25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 20:1-16a
The more familiar a parable is
The more difficult it is to have it speak a fresh word
I can call to mind 2 familiar interpretations
…2 ways I have heard this parable preached
One way
Is to hear it as a parable about Salvation
Maybe the parable is telling us that God doesn’t care if you’ve been working hard at your Christian vocation
for years and years and years
Or… if you’ve ignored God all your life until the very end
And then after a good deathbed confession
“WELCOME! we have been waiting for you!”
In fact…as the last line says…The last shall be first!
This makes it a parable about how ridiculously gracious God is.
That’s one way to hear the parable
Another way, is to understand this parable through a social justice lens
The landowner keeps going out to do more hiring
…throughout the day the landowner goes to the places where day laborers gather in the hope of finding a days work.
The landowner asks “Why do you stand here idle all day?”
They answer
“Because no one has hired us”
It doesn’t say they were lazy, or that they took a long lunch to go home and play video games
All we know is that they are still there
…still hoping for even a few hours work.
There is no judgment on why…at least not that I can see
…they simply weren’t picked
So we need to keep going…why weren’t they picked?
For some reason, those doing the hiring looked passed them.
Was it disability, skin color, did they look like they just got released from prison, was it the way they were dressed, or the language they were speaking? Whatever the reason, they were looked over.
This makes it a parable about the dignity of the worker
Perhaps it is about how the many (those chosen)
sometimes have to contribute to the needs of the few
those who sometimes
Just don’t get hired
A gifted preacher could make either of these interpretations into a decent sermon
My problem with these interpretations
Is that they keep the text at a bit of a distance.
While I agree that it is important to keep the end in mind
because having the end in mind has a way
Of giving ultimate meaning to TODAY
…To my life and my choices TODAY
But there is nothing surprising in this.
And, while I absolutely agree
that we need to work toward a more just society
A society where the dignity of work is available to all
And where roadblocks to hire-ability can be removed
This is also big and out there somewhere
it is a grand societal problem
But this is not to say that it isn’t super important…it is.
And we have ways to participate…we can vote, and advocate, and volunteer locally
I can name a laundry list of “shoulds”
things I certainly need to be reminded of and challenged to take part in…
But there is nothing surprising
Nothing that catches me flat-footed and demands a change in me…in the way I think and see.
The thing is
This is a parable
And parables are supposed to do something
What is it that parables are supposed to do?
What is a parable, anyway?
One thing is that they are NOT complete theologies of God or the Kingdom
If that were the case
We wouldn’t need so many
Each is concerned with just one aspect at a time
They aren’t meant to be once and for all answers
Rather they reveal glimpses of ‘kingdom logic’
Glimpses…surprising glimpses
Parables are supposed to ruffle feathers
MY feathers
One way to think about parables is as invitations
‘Parabole’
Means to ‘lay along side’
To lay something new alongside what and how I think I know
This laying alongside functions
To pull away the curtain…to unveil
And to reveal something about me…the hearer.
So what is the parable laying alongside?
What is this parable revealing about the way I think?
What it the parable inviting me to see?
And what is it offering as an alternative?
I am not particularly surprised that God is generous
No…I’m not surprised…In fact…I’m absolutely counting on it!
I am not particularly surprised that God is concerned for laborers
Especially day laborers, who stand in the hot sun all day waiting to be hired so that they can support their families for another day or week…
I am comforted by this too…
And I know, that by virtue of believing in such a God, I can’t just stop there,
I am called to participate in actions that display the same concern…
God-like concern for my neighbors…especially the most vulnerable
This is challenging for sure
It is hard…but not surprising or new
Where in the parable is there something that is just
Phew…uncomfortable surprising?
What I am surprised by is WHY the householder was so clear about
How the laborers were to LINE UP to receive their day’s wages:
The landowner says
“Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and ending with the first.”
I mean why was that direction, to pay the last hired…first
given so clearly??
It was so deliberate that it has to be important
And it isn’t just deliberate…it doesn’t make sense…who would do that!
Why not pay the first…first?
They were surely the most tired and sweaty and ready to be done!
If the first had been paid first…they would have been on their merry way…
none the wiser…grumbling averted!
The result was absolutely predictable!
The choice to pay the last first simply made it certain
that there would be grumbling!
