Sermon, September 21, 2008, Matthew 14:20:1-15

"An Offensive Arrangement" (Matthew 20:1-15)
Rick Olson, September 21, 2008

Parables are often best served cold, with not a lot of prior heating up by interpretation or explanation's warm embrace, and so I invite you to listen to this parable again, with the knowledge that Jesus is speaking to his disciples here, the folks who've been with him since the beginning, who've sweated with him, watched him sparring the religious authorities and casting out demons . . . they may even have done a little of that work themselves, and so they consider themselves insiders, and rightly so! They've earned it, they've listened to all his teachings and helped him feed the multitudes, and now they've settled down to listen to some parables and he begins this one with "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard." And they're thinking . . . uh, oh . . . a kingdom parable, this might not be too easy to understand . . . those others we've heard haven't been . . . but this one starts easily enough, the landowner agrees that he'll pay the laborers the usual daily wage, and they go to it . . . they enter the vineyard and begin work.

So far so good. The landowner has hired day laborers, he's gonna get his vines dressed or his grapes picked and they're gonna get a fair days wage . . . the disciples can understand that, they're all hard workers, and the early bird gets the worm, those at that early hour get the reward of getting up so early in the morning . . . a full days pay. And then the owner goes out into the marketplace again, about nine in the morning, and the disciples begin to wonder . . . why didn't he hire enough the first time, but the disciples like that he hires them, idleness is the devil’s plaything, and they undoubtedly had families to feed . . . and the owner says to them "You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." And he goes out into the marketplace at noon and at three, and the same thing happens, he hires more men, and the disciples are beginning to think "is he nuts? Can't he forecast his labor needs a little bit better?" But the kicker is when he goes out into the marketplace at five in the afternoon, only an hour before closing time, and does the same thing . . . and it seems to the disciples that it's hardly worth the trouble, either the landowner's or that of the laborers themselves.

And then evening comes, and the owner of the vineyard says to his manager – and just why, the disciples wonder, didn't he send his manager to hire the workers in the first place? – the owner says to the manager "Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first." And the disciples say, oh . . . maybe that's what he means by the last shall be first and the first last, they remember Jesus saying stuff like that, in fact he said it just before this parable, the last get their pay first, and so the ones hired at about five come along, and they're paid the usual daily wage, the pay the landowner had agreed upon with the first workers hired, and the anticipation of the disciples listening rises, just as that of the first-hired laborers . . . they're amazed at the landowner's generosity and what's more, they're thinking "If he paid those one-hour-lay-abouts so much, what must he have in store for those who worked all day?" What is he going to give those hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, get-up-early-in-the-A-M folks, who really deserve it?

But when the first-hired come, each one of them receives the usual daily wage, and they grumble, they’re very angry, and they complain to him, saying "These last worked only one hour, and you've made 'em equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat." And the disciples can certainly identify with what they're saying, because they've stood around in the scorching heat, listening to this incomprehensible story – see the sweat dripped from their noses! – and what's more, they've tramped all around Galilee with Jesus, and they are certainly long-suffering. they'd been busy little beavers, working with Jesus . . . and they’d hate to see some Johnny-come-lately disciples get the same as them . . . but the landowner in the story answers the workers saying "Fiends, I am doing you no wrong . . . did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go."

Now. How does this story make you feel? Does it make you uncomfortable, does it make you mad? Do you think that the laborers who worked a full day for the same amount as those who worked an hour got the short end of the stick? Me too. This story goes against every grain that a lifetime of upbringing in this old world can get . . . like a lot of you, I have a keen sense of what's fair and what's not. And we live in a debt-keeping world, one where balances must be kept even. If a pipe-fitter or an electrical engineer or a horse-trainer works 3 hours, we expect her to be paid for three hours, not one, and certainly not for a full day.

As a matter of fact, I think it’s downright fortunate our labor system operates the way it does . . . getting paid proportionate to how long a person works ensures that the system does work . . . if everybody knew they were going to get paid the same amount no matter how long they worked, everybody'd just sleep in until the last minute, then go work for an hour or so and collect a check. Not a lot of work would get done. You might say that the whole social order relies on this principle of "equal pay for equal work," and so the actions of the landowner are deeply subversive, they have the power to overturn the social order . . . maybe that’s why this story creates as great a sense of distress in me as it must have in the disciples, who were after all, insiders in the kingdom. Jesus called to them, of course, they were chosen first.

