A Sermon on Matthew 20 and the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
I told the parable of the vineyard to one of my kids this week, wondering how they would respond. I told him about the landowner who hired people at different times during the day, promising each group they’d be paid a certain amount. As I got to the punchline, the people who worked all day received the same amount as those hired at the end of the day, I got what I expected – that’s not fair!
But they also said something else, something insightful, something brilliant: Jesus is okay with that?
Yes, my dear. Yes, he is.
We are tempted to think of this story about God’s impartiality, that everyone receives the same no matter what. What if, instead, the story is about God’s abundance, that God’s love can never be extinguished or used up?
It’s the metaphor of the pie – if God’s love is a pie, then there is a finite amount of it. If people who aren’t worthy, who don’t deserve it, get some pie, then there is less for those who are faithful or “right.”
Here’s the problem – God’s love isn’t like pie.
Don’t get me wrong. Pie is pretty great. I feel much like Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon when he talks about drawing – and eating! – all nine types of pie that he likes. Blueberry, caramel apple, I could go on but this truly is a digression. Because God’s love isn’t finite. It exists. It doesn’t fit in any container – not a pie or bucket. It cannot be measured. It is abundant. Overflowing.
And God’s love – we often talk about it by the word “grace” – is also indiscriminate, gratuitous, offensive.
In the Houston area, St. Isidore’s “church”, (http://isidores.org/) hosts many ministries. Their tagline reads “offensively generous.” St. Isidore, the patron saint of farmers and the internet, seeks to decentralize church and be a church without walls. It has several incarnations: a pub theology group, a food truck, a laundry ministry, house groups, and a taco group – all with a distinct Episcopal liturgy. The Rev. Sean Steele, “seems to want to do away with the idea of ‘doing outreach;’ and instead is seeking to manifest the body of Christ in a way that more fully intertwines mission and sacrament than the traditional parish model with its Sunday services and mission projects that occur separately and often without significant involvement from worshipers. Steele’s goal is to be ‘offensively generous,’ he says” (https://www.episcopalcafe.com/church-plant-in-texas-seeks-to-do-something-brand-new-in-an-old-way/). Deacon Molly Carr runs the Harvest Food Truck – a place where food is made by volunteers and given away for free. After Hurricane Harvey, I noticed Molly gathering groups together to make casseroles to give away on the truck.
In North Carolina, a small youth group with whom I have worked goes to the local laundromat once a month armed with quarters. They call it “laundry love” and pay for cycle after cycle of laundry to be washed. They don’t check people’s papers or their need level before they pay for what is there, they just offer. They help make dirty things clean again. If that’s not a definition of the good news of Jesus Christ, I’m unsure what is.
Have you been to a laundromat lately? It’s the kind of place Jesus would hang out. People. Waiting. Some worried they might not have enough cash to pay to clean their clothes. Some only wash their clothes hoping they can air dry them at home to save a few bucks. Others spending time there because it’s the best way for them to do the loads they need to do. The laundromat is a cross-section of humanity.
Or perhaps you, too, have seen this happen. You are in the checkout line of the grocery store. The person in front of you is short just a bit and someone pays the difference. Or you’ve been on the receiving end of a Starbucks or fast food pay-it-forward where the person in front of you has paid for your tab, unbeknownst to you. They don’t know you. They don’t know your situation. They just offered something in such a way that you can’t even refuse.
And it’s not just money. Someone mowing your yard without you knowing who it was. Someone offering to take the kids for a little while. Someone texting you and asking if you need anything at Costco. Someone out-of-the-blue making something for the BBQ or offering to volunteer.
It’s this type of generosity. Overwhelming. Seemingly without discretion. Honestly, offensive.
You see, the parable of the workers in the vineyard reminds us that the Kingdom of God, the Dreams of God, is not about a meritocracy. We are enamored with this type of social system in our country. We make all sorts of assumptions about everyone having equal opportunity to succeed or fail and create these narratives about monetary or societal or familial or academic success is about work ethic that is derived from our Puritanical heritage. And, frankly, we mistake this notion of meritocracy with Christianity.
It isn’t.
This love, this grace, in the parable could have been hidden. Jesus could have told the story that everyone gets the same but not everyone knows it. But that’s not the Kingdom of God. As Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas says in his commentary on Matthew, this story “is the grace of truth refusing to hide from us the character of our envy of those whom we think undeserving. The parable of the vineyard exemplifies God’s justice – a justice disciplined by the truth” (177). Many of us are offended by this story – and I think we should be. I am. Jesus refuses to separate us by casts. He refuses to hide. He is a truth teller. And this is how the Kingdom of God works.
In the end of our section of the gospel, Jesus quips: so the last will be first and the first will be last. Jesus talks about this type of Kingdom, an upside-down kingdom, one that operates on different rules from our dominant culture. Just when we think we are “in,” Jesus draws a picture of a Kingdom that exists without those who are “in” and those who are “out.” Just when we think we arrived and are all that, Jesus looks at the world in a different way and offers different rules for a society governed by God.
The Kingdom of God, these Dreams of God, is not everyone getting what they deserve. It’s about everyone receiving love and grace and forgiveness. Period. Because the Kingdom of God is not about pie but about being offensively generous.
I keep remembering my child asking, “And Jesus is okay with this?”
Yes, my dear. Yes, he is.