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September 2002
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 22, 2002)
“Doing God’s Work”
Dr.
Van Kemper
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
SERMON
Last
Sunday, Julie preached on Matthew 18:21-35, one of those parables beginning with
the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” – and in that case the
kingdom of heaven was “like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his
servants.”
This
morning’s text, from Matthew 20:1-16, begins with Jesus telling his disciples
that “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the
morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”
Last
week’s parable dealt with grace beyond imagination, about forgiving one
another and being forgiven by our Lord. As Julie said in concluding her sermon,
“However we come to it, forgive we must. Only then can we live in
community with each other. Only then can we free ourselves. Only then do we open
ourselves to receive in full the great love of God.”
This
morning’s parable moves beyond unimaginable grace to unanticipated judgment.
But before we come to appreciate the grace and judgment in this tale of the
laborers in the vineyard, we need to do a little work with this text.
First,
it is important to see how this parable is located in Matthew’s gospel.
If you just follow the Lectionary from Sunday to Sunday, you will miss
this key point. So, take a look in your pew Bibles at the last few verses of
chapter 19. Here, you will see that
Jesus is responding to Peter’s questions about the rewards that the disciples
will receive for having “left everything to follow” Jesus. In a text taken
almost word-for-word from the gospel of Mark (chapter 10:28-31), Jesus concludes
his answer to Peter with the famous saying, “But many who are first will be
last, and many who are last will be first” (v. 30).
And then, Matthew inserts the
parable about the laborers in the vineyard, which concludes in verse 16 with a
restatement of the saying, “So the last will be first, and the first will be
last.” Seen in this broader context, we can appreciate better the purpose of
the parable about the laborers in the vineyard. Clearly, it has to do with upsetting the traditional order of
human expectations, of overturning the principles of “firstness” and
“lastness” on which depend so many elements of our human culture and our
human institutions.
As
modern listeners to this parable, we have an almost impossible challenge. For
us, especially for those of us who have heard this parable dozens of times over
the many years since childhood, it is impossible not to see the landowner
as God and the payment as the last judgment. But, as Professor M. Eugene Boring
(of the Brite Divinity School at TCU) has declared, “such a reading has the
effect of letting the reader identify in advance with God, whose judgment
is always right” (Boring 1995:392, in the New Interpreter’s Bible vol 8).
Deciding
in advance that the landowner is God converts the parable into a straightforward
“just so story,” where God does whatever God wants to do with God’s
people, but without any challenge to us either as participants in the story or
as listeners to the parable.
So,
I want us to suspend our knowledge for a few moments and take another look at
this parable. In fact, even knowing
that it is a parable means that we should be expecting the unexpecting,
anticipating the unanticipated.
Now,
with this caution before us, we can turn again to the parable as we find it in
Matthew’s gospel. The story begins simply enough, with the owner going out
early in the morning to hire some day laborers for the usual daily wage. But,
for reasons not told in the story, the owner goes to the marketplace again at 9
a.m., and then again at noon, and then again at about 3 p.m., and then finally
at 5 p.m. So far so good.
We
can even speculate that there was big storm brewing over the mountains to the
east and that the owner sensed that he would lose a good share of his crop if it
were not harvested immediately, rather than over the two or three days for which
he had budgeted originally. So, he
went back again and again and again to the marketplace to seek out more hands to
help in the work, becoming more frantic as the storm continued to draw nearer to
his crop. I don’t know if this is why the owner felt a need to return time and
again to seek more workers, but it seems plausible, don’t you agree?
So,
the story reaches the point where the day’s work is completed. The crop is in,
the disaster of (the hypothetical) storm has been avoided, and the owner
breathes a great sigh of relief at what has been accomplished. He summons his
manager to pay all of the workers, but here the storyteller throws the reader a
curve – in other words, the story turns into a parable.
Neither the disciples who first heard this parable from Jesus or other
first-century listeners to Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels anticipated what
came next.
The
owner tells the manager to pay the workers, but in reverse order – with the
last being paid first, then the ones hired at 3 p.m., then the ones hired at
noon, then the ones hired at 9 a.m., and finally the ones who had been hired at
6 a.m.
