He says the Lord wants everyone to respond to His call, and that all of us have a part to play
By Bee Goodman
Anyone who has ever split a dessert with a sibling knows the feeling. Somebody’s slice is a little bigger, and everybody at the table sees it at once.
It was that instinct, the human talent for spotting what’s unfair, that Bishop Mark Beckman reached for on Sept. 20 when he preached to an assembly of young adults that filled the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville.
The Mass drew young adults from across East Tennessee, including students from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and East Tennessee State University, along with young adults from numerous parishes around the diocese.
A parable that seems unfair
The Gospel that Sunday was Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard, from Matthew 20. A landowner goes out at dawn to hire workers, agrees on the usual daily wage, and sends them into his fields. He returns every few hours, each time finding people standing idle and sending them in. When evening comes, he pays the last workers first, and every one of them, even those who worked a single hour, receives the same wage as those who labored all day.
Maggie Parsons, a University of Tennessee-Chattanooga student, leads the intercessory prayers during the Mass for young adults. (Photo Bee Goodman)
The workers hired first grumble. The landowner’s reply is short. “Are you envious because I am generous?”
The second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, set the tone. St. Paul says he is torn between departing to be with Christ and staying on for the sake of the people he serves, and he urges them to lead a life worthy of the Gospel.
Bishop Beckman began his homily by admitting the parable can sting. “It seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Human beings, he said, have a very keen sense of what is fair and what isn’t, especially when we feel like someone is getting more than we do. The bishop told of a couple he knew who had two children and a dessert to divide. Their solution was to let one child cut the dessert in half and the other choose first. The portions, he said, always came out remarkably close to even. Anyone with siblings can share the experience of seeing their sibling make an uneven split and take the larger share for themselves, a lesson that fairness is usually chosen by the person making the split.
The bishop also recalled his high-school days, when a complaint of “that’s not fair” drew a dry reply from the teacher: “The fair comes in September.”
The parable, the bishop said, points to a mystery much greater than we can imagine.
The heart of God, Bishop Beckman said, so desires every person to say yes to His call that He will not stop inviting humanity until the very last moment.
Those who hear that call in the early hours of life and respond, he said, have the joy of working in the vineyard of the Lord throughout their lives. They discover that God is about something good in this world and wants all of us to be part of it.
Then he turned to the people in front of him. “Somehow the Lord has called each one of you, or you would not be here in this cathedral church today,” the bishop said. They had heard that call, he told them, and had said yes to it.
If the day of the parable is the span of a life, he said, the young adults in the pews were still fairly early in the morning. Not daybreak exactly, he allowed, but maybe 9 o’clock.
The noonday demon
Young adults aged 18-35 across the diocese were invited to celebrate Mass with Bishop Mark Beckman, whose homily focused on a passage from Philippians about the generosity of God’s love. (Photo Bee Goodman)
The great challenge, the bishop said, comes when a person who starts out with a lot of energy in youth reaches the midafternoon, when “the noonday demon” comes along. People get tired and worn out, he said, and buried under the burdens of life, its anxieties and concerns. It is sometimes an easy thing to forget why you’re here, and to stop working.
His question for the congregation was a simple one: What do you think the landowner will do in that case?
He will come out, the bishop said, and ask what happened. He will call the worker back to the vineyard.
“It’s time again to say yes to the call of God,” Bishop Beckman said, adding that the Lord wants every single person to respond, and that all of us have a part to play.
‘Our young Church’
Bishop Beckman closed by addressing the congregation as “our young Church,” and he encouraged them to be active in the vineyard.
“Say yes to God over and over again,” he told them, urging them to labor together in what he called the beautiful vineyard, the world of God in which we are living.
The Mass drew young adults from all over East Tennessee. (Photo Bee Goodman)
The Lord, he said, is doing beautiful things in the world today and wants all of us to be part of “that beauty, that goodness, and that truth.” He asked the young adults to pray that the Holy Spirit would inspire them to continue to say yes to God, and to invite others to join them in the vineyard.
He ended with a blessing drawn from St. Paul: “May God who has begun this good and beautiful work in you bring it to fulfillment through Christ’s love.”
For those who know Bishop Beckman, the message was not a new one. The bishop has a particular fondness for young adults, and he has put it into practice in the classroom.
He is currently teaching “Encountering Jesus in the Gospels,” a class for young adults that follows last year’s well-received “Mysteries of Catholicism” series. The class does not meet on a regular schedule, with sessions varying from one to the next. (See dioknox.org/events for details.)
From the pews to the pavilion
College students from the East Tennessee State University Catholic Center in Johnson City, St. John XXIII Parish at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Catholic Center traveled to celebrate Mass with Bishop Mark Beckman. (Photo Bee Goodman)
When Mass ended, the gathering moved outside to the cathedral’s pavilion, where food trucks were waiting. There the bishop spent time conversing with the young adults.
It was a fitting second half to the homily. The students from UTK, UTC, and ETSU, and the young adults who came from parishes across the diocese, had just been told that the Lord keeps coming out to find His workers. Now they were standing face to face with their bishop, talking over a meal.
The Gospel’s landowner doesn’t wait at the vineyard gate to be asked. He goes out to the marketplace, to the people standing idle because no one has hired them, and tells them there is work for them, too.
That was the invitation Bishop Beckman extended on Sept. 20 to a room of young adults who had, in his words, heard the call of God and said yes to it. The day, by his account, is still early. The vineyard is waiting, and the Lord, he told them, will keep inviting until the very last moment.