Sermon 9/18/05
The Most-Hated Bible Story - Matthew 20:1-16
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I bet that after hearing today’s gospel lesson read you are wondering if I meant this sermon title for some other day and forgot to change the bulletin somehow. The most hated Bible story? Seriously? I’m sure you’ve never thought of this as your least favorite Bible story. Indeed, if I had to make my own list of Bible stories that I don’t like, you might find psalms that talk about God destroying our enemies, passages that say something about women keeping silent in churches, and most of the book of Leviticus. Maybe part of Numbers too! This passage wouldn’t occur to me, at first. Why do I think we secretly hate it most in our heart, even if we don’t realize it?
Jesus is telling a parable, another about the kingdom of heaven, another that uses imagery of landowners and harvesters and vineyards. A landowner goes out in the morning to hire laborers for the vineyard. He offers them “whatever is right” for a day of labor. He goes out again at noon and at 3 and at 5, and hires more and more laborers. At the end of the day, the landowner pays them all a day’s wage. All of them. That means that the workers who have worked 10 hours, 8 hours, 5 hours, and 2 hours all get the same paycheck at the end of the day. Naturally, this upsets some of the workers. The workers who worked all day were suddenly less happy with the wage they had received, because those who worked only one hour also received the same salary. But the landowner won’t hear it: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” Jesus concludes, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
See – this is the most-hated Bible story because it goes against everything we stand for and value in a society like ours. Here, you get what you work for, or at least we value such an ideal. We like things to be fair. We care about equality and equity. We know it isn’t right for people to get the same pay for such drastically different amounts of work. Who would agree to such a thing? Who wouldn’t be resentful of others who had it so easy, who hardly had to do anything to get such a reward. “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.”
Do we feel the same sense of outrage if we remember that this parable is about the kingdom of heaven and about God’s grace? In the story, the landowner is God, and we are the ones asked to come and work in God’s vineyard, to be workers in the harvesting. Being a worker in God’s vineyard is having a relationship with God, being a member of the kingdom of God. All our lives, like the landowner, God is giving out invitations to come and work in the vineyard. Will we accept? That’s up to us. God offers many invitations, just hoping that we will agree to come and take part.
But some of us have been working in the kingdom for a long time, haven’t we? Many of us can hopefully think of ourselves as laborers in God’s vineyard. God invited. We accepted. And now we are part of it, part of the kingdom, as we work to make God’s kingdom a place on earth. And part of our work, in this congregation, is to help with invitations. Even today as we prepare for next week’s Open House, we do so because we want others to experience what we have – we want to help them be in a place where they can have a relationship with God and experience God’s love and grace as we have. That’s our mission as a church – disciple-making. We make ourselves into disciples as we seek to follow Jesus, and we seek also to help others become disciples. We think we’ve found a good thing, and our mission, as a church, is to share it.
So where do we go wrong? Obviously, Jesus thinks we’re not really so happy helping others into the kingdom. In the parable, the landowner asks us: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” What do you think? Do you resent God’s grace when it is shared with others? Do you wish that God didn’t give grace, unconditional love, to anyone but you? We want to respond quickly, “no of course not!” But perhaps we’d better check our thinking to make sure we can answer with confidence.
In the parable, the workers are upset because others have received the same reward or pay for less work. If we translate this into a story about God’s grace, we can compare this parable to those who spend more or less time working in God’s kingdom. How late can you respond to God’s invitation and still expect to receive grace? If you’ve been a Christian all your life and tried to live as Jesus asks us to live, but the person next to you in the pew has only been a Christian for a few years, do you think they should still get God’s grace and love? Sure, right? But how far does your generosity extend? What about a person who lives a godless life until their last moment? What if they repent on their deathbed? Is that too late for God’s grace? If they’ve spent their whole life without God, up until the last minute? Or what if God offers grace even beyond the boundaries of the life we know on earth? And the invitation is accepted by someone beyond where we can witness it – is that too late?
It’s those scenarios, few though they might be, that are telling of what we really think about who should get God’s grace. If we’re uncomfortable thinking that someone can accept an invitation at the last possible minute and still receive all the rewards, then we have to press ourselves: why? How did we become like the workers in the vineyard? Do we expect everything to be ‘fair’ even when it comes to God’s unconditional love? Do we really wish that we had a say in how God ‘spends’ God’s grace?
In part, I think our reaction comes from our feeling that we’ve done something to earn God’s grace. Even if we don’t say it with our lips, I think with our hearts we believe that if we live better, more in line with God’s will for us, that we will be more deserving of God’s love and grace. So when somebody else waltzes into the kingdom and gets God’s grace after they’ve been doing nothing to prove themselves worthy of it, when they haven’t been doing the kind of right living we’ve been doing all along, we’re frustrated at least! Why have we been working so hard for so long?
Again, the answer lies in our inability to understand grace, to believe that God’s grace is what God’s grace is. In our baptismal liturgy, the words we say when we bring a child or adult into our community of faith, I say to you in the opening section, “all this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.” Without price! Grace is free, and without price. Completely. Totally free. No cost. No payment necessary. Grace does not cost anything. You don’t have to pay for God’s grace. You can’t pay for God’s grace. God’s grace is free!!! Have I said it enough? Do you believe it?
Where it gets tricky, then, is in the day to day living of the Christian life for those of us who accept the invitation to God’s grace sooner than others. Is it fair that we have to live this hard and demanding Christian life for so much longer than others? Perhaps we all should have partied a little longer, rebelled against God for a few more years? But in truth, when push comes to shove, even though being a disciple is sometimes hard and challenging and seemingly impossible, I wouldn’t trade it in for a minute. I would never want to struggle with that emptiness, with that search for meaning, without knowing the love of God. I would never want to feel so groundless. The life of discipleship, God wants us to learn, is its own reward, as hard as that is to believe sometimes. That is why we should be in such a hurry to share the news about God’s love with others, so that they too can join in this rich life of trying to walk with God.
Today, when we celebrate Peace Sunday, I wonder how many of our wars and conflicts and disputes arise from worrying about what others have compared to what we have, worrying about what is fair, and who gets what. Here’s the truth. God’s grace is free. There’s an unending supply. You can take as much of God’s love as you can stand. And God chooses to give to each of us an invitation. You just have to decide if you want to come or not. And this party of God’s love – it’s not to be missed. So please RSVP. But don’t worry if you’re coming a bit late. The doors are always open, and the party is always going on. Amen.