Love That Resists Absurdity
As a child, I did not read very much. I began to read more around the time I entered college. I read especially often during my military service. I served at a guard post on the front line, along the border with North Korea. Life there was simple and repetitive. Most days were much the same. Whenever I had a little time, I would read. Back then, I preferred books that explained ideas and theories. I thought reading was worthwhile when it gave me new knowledge. Novels and poetry did not interest me much.
But as I grew older, that began to change. Especially after I turned forty, I found myself enjoying novels more. Through novels, I could get a glimpse of lives I had never lived. A character might be hard to understand at first. But as I followed what that person went through, I began to see them differently. I might still disagree with what they did. Yet I could begin to understand why they did it, and I became a little slower to judge. This has helped me in ministry, too. When we sit with people and listen to their stories, we often discover things we could never have known just by looking at them.
Recently, I reread The Stranger by Albert Camus. The novel begins with the death of a mother. The main character, Meursault, cannot say for certain whether his mother died today or yesterday. At her funeral, he does not show his grief in the way people expect. He seems more aware of the hot sun and his own tiredness. Some time later, he kills a man on a beach. At his trial, people judge him not only for the killing, but also for how he behaved at his mother’s funeral. Again and again, they raise the question of why he did not cry. He is responsible for the killing. But as people judge that crime, they also condemn him for failing to grieve in the way they expected.
But when Camus speaks of “the absurd,” he means more than the way society judges people. We
want to understand our lives. We want to know why something has happened and what our suffering means. When someone who has lived an honest life suffers a terrible loss, or when someone we love dies too soon, we struggle to understand. We ask, “Why did this happen?” Yet sometimes, however often we ask, no answer comes. We search for meaning, but the world gives us no answer. Camus called this clash between our need for meaning and the silence of the world “the absurd.” Those of us who have faith know this experience, too. There are things we cannot understand, even as we pray. Some questions stay with us for a long time.
Today’s Gospel does not answer that question directly. But here, too, things do not happen as we expect. There is a difference between what we consider fair and what the owner of the vineyard does. Jesus tells us about workers hired for the day to work in a vineyard. Early in the morning, the owner goes out and sends workers into his vineyard. He goes out again at nine, at noon, and at three, and hires more workers. Then, at about five, when the day is almost over, he returns to the marketplace. There are still people standing there. He asks them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They answer, “Because no one has hired us.” That answer stays with me. We remember them as the people who worked for only one hour. But before that hour of work, they had spent hours unable to find work. As others were hired and went off to work, these people were still waiting in the marketplace. They may have worried that once again they would have to go home to their families empty-handed. The owner says to them, “You also go into the vineyard.”
When evening comes, the owner has the workers paid, starting with those who came last. They receive a denarius, a full day’s pay. It is the same amount he promised those who began early in the morning. The first workers see this, and their hopes rise. If those who worked only one hour receive that much, surely they will receive more. But they, too, receive a denarius. They receive what they were promised. Still, they are angry. They have worked through the heat of the day, yet they are treated just like those who came late. We can understand how they feel. It is natural to expect more pay when we have worked longer. Jesus knows how hard they have worked. But the owner says, “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.” The first workers are not upset because the owner has given them less than he promised. They are upset because he has been generous to someone else. Their own pay has not changed. But once they see what others have received, they are unhappy.
We find something similar in Jonah, in today’s first reading. Jonah is angry because God has forgiven Nineveh. Nineveh was an Assyrian city. For the people of Israel, it represented a cruel and powerful enemy. For Jonah, Nineveh was not easy to forgive. Yet God has mercy on that city. Jonah goes outside the city and sits down. When the bush that has given him shade withers, he becomes deeply distressed. God reminds Jonah of his concern for the bush. Then God asks, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” Even in the city Jonah hates, there are lives God cares about. We believe in God’s mercy. But when that mercy reaches someone we find hard to accept, our feelings become more complicated. The forgiveness we desperately needed may seem far too freely given when someone else receives it. We can find something of ourselves in Jonah and in those first workers.
In daily life, we weigh work and reward. We need to consider how much work someone has done and what responsibilities they have carried. There is nothing wrong with asking for fair pay. But we cannot judge a person’s worth by how much work they have done. Working fewer hours does not make someone less hungry. Not being hired does not make that person’s day any less important. The owner of the vineyard goes out to find the person still waiting in the marketplace. And he gives that person a full day’s pay. The first workers see only one hour of labor. The owner wants to be generous to that person, too. Sometimes, when we see someone receiving help, our first question is whether they have done enough to deserve it. We may know very little about the difficulties they have faced. While we compare what we have received with what someone else has received, we fail to see what life is like for the person still standing there empty-handed.
I would like to return to the question we began with. We do not fully understand why some people suffer so much. Having faith does not mean we can explain every illness, every death, or every loss. Camus and the Christian faith do not give the same answer to this problem. But we, too, have to ask how we are to live with questions we cannot resolve. In today’s readings, God calls the people no one has hired and cares for the lives in the city Jonah wants to see destroyed. God cares for people we have failed to notice, or have not wanted to see. And we who believe in this God have something to do.
Even when we cannot explain why someone is suffering, we can listen to their story. Even when we cannot solve all their problems, we need not leave them to face those problems alone. Love begins when we listen patiently to someone others have rejected, and share a little of what we have. I believe this love is our Christian way of resisting the absurdity of the world. We refuse to add our indifference to suffering we cannot explain. Even as the day was ending, the owner went back to the marketplace. There were still people there. I hope we can do the same.
Amen.