Sermon - Day by Day - 16th Sunday after Pentecost (20A)

16^th Sunday after Pentecost (20A)                                               Matthew 20:1-16

Sept 20, 2020

Ever heard this at your house? “But that’s not fair!!!” (Did I get the tone of voice right?) Oh, I see you have! J This cry is not new. We have all felt that way at one time or another. We want the best treatment possible. We want people to hold up their ends of the bargains we make with them, implied or explicit. We have expectations that need to be met and we want it all on our terms.

I’d say it’s “the American Way,” but this attitude of fairness or appropriate reward predates our history as a nation, or even our practice as Christians. From the beginning of our history, God promised to make a great nation. For the early followers of God, this relationship was mediated by the head of the household – first Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob and Joseph. But at many stops along the way, something got in the way of that relationship. We strayed off the path. We stopped following God. When the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt, God called new spokesperson – Moses. His credentials? He was called from a burning bush. Try to argue with that kind of call!

We’ll talk about this more in a few weeks, but for a minute, let’s think about Moses receiving God’s word. God hoped these ten general rules would be enough. Worship me only… don’t murder… don’t steal… don’t lie… don’t covet. But the people wanted more rules. They wanted to know the details of what was and what was not allowed. When tathered together, the rules numbered in the hundreds. Ask the Torah law code a question, and it will give you an answer. What to eat… what to wear… when to plant… when to harvest… who to accept… who to reject… the code will tell you what to do.

For instance, what do you pay a hired worker as a daily wage? Look to the law. A denarius was considered the fair way for a day’s work. It was enough for a person to exist for a day, but not enough to feed a whole family. This concept was based on the manna experience in the wilderness. God will provide just-in-time remedies just when you need them. Nothing more or less.

So, when our landowner went to look for laborers, he went offering them the amount that was expected. And those who came at the first hour were willing to work a whole day – 12 hours – for that wage.  Each time the landowner went out, he promised a fair wage to those who followed. No other promises were made by the boss, but assumptions were made by the workers. Everyone assumed that the workers who followed would earn less, based on the number of hours they worked. That was what the law required. That’s what everyone expected. That’s what we expect.

At the end of the day, the boss started paying those who worked only one hour. Imagine their surprise when they got a full day’s wage. Likewise, those who worked 3 and 6 and 9 hours also got a full day’s wage. But when the 12-hour workers got paid, they were angry that they only got what they agreed to – a full day’s wage. “Not fair,” they cried. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

But Jesus’ stories rarely do… at least through our human lens. In most of the parables and in his other teachings, Jesus is all about changing expectations… it can be jarring because it feels like life is upside down and backwards, all at the same time. This often means that even when we think we have this “living for Jesus thing” all figured out, Jesus turns it all on its head.  

Back in Matthew 19, we run into a rich young man who learns this lesson the hard way. (I know, I talk about him a lot!) He asks Jesus, “What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds, “obey the commandments.” The young man responds, “All these I have done – what do I lack?” Jesus’ response was “Sell your possessions, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me.” And do you remember the young man’s response? “When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (v22).

The rich young man was curious about how Jesus would interpret the law. Maybe it was a test – maybe it wasn’t. But Jesus’ answer would tell him something important about who Jesus is. What he didn’t understand was that Jesus came to both fulfill and reorder the law. There are new rules of engagement in the kingdom of God, and Jesus came to proclaim them to us, one encounter at a time.

Back to our landowner – he could pay people whatever he wanted. He chose to treat everyone as if they had worked the whole day. The anger in this story doesn’t come because the landowner didn’t live up to his promises. It came because he was too generous. This story is about more than a fair day’s wage. It is about our expectations of who God is and what God’s kingdom and church look like.

Previously, living a life of faith with YHWH, “I AM,” the God of the Israelites, was about following the rules – understanding the letter of the law. Living a life of faith with Jesus was about understanding the intent of the law. Jesus didn’t come to make us better rule followers. He came to make us more loving people. Both the story of the rich ruler and this parable about the generous landowner are meager expressions of the amazing generosity that God feels for us AND in turn expects from us.

More than anything, this story and most of Jesus’ tales are stories of the triumph of grace. Participation in the kingdom of God is not about accomplishment or achievement. Life in Jesus is not about doing all the right things in order to gain salvation. It is about something much harder. It is about understanding that we only do this “faith thing” with God’s help. And help isn’t even the right word… it’s really about surrendering to God. And that scares us to death.

