September 20, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Matthew 20:1-16[1]
God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in
steadfast love. God is generous in showing love and mercy. There is no end to
the generosity of God. People, on the other hand…
Now, I know that everyone here is generous. We give to the
church each week what we can. Despite everything, the offerings we have given
this year are higher than last year. We are kind and welcoming to visitors and
new people. We share our vegetables and love a good pot-luck. We are generous
folk. We genuinely want to help our neighbors and make positive changes in our
community.
There are limits, though, right? When I think about other
organizations to which I might give money, I tend to think about which is more
deserving. How is the money going to be used? How much goes to the mission and how
much to overhead, administration, and expenses? When I give to a person on the
street, I hope they will use it for food and not alcohol. In fact, I would
rather buy food for that person than just give them the cash. They might waste
it.
I want some control over what happens with my donation. I
want to put some restrictions on how it gets used. If I give a large gift, I
want something for it, I want to put my name on it. There isn’t a hospital wing
in America without a donor name attached to it. Recognition is the price of my
generosity. But if so, isn’t it more of a transaction than a gift? Will I give
the big bucks if I don’t get something out of it for myself?
There is a selfishness in that way of looking at generosity,
a need to look out for my own self-interest first. There is a sense of scarcity
too, the idea that I have to look out for myself first before I can help
another. If I give away what I have, I won’t have what I need for myself. It is
good to be responsible, to make sure that I don’t throw good money after bad,
but if there is never enough for me, there will never be enough for anyone
else.
That sense of scarcity is what comes out in the parable of
the envious laborers and the generous landowner. This story is not about equal
pay for equal work. It’s not about fairness as we usually understand it. In
fact, our first response is probably to agree with the first laborers, hired
early in the morning. We’ve worked hard all day, we have “borne the burden of
the day and the scorching heat.”[2]
Don’t we deserve more than those who were hired last?
Putting ourselves in the place of the first laborers, we too
are envious of the ones hired last. They didn’t have to work all day. They
probably just sat around all day, those lazy, good-for-nothings. I worked hard
for what I have, not like them. And in thinking that way, we easily focus our
disappointment, our frustration, and our resentment on our fellow laborers. How
easily we turn on each other.
If the parable was about deservedness, then yes. The
laborers hired first deserve more pay. But that is not what the story is about.
The story is about the kingdom of heaven. “For the kingdom of heaven is like a
landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”[3]
The kingdom of heaven is not about who deserves what. The kingdom of heaven is
about God and the generosity and love of God.
So, let’s start over, and look at this a different way. The
landowner gives everyone in the story work to do, and promises to pay them. Who
are the laborers? It appears they are unemployed until they are offered work. Today,
we might call them day-laborers. If no one hires them, they’ll go without work
and without pay for the day. They all begin in the same circumstances, but by
the end of the day, each has been given work to do and is being paid for that work.
No one goes home empty handed today.
If we put ourselves in the place of those hired last, we get
a different understanding. Having been idle all day, hoping someone would hire
us, we were about to give up and go home to a hungry household with nothing to
offer. At the last minute, the landowner offers us work. At the end of the day,
we’re handed a full day’s wage. How generous, how amazing, how much more than
we could have ever hoped for!
If we’re stuck thinking we’re the ones hired first, the
story is about envy. We worry about the unfair distribution of wages; we envy
those who worked less than us. We compete for the most, and struggle to accept when
others receive undeserved generosity. We want to be first, and we resent when
the last become first.
When we are stuck in that resentment, we fail to see that we
have received what we need. We can’t recognize that we didn’t lose anything,
nothing was unjustly taken from us. Those others didn’t walk away with more,
they walked away with the same. We think that somehow we earned more of
something, and we fail to understand that we earned it simply by needing it.
Jesus asks us to set aside our desire for equal treatment
and celebrate a more generous understanding of fairness. A day’s wage will put
food on the table. Each of the laborers has received according to their need,
for each of them needs to feed their family. Are we unable to appreciate the
good fortune of others because we have not appreciated our own good fortune?
Are we not grateful that we have all that we need for today? Do we feel like we
need more?
Depending on where you see yourself in the story, this
parable changes from a tale of envy into one about the generosity of God. God’s
generosity is more than we can imagine. God’s love and grace are not limited,
God’s care and concern are not scarce, and the bounteous table of blessing has
no lack of seats. The table of the kingdom is set for a feast, and every cup
overflows. We are invited to share in the abounding and steadfast love of God, all
of us, the first and the last, and the last no less than the first.
Let us be a generous people, giving freely of grace,
kindness, and love to any who have need. God has generously blessed us and there
is an endless store of blessings yet to be given away. May we learn to love
with the heart of God, to let go of envy and celebrate God’s astounding
generosity. Amen.
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