Now,
put yourself into the sandals of the workers who came only for the last hour of
the day. The story does not tell us how much the owner had agreed to pay you and
the rest of them for your labors. But remember that (hypothetical) storm brewing
over the mountains to the east, and imagine that you and the other last-arriving
workers labored as fast as humanly possible in collaborating with the other
earlier-arriving workers in getting in all of the harvest. You might only have
been there in the fields for the last hard push to complete the harvest, but you
know that your energy was critical to the success of the harvest. So, when you
and the other last workers were told to line up first to be paid, you all must
have been surprised. Imagine, also the comments of the other, earlier-arriving
workers who had to wait while you and the other last workers went forward and
received a full day’s wages – a bright and shiny one denarius coin. You and
the other last workers surely were surprised at your unanticipated good fortune,
and at least some of you were a bit embarrassed at being “overpaid.”
In fact, you went back to see the owner and said, “Surely, there is a
mistake here; I only worked an hour. I
know that I worked as hard as possible so that we could get in the harvest
before the storm comes over the mountains, but I don’t deserve a denarius.
You are too generous, just give me a tenth of a denarius, and I would
feel better. And then you might add, “I am grateful for your kindness, but I
would prefer that you hire me for a full day’s work tomorrow morning – and I
will demonstrate that I deserve to work for you everyday.”
But,
did you hear any of this kind of talk from the last workers during the earlier
reading of the parable? Actually,
no. Not a one of the last workers
expressed any thanks to the landowner or to the manager for having received a
full day’s wages. The absence of any grateful responses among these last
workers, or by any of the ones hired at 3 p.m., noon, or even 9 a.m., suggests
that each of them got out of there as quickly as possible with their one
denarius coins in their hands – before the manager or the owner realized the
mistake that had been made!
In
fact, the only comments that we witness in the parable come from the first
workers, who – upon receiving the agreed-upon regular wage of one denarius –
“grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour,
and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and
scorching heat’ (vv. 11-12).”
Now,
put yourself into the sandals of one of these first workers.
You have seen that the last workers, and presumably, all of the others,
received a whole day’s wages for less than a full day’s work.
You are thinking to yourself, as you wait your turn in line, “Well, at
the very least, the landowner ought to give me a bonus, if he is going to reward
those others with a full day’s pay.” And
you start doing the arithmetic in your head (or on your fingers) as you move
forward toward the manager to receive your wages – and then it turns out to be
the one denarius coin like all the other workers received.
This
is not fair, you think to yourself. And,
as you look around among the other first workers, you can see from their
expressions that you are not alone in your feelings about the unfairness of the
situation. So, getting up your courage, you all go to complain to the landowner.
But he responds in a way that disarms you completely. He says,
“Friend, I am doing you no wrong;
did you not agree with 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?”
A
couple of points about the landowner’s remarks.
First, his use of the term “friend” is not as friendly as our
English language translations suggest. The original Greek term is translated
better by a more sarcastic American term, like “Buster.”
Imagine
that you are speeding along the neighborhood street right through the
well-marked school zone, and when the policeman pulls you over in the next
block, then walks up to your car window, he were to remark, “Friend, do
you know how fast you were going back there in that school zone?” – you
would know that his use of the term “friend” was just a little sarcastic.
Second,
as you listen to the landowner’s response, you suddenly realize that your
chances of getting hired again tomorrow may have just gone down the drain. He
sounds angry. You have challenged him in his role as the boss. He is not pleased
that you are interfering in his affairs. After
all, he hasn’t cheated you. He
did pay you what was contracted.
So,
as one of the first workers, you decide to apologize to the landowner for
appearing to be unhappy with your one denarius coin.
You say to the owner that you and the other first workers simply were
concerned about equity and fairness, not about being greedy for more than you
yourself deserved – based on what had been contracted at the beginning of the
day. You now understand his unanticipated generosity to the other workers, and
realize that – in effect – he has given them a bonus for helping to get in
the harvest before the arrival of the threatening storm. Yes, you too would like
to have received at least some bonus for your long day of work, but you also
know that a contract is a contract, and you are eager to work for the landowner
again – if he will have you.
