well, it’s in Scripture, we might answer.
Isaiah tells us to seek the Lord while he may be found,
to call to him while he is near.
St. Paul tells us to conduct ourselves in a way worthy of the gospel.

But those readings tell us what we ought to do.
Why do we choose to listen to them and act on them?
What is our motivation for being a disciple?

To answer that question we need to turn to the gospel
and the Parable of the Good Employer.

This is a classic parable.
Like all good parables, it shocks us.
It makes us scratch our head.

In fact, whenever we come across something in Scripture
that is difficult or puzzling like this,
that’s usually a good sign to stop and spend some time on it,
rather than skipping over it.
So let’s spend some time with this parable.

The landowner who owns a vineyard.
In Scripture, a vineyard is often used to represent the people of God.
So God, the landowner, goes out at dawn to hire vineyard workers.
Then he comes back again at nine, then noon, then three,
and finally at five.

This is similar to how each of us receive the call
and respond to the gospel.
Each of us comes to discipleship in a different way
at different stages of life.
Maybe we’ve worked in the vineyard since dawn.
Maybe it was in Catholic grade school or religious education,
and something a teacher said or did struck us,
and the Holy Spirit began working on us.
Maybe it was something that happened
on a retreat in high school or college.
Maybe it was when we got married
and we saw the deep faith of our spouse.
Maybe it was when our children were born.
Maybe we felt the call when we were younger
and we kind of drifted away,
and the birth of our children brought us back to practicing our faith.
Maybe it was in middle age after a series of tragic events,
or after living a life that felt kind of empty.
Maybe it’s in old age and we’re starting to think about
what comes after this life.
There are even some people who embrace gospel on their death bed,
maybe even in a jail cell.

The Good Employer, the Landowner, calls us all at different times.

Now returning to the parable,
it’s the end of the day, and it’s time to be paid.
These are day laborers,
so they need this day’s wages to buy food and support their families.

This time something unusual occurs, and Jesus is alerting his readers
to pay attention.
The landowner orders the last workers to be paid first.
In our world, the kingdom of earth,
they would be paid for the hour that they worked.

But in the Kingdom of Heaven things work a little differently.
God’s ways are not our ways, as Isaiah says in the first reading.
The landowner has compassion on them.
He knows they have a family to support,
so he gives them a full day’s wage.
They’ve only worked for an hour, and only in the cool shade of evening.
Yet they get the full day’s pay
out of the goodness of his heart,
out of sheer generosity.

The first to be hired assume they’re going to get more.
They did ten times the work in the hottest part of the day.

So when they get the same daily wage, how do they react?
Probably the way most of us would:
they start to grumble.

Is that fair?

When we come to payday in the Kingdom of Heaven,
at the end of our lives,
what’s going to happen?

Those of us who have been laborers in God’s vineyard for years,
those of us who were called and embraced the gospel at a young
and who have been coming to Mass faithfully,
those of us who have been volunteering,
sending our check off every week to the church,
going to Adoration,
praying the rosary with our families,
making sure our kids have a good upbringing,
donating blood year after year,
teaching children in religious education classes for decades,
they will receive the same payment
as those who were just baptized yesterday,
or who embraced the gospel on their death bed,
or after spending fifteen years in prison?

Is it fair that God should save those who turn to God
at the end of their lives,
when others have served God faithfully throughout their lives?

Instinctively we cry, “No! It’s not fair!”
“I’ve worked years for God, slaving in the heat of the noonday sun.
And this person who embraced God at the end
and bypassed all the rest,
they get the same reward that I earned by the sweat of my brow?”

And there it is.
“I’ve earned…”

When we start to believe that we earn our salvation,
then we run into the same trouble
that the workers hired at dawn ran into:
We think that we’re owed something based on how hard we work.

But these good things we do
aren’t being tallied up in a record book somewhere.
These good things aren’t about working our way into heaven.
Salvation is God’s gift to us, it isn’t something we earn.

There isn’t a country club in heaven
for those who have worked longer for the kingdom,
you know with a grand view of the Beatific Vision,
and then a little cottage for the people who came late to the party.

Everybody gets the same thing.

So let’s go back to our question.
Why do we do the things that we do if it’s not to earn our salvation?
Why should we bother giving blood to someone,
why should we bother coming to Mass
when we’d rather be sleeping in or watching the game,
why care for the poor, why pray?

Why bother if it’s not going to get us anything?
What is our motivation for being a disciple?

Well, that’s actually a secondary question.
There’s an even more important question behind it.

The better question is, “Why does God even call us to be a disciple?”
It’s good to ask, “What’s our motivation for being a disciple?”
but even before we answer that question we have to ask,
“Why does God want me as a disciple?”

God doesn’t need workers for his vineyard.
He could do this himself.
Who am I to be asked to be a part of bringing salvation to the world?
God wants me to help build the Kingdom of Heaven?
Why?

Because that’s where we get our dignity,
that’s where we get our meaning.
That’s how we become full human beings,
when we participate in the work of building the Kingdom of Heaven.

When we bless our children before they go to sleep,
we are ushering in the kingdom.
When we sign up to work at the House of Charity,
when we come to Mass to be in community,
when we turn to the person next to us for the Sign of Peace
and really look into their eyes
and really shake their hand,
and really convey to them how much we honor their presence,
then we are building up the kingdom,
working in the vineyard of the Lord.

And we are working in the vineyard because it gives us life,
it makes us more fully human.

God calls us to be workers not to earn our way in,
but so that we can participate in the blessings he has bestowed on us.
So that we can be bearers of blessing.
We don’t bear the burden of the day,
we bear his blessing to the world.

So in a few moments when we bless these catechists,
we can only do that because God
in his great love and generosity
has given us the call to do that.
And when they go out to teach the children
and instruct them in the ways of faith,
they can only do it because God
in his great love and generosity
has called them to do it.

That is why we do what we do.
Because God, in his great love and generosity
has called us to.

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