The rich young man rejects this notion of surrender because he can only define himself by his possessions and behaviors. I’m sure he said to himself, “But I follow the rules…”  Likewise, the workers who labored the longest are resentful, not of what they have received, but for the generosity that was shown to others who did not work as long. Think about the corpus of Jesus’ parables. They are all about this same generous God. A father who welcomes home a wayward son … a housewife who loses a fine pearl and cleans the whole house until it is found… a shepherd to leaves 99 sheep safe at home to go and search for the lost one.  

This kind of extravagance is hard to comprehend. It’s more extravagant than waking up every Saturday morning to find your car washed and vacuumed and always in perfect running order. It’s more extravagant than coming home to a perfectly prepared meal, complete with dessert and a clean house and well-behaved children and pets. It’s more extravagant than the most amazing vacation or the most breath-taking piece of jewelry or a worry-free retirement. God did more than give us the things we want. He gave us a path to what we need the most. He gave us a life worth living.

The God we worship, the one who calls us into a two-way relationship, is overwhelmingly generous. He is more amazing than anyone any of us can fully comprehend. He loves us more than the person who loves us the most – our husband or wife, our parents or children or friends. He gives us what we don’t deserve… life, a fair day’s wage, and opportunities to share it with others in his name. Sometimes that’s the biggest barrier to committing ourselves fully to him.

Maybe if we see ourselves differently, we can understand the story the way it was meant to be heard. At our best, we see ourselves as the “whole day” workers. “I have worked long and hard … please appreciate me.” But to tell the truth, I am only a part-time laborer. Sometimes I can be counted on for a full day’s work, but not always (and you know I’m not talking about hours.)  Instead, I am the rich young ruler, unable to fully surrender. I am the indignant worker, mad that others are equal recipients of God’s love. Lucky for us, we are also the workers who only works an hour and receives a full day’s wage. God loves us all equally and extravagantly and asks us to do the same.

When asked at the end of my first semester of seminary what I found most surprising, I answered, “There’s a lot of people preaching heresy out there.” My second biggest “wow” came several years later when I realized the most important classes I took were not in theology, biblical studies, or preaching. They were the ones I took in church history. It confirmed my earlier suspicions… that we often revive the theological heresies of the first two centuries, dusting them off and using them to legitimize our misuse of power and privilege.

There have been a lot of times when the Church was the most important power on the planet… those were usually dark times for the marginalized people of the world… the poor, the immigrant, women, children. Jesus’ message valued those on the outside… he maybe even preferred them. That’s a very hard message to hear when we sit in positions of power and privilege – especially if we don’t think that’s where we sit.

This parable calls us to read the story from the marginalized perspective… the 1-hour worker is blessed by the great gift of a full-days wage. At the same time, the full day worker is blind to the injustice they perpetrate by hating those who receive more than WE think they deserve. (Miguel de la Torre – Reading the Bible From the Margins, Chapter 1, 2002)

When we read in the gospel of John, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16),” we must internalize the message buried deep within Jesus’ story. First, this gift is offered to everyone – we don’t get to choose who hears and responds to Jesus’ call. And second, it isn’t offered to sit on the shelf and be admired from afar. It is intended to change everything we know about what it means to live. Once we have the gift of eternal life, we have to allow it to change everything about us … our feelings, our thinking, and our choices for how we relate to others. 

On his deathbed, 13^th Century bishop, Richard of Chichester prayed on his deathbed a prayer which has been condensed to these familiar words: 

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ

For all the benefits Thou hast given me,

For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.

O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,

May I know Thee more clearly,

Love Thee more dearly,

Follow Thee more nearly.

And God’s people respond: Day by day.

That’s the challenge of the Christian lives we lead… to live as if we KNOW that Jesus’ loves us. Day by day, hour by hour, we are bathed in the glory of God’s love. We don’t deserve it. We can never work enough for it. And yet, here we are, recipients of his boundless love, grace, and mercy, and required to pass it on.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, we cry out to you for deliverance in our times of need. Sometimes, in your gracious love, you come to us, you meet our need, you respond to our cries with your deliverance.

And yet sometimes, dear Lord, we confess that the deliverance you send may not be the deliverance we thought we wanted.

And sometimes, once our problem is solved, we find ourselves with new problems and different challenges.

Thus we pray for three things: The ability to recognize your deliverance when it is offered, the grace to receive your deliverance as yo

u would give it to us rather than what we thought we deserved, and the faith to embrace the new life you give us in our deliverance.

For your care and your deliverance, we give thanks. Most of all, we give thanks for your love that enables us, delivered of our ills or not, to live with faith, hope, and love. Amen. (Will Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Volume 48, No. 3, Year A, 2020)