Of
course, the story as we have it in the gospels contains no remarks by any of the
first workers in response to the landowner’s angry comments. In fact, much is
“missing” and needs to be supplied by the reader. But no matter what we
do to fill in the story, to try to make it more plausible, we still are stuck
with the concluding statement: “So the last will be first, and the first will
be last.”
This
parable, like many others about the “kingdom of heaven,” is disturbing
because it challenges the listeners’ conventional wisdom about firstness and
lastness, about the fairness of human ways of carrying out our business.
We
Americans have a strong commitment to our notions of “fairness” and
“equity.” As such, we have problems in dealing with this parable of the
laborers in the vineyards. If we were to take a poll among American Christians,
I suspect that many of us would support the position of the first workers –
that is, we would be complaining to the landowner about the “unfairness” and
the “inequity” of his decisions about paying all the workers the same,
regardless of how many hours we had worked.
In fact, some of us might even call up the Department of Labor and ask
for an expert opinion about Fair Labor Practices, especially the idea of equal
pay for equal work.
Opinion
polls show that many Americans resent the millions of immigrants who, in the
last decade, have come into this country from all over the world in pursuit of
opportunities unavailable in their home countries.
Often,
I have occasion to drive along Royal Lane in northwest Dallas as I head over to
I-35 on my way down here to Oak Cliff. As I pass the corner of Royal and Dennis
Road, I always see groups of Hispanic men of all ages – but never any Hispanic
women of any age – standing around waiting for someone to come along to hire
them for day labor. It is a sad sight, especially when I notice that many of the
men are still there at midday, and a few are still there when I return home in
the 5 o’clock traffic. Yes, some did find work; others have had no luck and
spent the day standing around with nothing to do, except perhaps to complain to
God about their fate, to worry about how they will earn enough to cover their
bills here in Dallas and still have some funds to send back to Mexico or some
other country to support their families.
This
morning’s parable about the laborers in the vineyard is a parable precisely
because of its unanticipated judgment. The landowner judges the workers not
on how long their worked, or even how well they worked – for nothing is
mentioned about the quality of work performed by the first, middle, or last
workers. Instead, the landowner
rewards all of the workers for having worked together as a group to accomplish
the great task of bringing in the harvest in a single day, an enterprise that
– in his judgment about the (hypothetical) threatening storm – would have
been impossible for those first workers trying to do it all alone.
What is going
on here in the vineyards is typical of the way Jesus approached the human
condition. He saw the possibilities of working together in community
rather than of going it alone as individuals. Jesus raised up those who cared
not just for themselves but also cared for their neighbors.
So, when we go
about our business here in the church and out in the community, we should
work together toward the greater good. Just as the landowner brought in workers
throughout the day, with the goal of getting the harvest finished in a single
day, so too we should be willing to cooperate with all who are willing to join
in our Christian endeavors – working in community for the fulfillment of the
gospel message.
In
proclaiming that the “first will be last, and the last will be first”
(Matthew 19:30) and then again that “the last will be first, and the first
will be last” (Matthew 20:16), Jesus put all of humanity on the same pay
scale. He inverted the order of
human understanding, and he subverted human ideas about the hierarchy inherent
in firstness and lastness. Jesus
saw the potential in all of us, and what an undeserved and unanticipated
judgment is that!
In some ways,
this congregation – and many others like it – can be seen in the light of
this parable. Some of you have been working here in these Oak Cliff vineyards
for a very long time; others of you have been here for a while; and a few of us
are last minute arrivals. But it will take all of us, working together, to
accomplish the great work that God has called us to do.
We have been called at different times, but we have been called to serve
together in community, not as isolated individuals running off in separate
directions with our own ideas about what needs to be accomplished.
We
need to throw out our old ideas of firstness and lastness, to lay aside our
well-entrenched ideas of patriarchy and matriarchy – and then, perhaps, we all
can learn to labor together to carry out a common mission and to srtive toward a
common vision.
Ultimately,
the parable of the laborers in the vineyard shows us that Jesus insisted on
overcoming firstness and lastness so that we might learn to work together, in
community, to love our neighbors as ourselves. At Trinity Presbyterian, we
welcome all who are committed to laboring together in “doing God’s work.”
Amen.