"Receive Grace" Matthew 20:1-16
For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle/barren (αργος) all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they though they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Dude, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you have an evil eye toward my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”
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Receive grace.
This morning, about 5:30 am, I was grumbling to myself in the walk-in freezer of the back room at Target. I love my second job, and the chance to have my feet, my mind, my time, in two rather different kinds of work, but there are days when my second job is just downright annoying. Any day I have to spend more than four minutes in that ridiculous freezer, for example. Those are moments when I just get angry at the world! My fingers hurt from the cold, it is a very rare day when the floor is not full of boxes of backstock that hasn’t been put away properly, and I know, I know, one of my co-workers has mastered the art of avoiding the morning work in the freezer. Sure, sometimes he works in there, but he’s really good at standing around and looking at his hand-held computer or moving on to the next task so that somebody else gets stuck pulling on the extra coat and hat and gloves to stand around in the cold and scan boxes of frozen pizza and pints of ice cream for twenty minutes.
Ok, I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding this particular job, too. In much the same way that he has. I’ll admit it’s become sort of a competition for who can do everything else except the freezer, albeit an unspoken competition. And there I was, in the freezer this morning, thinking about tonight’s Gospel reading. They should really pay us more if we’re going to get stuck in that freezer. At least it would encourage us to feel a bit better about going in there. But, nooooo. Stay nice and warm or freeze your face off, you still get the same $9.25 an hour.
So I can understand where these first comers are coming from when they moan and complain that the workers who came at the eleventh hour got just the same pay for what looked like easier work.
Then again, there are many ways in which I am the latecomer. In my particular Lutheran church, which has been a denomination historically for just a little longer than I have been alive, women have only been Ordained for just over thirty years. It’s only been since 2009 that my particular Lutheran denomination has been Ordaining members of the LGBTQ community without requiring celibacy. There were a LOT of conversations and arguments and Scriptural references thrown back and forth and families and parishes split over each of these decisions. Even the split in the Missouri-Synod Lutheran Church which laid the groundwork for the ELCA, back in the 1970’s, which was a huge movement, a few of whose eyewitnesses I’ve been able to meet, seems like a lifetime ago and an entirely different reality. I’ve not had to bear the brunt of that battle. Someone else fought that fight for me before I ever showed up on the scene. Not that they actually fought it for me, per se. They fought it for what it stood for, for the sake of the work itself, the right-ness of making the changes they saw they had to make to be faithful to the Gospel as they knew it.
Like most of us, then, probably all of us, I’ve worked harder than some and benefited from the hard work of many, many others. And what stands out to me most often isn’t the great gift I’ve received, no, it’s the fact that my face and fingers were freezing this morning for a good ten minutes before it was even six o’clock in the morning.
Why is it so much easier to see where we feel we have been slighted? To want the world to be fair when it most benefits us, and not worry about fairness when we’re doing just fine? Granted, if the world were fair it would be a far different place. And if God were fair, we’d all be doomed.
Seriously. If God held us to the standard of Jesus, made us accountable to every time we fail to live up to those two most basic laws of loving God and loving each other, there is no way on earth we’d have the slightest hope of heaven.
But the kingdom of heaven, Jesus reminds us, is not fair. It is not about checks and balances and making us pay for every wrong we have ever committed or ever right we have failed to do. It is, rather, about grace.
I gather two main things about God from this parable, about God: God gives what is right. When God gives what is right, we are all valued equally.
Then of course is the obvious thing about people: We want to earn reward and be recognized as better than our peers.
These things are in a bit of conflict, wouldn’t you say?
Go figure, there is conflict between God and God’s people.
But conflict is where we grow. Conflict is how we learn. Conflict is not the end of the relationship. When we conflict with God, when God rubs us the wrong way, it is an investment in the relationship. If there was no conflict, there would be no engagement, no chance to deepen the ties that bind us together.
The master of the house speaks directly with the one who disagrees with him.
Thus, conflict with God is how we receive mercy. A lesser God would smite us all. Or dismiss us all. Or smite us all. This God is in relationship with us, searching us out in the marketplace throughout the day, granting us our daily bread regardless of our ideas of deserving, and engaging with us even when we pray only to complain or make demands.
The big complaint that the first workers make about the way those who came to the vineyard at the eleventh hour were paid, was that by the payment received, the master of the house had made them all equal, regardless of the work that had been done. They should have seen it coming when the master of the house told that second shift they would be paid whatever was right. Because in the kingdom of heaven, what is right is that all are welcome, all are valued, all receive grace and mercy and forgiveness, no matter when they showed up or where they came from.
It is a sad day when someone has a deathbed conversion, and the cradle Christians complain about having grown up following the rules, while the late convert got to have some fun at least before they died. As though the life of a Christian is all drudgery and so little joy. Or as though there is no real meaning to the hard work we are called to do.
The kingdom of heaven is where all are invited to bring forth life from the earth, to gather in the harvest, and where all are given enough resources for each day. Give us this day our daily bread, we are taught to pray. Not give us this day the bread according to how many hours we spend pounding the pavement and blistering under the sun. Not give us this day bread to eat in front of the hungry poor because they didn’t earn it the way we did. Give us all this day the bread we need for the day, because the bread comes of the free gift of God’s good earth and rain and rich soil. Give us this day our daily bread because everyone is mortal and everyone relies on life outside of ourselves to live.
If there are some who have not yet joined the work in the vineyard, the master of the house returns to market, hour after hour, to gather in more who can be part of this kingdom. Hour after hour seeking those who thus far have been unable to produce a harvest on their own. Hour after hour, God comes after us, with the gifts of grace and mercy and forgiveness, that we might not only be part of God’s harvesting labor in the vineyard, but that we might all know the same dignity regardless of the hours we put in. Regardless of what others think we are worth, God alone knows our true worth, and God who has called us to the vineyard, who has brought us in by the witness of the saints and the Scriptures and the Spirit, keeps coming after us, hour after hour, to give us what we need, regardless of what we say we deserve.
So we work. We work and we pray. We work and we pray and we give freely even as life has freely been given to us. And no matter who we are or where we came from or how long it takes us to get into those vineyards, God does not withhold the love and the grace that we need. Because the master of the house is fair and righteous according to the law of grace, by which we have been saved.
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