Proper 20 Year A
September 24, 2017
We have heard several parables over the last weeks that point to God’s less than perfect farming skills. Seeds are scattered with little or no regard to what kind of soil they are scattered on; or letting weeds grow with the good wheat, letting the weeds be weeds, and even letting the weeds take nourishment meant for the wheat. None of these are particularly wise farming skills. Today, it seems that God is also a foolish boss as well.
Who in their right mind pays the day wage for the last only hour of work? The laborers who have endured the heat of the day are furious, and who can blame them? It doesn’t seem fair or just… it doesn’t make sense… not to mention, it’s not good business sense.
But obviously the parable, like the story of Jonah from the Old Testament is trying to tell us that God doesn’t think about these things the way that the rest of us do. We should view these stories as good news… but sometimes that’s hard to do…
One of the lessons we get to learn today is that God’s sense of justice isn’t quite what we would have in mind… we tend to think about justice in terms of equal resources and getting paid for our work in ways that make sense…. in today’s parable, the wealthy land owner seems more concerned with the day laborers earning enough rather than how long they have worked… a pretty good deal if you came in later in the day…
The thing is, our God is always extending a pretty good deal. There is always enough love to spare no matter when we arrive; always more than enough for us and for anyone else who shows up… always… and so the anger that the laborer feel while it seems justified by our standards, isn’t justified by God’s standards…Grace is God’s gift to scatter as God sees fit… parables of grace are hard to hear and to understand because we don’t usually love and extend grace the same way that God does. and we may never understand just how loving and incredible an action it really is, until WE are the ones arriving at the last minutes of the work day and are surprised to find that our share equals everyone else’s.
The question that strikes me here, is why do the laborers act the way they do? Perhaps a more important question, is why do WE act the way we do in the face such love and generosity?
We certainly see this theme repeated over and over again in scripture… from the story of Adam and Eve, to our own stories, it seems that we are always trying to get more, trying to get God to give us even more than God already has… It seems to be part of our nature to be overly concerned with what others are given rather than doing the best we can with what we’ve been given… What God does with God’s grace and love is really God’s business, not ours. Whomever God decides to lavish grace upon, does not affect our share, not ever. Why do we care so much?
One of the best definitions I have heard of what the church is, is that the church is the place and the people, who bring hope to the hopeless… What if, in response to God’s blessings and love, we turned around and gave hope to the hopeless?
The only response to what we have been given by God, is to give to others. It’s the only way to really love God in return. God has not just given enough; God has given more than enough… to quote a much overused phrase, our cup runneth over, and in response, we must reach toward others and give them the hope that life in the kingdom offers…not just in the next world but in this one as well.
What stood out for me as I read the story this time, is that the land owner tells the laborers to go into the vineyard and he will pay them whatever is right… and of course, by the end of the story, whatever is right, is much different than we or the workers expect…no matter who the worker is, not matter when they get to the vineyard, they get what they need…
Abundance is the status quo in God’s kingdom. There is enough for everyone… it seems that no one has more than anyone else, and no one has to want for anything… it’s a radical equality based on kingdom values, rather than on human values.
The hope for us and for others, is that God always has more than enough grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness…. for all of us, no matter who we are; even when we live our lives as non believers, or live our lives without giving God a thought; over and over again, grace is offered, whether we accept it or not…
So… hope, mercy, love, are all gifts that we can give, because there’s plenty of them to go around… doesn’t always seem like it when we look around, but we are the church, the people responsible for bringing hope… in God’s kingdom, hope multiplies; grace, mercy and love, all multiply… and the more we give, the more there is… isn’t that part of the miracle of living in the kingdom?
As workers in the vineyard, workers in God’s kingdom of abundance, we need to get the message of God’s unimaginable generosity out there… and part of getting the message out there, is living as though we know the message is true.
I pray that we can live in the overwhelming joy that God’s grace brings into our lives; I pray that we can each treat our fellow children of God in ways that aren’t based in the fear and jealousy that lives inside us when we live in a culture of scarcity. The kingdom has no scarcity; only abundance. It’s an abundance that knows no limits or boundaries. May we all be the kind of vineyard keepers that God is.
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