All the householder had to do was pay the early hires first
Ah…but then this wouldn’t be a parable
By reversing the order
The curtain is pulled away to reveal…grumbling
Allowing myself to get closer to the text
Might bring out a more honest response:
“Okay, I admit ---- sometimes ---
when Jesus speaks about God and the Kingdom
---and he’s throwing around blessing and
---in this instance, hard earned wages
throwing them around so carelessly…
well sometimes I just feel a bit
well…
RIPPED OFF!”
My propensity for grumbling is what is being exposed to the light
I suggest that…in today’s language…the grumbling in this parable
Means resentment
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
That is…a very good question!
At this point
It is helpful to glance back a few verses in the Gospel of Matthew
Peter has just asked Jesus a question
It is a question so near to the human heart
Just a few verses ago, Peter asks:
‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.
What then will we have?’
It is a reasonable enough question.
Peter just wants to know what kind of Payoff is eventually coming
Peter is familiar with the human tendency to put things in such terms:
Inquiring minds want to know:
Are we talking PAYOFF or RIPOFF?
Beneath the surface of Peters question
Jesus hears an attitude that needs re-direction.
In his compassion, Jesus reassures Peter
Laboring in the LORD’S vineyard will demand a different way of seeing
Our parable today seems to offer Peter a corrective
I remember counting the presents under the Christmas tree
when I was a child
I could say that I learned it from my sister
But it came naturally enough
Was I getting a fair PAY-OFF
For being a darling daughter?
Or
Was I getting RIPPED-OFF
That is…compared to my sisters and brother
My guess is that we are hard-wired from the womb
To think in terms of PAYOFF or RIPOFF
They might be little things
But I tap into this kind of careful accounting several times a day
My guess is that you know what I mean
In the line at the grocery store
Or a friend who bought the same tv I did but got it at half the price
Or how about when someone gets credit for an idea that was mine!?!?
Or when I am not thanked quite loud enough for my obvious generosity!?!?
Whenever my internal voice says “Not Fair”
That is a signal of my Payoff-Ripoff mentality kicking in!
In bigger or smaller ways
Everyday
My mind sets up the scale
so that I can measure my world in terms of PAYOFF and RIPOFF
I confess all this…knowing that I am not alone;)
It is, I think, in the drinking water!
To be fair though
It isn’t that I don’t experience graciousness
I do
Plenty of times…everyday
But here is what I do when I am on the receiving end
…the payoff end
Lightening fast…I construct some reason for why I deserved it after all!
I take the giftedness away…and replace it with my ‘deserving’
I keep going with this because I am 99% sure that I am not alone in this???
The reason, I think this comes so easily
Is that Utterly unconditional, unearned, pure, no strings attached…generosity
is very hard for us to get our heads around.
Hard but not impossible!
Therein lies the Good News!
The Good News is NOT simply the domesticated sweetness of a parable that comforts us with the generosity of God
As the parable pulls back the curtain on a world---our world---
of scales and balanced accounts
it pulls back the curtain
and exposes our propensity for grumbling
It exposes it and It offers something new
The Good News is that
Beyond the stiff world of strictly balanced accounts
There is something light and un-burdensome
And we don’t have to wait until we are dead!
The householder keeps going to the marketplace
He goes often
from sunup and sundown…punctuating the day with visits
For the householder…it seems…
It is getting workers into the vineyard that matters!
We are all co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord
Morning hires or 11th hour hires
Here…to worship…is where we come
Week after week
we come here to remember who we are
…to remember that we are a body
And that body is Christ’s
And that we are in this together
Chosen first or last or somewhere in between
Here we remember that even though we might suffer daily from creeping resentment…from grumbling
We are not alone
We are granted a fresh start!
Even a quick glance at how we worship we can see and understand this
Didn’t we confess…right off the bat?
“we have not loved…we have rebelled…we have refused to hear”
We mean our confession
And we are assured of God’s forgiveness
And when we are sent from here
We are sent having heard the Good News
And having been invited to let it change and mold us
We are sent with the blessing of everyone gathered here
Sent to participate in the healing of the world
Beginning with the patch most near to us.
My friends, where else does this happen?
There is an implicit…or maybe it is quite explicit
There is a humility in “Coming to Church”
By the very practice of it
We admit
We need changing
And We admit that changing takes practice…weekly at least!
This week the change called for
Is to step a little further away from
The logic of Payoff and Ripoff
To step away from the logic of deserving and undeserving
And to step toward a new alternative
One of graciousness
One of beatitude
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
YES…probably a hundred times a day.
But…my friends
being here
Admits that we are working on it
And we are working on it…together!
