September 18, 2011 Matthew 20:1-16¶ "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 1 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, ‘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?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
"Fairness Doesn't Enter into It"
Kate grew up in a family with four children, and from the way she tells it, her mother’s life’s work seemed to be enforcing strict fairness among the four of them. If one got a toy for Christmas that cost seven dollars, everyone’s toys must cost seven dollars. If one kid needed something for “back to school,” then everybody got the equivalent amount spent. Even into adulthood, when her children had children of their own, she kept to strict spending guidelines to make sure everything was fair. Once, when they decided to forgive some debt that some of their children had borrowed from them, she and my father-in-law sent checks to the other kids for equivalent amounts. After all, what’s fair is fair.
God bless her, Kate tries to do the same with our kids and even with the dogs. If Toto gets a biscuit, then Buster has to get one, too. After all, you can’t play favorites. Even Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer,” says that if you have a favorite dog, you are not a pack leader!
Which brings us to the scripture for the day. The parable that Jesus tells here in Matthew and only in Matthew’s gospel fits hand in hand with the parable of the Prodigal Son. You remember the one about the Prodigal Son. Father has two sons. The Younger one wants an early distribution of the inheritance, takes Dad’s money, spends it on prostitutes and booze, and then shows back up at home. Meanwhile, the older son--the good son--has remained at Dad’s side doing whatever Dad wants. When the younger son returns, Dad throws a grand reception and the older, “good” son goes nuts, because what has happened is patently unfair!. The message here is that in the kingdom of God, you don’t get what you deserve, but rather you get what God has for all--grace and pardon.
Today’s parable is a little different. A man goes out to hire laborers. He hires some at first light, others at 9:00, noon, 3:00. and 5:00 and sends them all to work in the vineyard. At the end of the day, he pays the last one’s hired a full day’s wage. In fact, he pays all of them a full day’s wage, which is upsetting to the ones who were hired at first light. They thought they should get more because they worked longer. But the landowner says to them, didn’t I pay you what I promised? Why are you jealous of my generosity?” The long-tenured workers expect more for being there all day, and the good son expects the reward from his father for being the good son. And both are miffed that the ne’er do wells and Johnny-come-latelies are getting more than their fair share of the pie. Pies are only so big you know, and there’s only so much to go around.
And yet, these parables are very different from each other because they are told to different audiences. The definition of a parable is a story told to convict the hearer. And so, to find the real meaning of the parables, we have to look back and see to whom the parables are told. The Prodigal Son appears only in Luke, and is told by Jesus to the Pharisees and Scribes who complained that Jesus was spending time with “tax collectors and sinners.” The Pharisees were the holier-than-thou folks who sought to make ritual purity a matter for everyday living, as opposed to just for Temple worship. The Scribes were the lawyers--the folks who every bit of the tradition, both from Moses and the Rabbis--that is the Torah and the Talmud (the oral Torah.). The point of telling the story of the Prodigal Son to the most religious people of the day was this: You may do all the right things and observe all the right practices like the Good Son, but that doesn’t mean you’re more important to God, who loves all his children no matter what they do., or don’t do.
But to whom is this parable told and when? It comes right after Peter asks if the disciples will get a special reward in the kingdom of God. After all, they’d left everything and walked with him and eaten with him and stayed with Jesus--and not in the nicest places, mind you. Three years of following Jesus ought to have an upside, don’t you think? A special reward for the closest friends? And so Jesus tells this parable to Peter and the twelve and the message is clear. This parable is told to teach Peter that the kingdom of heaven is not earned, it is generously given.
Everything is a gift. Even the work in the vineyard itself was a gift for which the all day workers should have given thanks. On New Year’s Day, 1957, I did not exist. I had no body. I had no being. I had no more way of making myself an alive entity than those day laborers had ways to make work. As soon as I stay in touch with the fact that my sheer birth is windfall, that my life has been given to me as an incredible gift, then something deeper becomes the way that I look at this whole mystery of existence. If it ever stays with us that life is gift and birth is windfall, then we can begin to be generous with our lives exactly as God has been generous with God's life.
Fairness doesn’t enter into it; fairness is we get what we deserve. But no gift can truly be deserved, much less fair.
There is an old Talmudic parable about a farmer that had two sons. As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and he taught them everything that he knew about growing crops and raising animals. When he got too old to work, the two boys took over the chores of the farm and when the father died, they had found their working together so meaningful that they decided to keep their partnership. So each brother contributed what he could and during every harvest season, they would divide equally what they had corporately produced. Across the years the elder brother never married, stayed an old bachelor. The younger brother did marry and had eight wonderful children.
Some years later when they were having a wonderful harvest, the old bachelor brother thought to himself one night, "My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one. He really needs more of his harvest than I do, but I know he is much too fair to renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he is already asleep, I'll take some of what I have put in my barn and I'll slip it over into his barn to help him feed his children.
At the very time he was thinking down that line, the younger brother was thinking to himself, "God has given me these wonderful children. My brother hasn't been so fortunate. He really needs more of this harvest for his old age than I do, but I know him. He's much too fair. He'll never renegotiate. I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he's asleep, I'll take some of what I've put in my barn and slip it over into his barn." And so one night when the moon was full, as you may have already anticipated, those two brothers came face to face, each on a mission of generosity. The old rabbis said that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall. You know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point. Two of his children had come to realize that generosity is the deepest characteristic of the holy and because we are made in God's image, our being generous is the secret to our joy as well.
Life is not fair, thank God! It's not fair because it's rooted in grace. The kingdom is not about fairness, but about grace. What might you be thinking?
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