Back in the ‘70s, equal pay for equal work became a rallying cry of the feminist movement. This was, of course, the idea that women who were hired to do a job ought to be paid the same thing as men who do the same job. It sounds simple, right? Simple and fair . . . but you remember all the griping and moaning and complaining coming from the employers and other pundits who were – just coincidentally, I'm sure – men. They couldn't attack it directly, because it's really such a no-brainer – what man wouldn't gripe to high heaven if – all other things being equal – he didn't get paid the same as the guy next to him? They couldn't attack it directly, so they had to get creative. My favorite was "well, men are the family breadwinners, they need the living wage, women are just dilettantes, working for a little extra income." Such touching concern for families . . . too bad it didn’t carry over to today, when 40 million people are in families below the poverty line . . . And anyway, what skin off of male noses would it have been if women were paid the same as they were? They’d have still get their fair day’s pay . . . and it’s the same with those who were grumbling in our story . . . “Friend,” the landowner says, “I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?” What skin is it off of your nose if I choose to pay them the same as you? You’re getting what we agreed upon . . . and then he puts his finger on it: Or are you envious because I am generous? The problem isn’t the landowner, it’s not what the landowner has done that’s caused them to grumble and complain . . . it comes from within the laborers themselves. They’re envious.

But . . . just who and what are they envying? It can’t be the folks who came late . . . they all got the same amount, which was – significantly – just enough. The only person to envy is the landowner, who they know has enough to pay them more . . . they know that he could give them more if he’d so desired . . . what they envy is the wealth of the landowner, who is giving from his abundance . . . and perhaps their envy is understandable. After all, in the economics of the First Century, “generous landowners” were products of a system that allowed them to accrue great tracts of land at the expense of the original owners, who – through a process of increasing indebtedness – making less than a living wage in bad years and just enough in good years – lost their land and became tenant farmers to these “generous landowners” who thereby accrued larger and larger tracts of land. But when we read this parables “from above,” that is, when we go immediately to the assumption that the landowner is obviously God, then we tend to blame those who were first hired, to act as if it’s all their fault. Refraining from seeing the landowner as God – and neither Jesus nor Matthew tells us that the landowner is supposed to be God – allows us to see some of this parable’s richness.

OK . . . but what does this say about the kingdom of heaven? After all, the first line of the parable is “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner . . .” If we aren’t supposed to jump the conclusion immediately that the landowner is God, what can we infer about the kingdom from this story of a – typical – landowner and laborers who are – again, typically – envious? Well, let’s see . . . we have a landowner who’s giving from his abundance, who could give more, but doesn’t choose to . . . but what if he can’t give more? What if the riches he controls are not sub-dividable, what if he’s giving all he has? What is there that’s like that? Well, let’s see . . . what’s something you either give or don’t . . . what about . . . forgiveness? Forgiveness – God’s ridiculously bountiful grace – is nonetheless un-dividable . . . forgiving somebody is unitary, you either forgive them or not . . . and in this light, the parable becomes about the ridiculous nature of forgiveness in the Kingdom of heaven . . . it is not dependent upon how much work you do. Those who were there first – like the first-hired, or the disciples who’d been with Jesus since the beginning – don’t get any more grace than those Johnny-come-latelies who’d only worked an hour.

That’s the problem with grace, folks, the problem with the kingdom of heaven . . . unlike the world, where what you get is proportional to what you do – and as in the many cases – way too often, I’m afraid – who you are, what the color of your skin is, or where you live – in God’s kingdom, none of that matters, everything will be reversed, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. And of course, that often feels scandalous to those of us raised up in the world . . . and it is. Like the landowner who paid the same no matter how long they worked, un-earned forgiveness overturns the social fabric of our world, it undermines the very basis of how our society works. We live in a debt-keeping world, a world that expects tit-for-tat, that expects all the books to add up . . . and grace just isn’t like that. Forgiveness isn’t like that . . . and like those who were hired first, like the disciples who heard Jesus’ tale, we insiders are prone to grumble about it. It’s natural, it’s the way we were brought up . . .

But . . . that’s the way grace is, and I thank God for it . . . God’s grace – and it’s kinda sneaky how we got back around to equating the landowner with God, isn’t it? – God’s grace is undividable, it’s the same for you and me and everyone, no matter what we’ve done, no matter who we are, it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been with the program, how many times we’ve gone to church, or anything else, God’s grace is ours, it’s free, period, that’s the end of it, amen.