Where is Your Heart?

Have we ever put on our lips the words, "He doesn't deserve it"? An event took place and injustice was done. The feeling of helpless frustration towards the perpetrator, coupled with the wrenching empathy towards the poor victim, drives us into the tension that fills our hearts with a certain anger and unwillingness to extend mercy and forgiveness. And when we finally hear the perpetrator pleading for mercy after he knows he is about to pay a heavy price for his deeds, how we protest in the name of justice and refuse to "tenderise" the hardness of hearts in the firm believe that "He doesn't deserve it".

In last Sunday's Gospel, Jesus paid all the workers 1 denarius for a day's work, no matter how many hours they had each worked. If we were to put ourselves in the shoes of the workers who were the first hired into the vineyard, we will certainly feel a strong sense of injustice, perceiving that since we had done more, we should deserve to be paid more. A highly diligent child of average intelligence feels sore and jealous that he could never outdo his lazy peer of high IQ no matter how hard he studies. Isn't this comparison and calculation of the amount we put in in relation to the amount we get a very pertinent practice in our society? We have performance-related bonuses to reward people who work harder and produce greater results for the organisation. If we were to leave an organisation, our month's pay will be prorated accordingly. We judge and we attach a price tag to everything according to what it appears to deserve, like the television game show "The Price is Right". While we can price objects and the commercial work we do, can we honestly do the same for love, sacrifice, selflessness, which founds the nature of God's work in the vineyard?

Source

If we dare to put aside our prejudices and the familiar adoption of our societal norms, and dig deeper at the message that Jesus might be putting across to us, we might catch a better understanding of who God is and what is required of us at the crux of our relationship with this God. The initial suspicion that God might not be that fair after all might slowly give way to an appreciation of His flawless ways of directing our hearts to the real Truth of His Kingdom.

Here, the question "Where does our heart really lie" comes to mind. Have we wholly set our hearts on God? Or are our hearts distracted with the many externals? "What do I get in return", "How much are you paying me", "Will it make me look good", "What is the job scope like"? If today, God hires us to work in His vineyard, will our thoughts be similar to these real human concerns? If they are, then perhaps, we might have missed the point. The focus is not on the amount of work done or what we will get eventually but rather, the focus is for who it is being done.

If our hearts are set upon God wholeheartedly, our will, united with His, brings us together in the common goal of working for His greater glory in every way we can, in whatever measure it requires of us. Our hearts will rejoice with each lost sheep found, no matter how late, because our hearts share the same beat as our Lord, who desires to save all. When our hearts do not beat alongside with God's, we will forget the truth that we are mere creatures, limited, sinful and undeserving. We will begin to compare ourselves with others and see others as undeserving and ourselves as more deserving. We will feel that God is unfair, blessing another seemingly more than He blesses us, and the worst of all is when we meet at the Gates of Heaven the very people we had judged as unworthy.

Of the people whom the landowner had hired, was there even one who was truly deserving of the 1 denarius? If not for the landowner who went out in search of us, would we not be still standing by the roadside, aimlessly, hopelessly, meaninglessly? Wasn't the landowner the master of his servants, whose lives were his to decide? Were not servants meant to serve their master in their entire lifespan? Why demand for that 1 denarius or more if the work being done was what ought for us to do to begin with? If Jesus is truly the Master of our lives, can He not decide how He wants to hire us, what He wants to hire us to do? If our hearts truly take Him as our Master, will not our gratitude to Him for the gift of life and love naturally burn our hearts with the deep desire to do whatever He asks of us, regardless the reward, and independent of any other person? Isn't the indescribable joy and peace of being His trusty worker, so great a reward that nothing else matters?

Jesus paid up our wages with His own life, opening up the gates of heaven and the hope of salvation to us. He paid us even before we began work, before we chose to work or not in His vineyard. Since He has paid with His life, it is only right then that the work we do requires us to lay down our lives too.

Where is your heart?
How pure and sincere is your love for God?

23 September 2011, Friday
11.50pm