Oh, Salieri...Get Out of My Head!

For several weeks now I've woken up with the name Salieri on my mind.  And because I didn't know much about him - I ignored the continued prompting.  However, since this is the  weekend, I decided to look Salieri up and try to figure out why he was in my head.

Apparently, Antonio Salieri was an Italian-born composer who lived between 1750 and 1825 in Vienna.  There he studied with the the renowned opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and through that esteemed connection, Salieri was appointed director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court.  In that position he often directed and conducted his own operas (of which he wrote 37)...

Okay - fascinating - but God, why do you KEEP putting his name in my head?!?!

And then I found it.  In a NY Times article from 1992, I read that "years before he met Mozart, Salieri had made a pact with God in which he promised to lead an exemplary life if God would make him a famous composer.  And, until Mozart appeared, Salieri believed that God had honored the bargain."

Apparently however, after meeting Mozart, Salieri was consumed with jealousy.  The article says "he began to distrust God."  

Salieri coveted the talents Mozart had been given and felt he had been treated unfairly...and now Jesus' parable of the vineyard workers comes to mind.

The story tells about the owner of a vineyard who goes out early in the morning to find people to work.  He agrees to pay each a denarius for their day's labor and they agree.  The owner goes out again at 9, and tells the people who agree to come, 'I will pay you whatever is right.'  Then he goes again at noon, at 3, and at 5 - gathering more workers each time.

When it comes time to pay the workers the owner begins with the group that was hired at five, and pays each of them a denarius.  He does the same for the groups hired at 3, noon and 9 - and finally with the group that was hired early in the morning.

"When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' 

But he answered one of the, 'I am not being unfair to you, friend.  Didn't you agree to work for a denarius.  Take your pay and go, I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.  Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?  Or are you envious because I am generous?" (Matthew 20:11-15)

I think this is what Salieri missed.

For if you know God, then you know that HE is the one who controls everything.  HE is the one who decides what gifts and talents each person is born with.  He can grant wealth, power, or position - or take it all away.  We are fools if we compare ourselves to others, for EVERYTHING God does has a purpose, and jealousy has no place in the Christian life. 

"Each one should test their own actions  Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else." - Galatians 6:4