God Gives Grace Generously
Matthew 20:1-16
Pentecost + 14, September 18, 2011
Years ago there was an investment company – I don't remember which one –but the tagline of their commercials was, “They make money the old-fashioned way – they earn it.”
The idea as I remember it was that the investors worked hard for their money, that nobody gave them anything for free – and I guess by extension, that they would work hard to make you money too – they would earn it.
That could have been the motto of the first workers in this kingdom parable Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew's gospel this morning: “We make money the old-fashioned way – we earn it.” And certainly, they did work hard to earn their daily wage. Lucky enough to be among the first chosen for a day's work, they were out in the vineyard all day, working through the hottest part of the day, earning their pay by the sweat of their brow and the strain in their backs and the ache of their feet. This was no cushy, sit-around-an-air-conditioned-office all day kind of work; this was hard physical labor. And at the end of the day, they lined up with everyone else to receive their pay.
That's how it worked, you see. These men working in the vineyard were day laborers. They had no other source of income. And each day's pay was enough to provide for the next day. They were literally working for their daily bread. This was subsistence. This was about survival. There was no extra to set aside for a rainy day – every day of their lives was rainy, if you know what I mean. So the manager lines them up in reverse order – the ones the owner had hired last at the front of the line, and the ones who had been there from the early morning at the end. The workers watch the money as it's doled out, and you know that when they saw the guys who only worked for an hour get paid the standard day's wage, they started to get excited. Because if they got the usual wage, surely they would get more. It would only be fair.
But of course, Jesus says that's not what happens. They end up getting the same amount as everybody else. And that ticks them off. How dare the landowner make the last workers equal to them when they were the ones who had done the hard work and had been there all day. Where was the justice? Where was the equality? If the landowner thought those Johnny-come-lately's had earned the usual wage, certainly they had earned more!
Oh, how familiar this whole scene is! It's built right into our fallen human nature. We see it in little kids from a very early age, right? this “it's not fair” mentality, but we don't necessarily grow out of it as adults. We too want to get what we've earned, and we've got a keenly-developed skill for keeping score and figuring out where everyone is on that continuum, who has earned their place, & who hasn't. It's powerful, this tendency to rank ourselves and everyone else in comparison to each other and in line with some internal sense of what is just and fair and right.
Trouble is, we think and want and expect God to operate the same way. At the end of this life's day, we want God to look us over and say something like, “You got your salvation the old-fashioned way – You earned it.” And of course, by extension, we just know that there are some folks who haven't earned it, who have been too bad or sinful or just plain lazy to have earned their way into God's good graces. I'd guess that most of us put ourselves in the early worker camp – maybe not the 1st round, but at least we've been working in God's vineyard for longer than an hour come the end of the day. So when we hear this story Jesus tells, our sense of justice is offended! How dare Jesus say the kingdom of God is like a landowner who pays everyone the same amount, no matter how much time and effort they have put in? How dare Jesus imply that God doesn't keep score, tallying up what we have earned on some divine cosmic balance sheet but instead gives generously to everyone? How is that justice? How is that right? How is that fair?
But this is God's kingdom, God's ruling, God's economy Jesus is talking about here. And in God's kingdom, things don't always line up with our sense of what is fair. Things often seem upside down and backwards to us in this place where the last will be first and the first will be last.
And how like us jealous, competitive humans to judge this story and our own lives by looking around at how much God gives to others and weigh it in comparison to what we think we and they deserve! How like us to look around, and instead of seeing the generosity of God, be drawn to see what seems to be lacking! How like us to grumble along with those first workers, protesting that we deserve more than we have been given! And yet thanks be to God that none of us gets what we deserve!
See, this parable is less about the workers and more about the landowner. In this story Jesus tells, the landowner is the one who decides who gets what – not the workers. The landowner has the right to decide what he wants to do with what belongs to him – and what he wants to do is to provide generously out of his own abundance, to give to all as they have need, which in this story is everyone. Every single person hired that day needed that full day's wage to make it through to the next day, the next possible job. And so the landowner chooses not to be a miser, not to just pay what they seem to deserve, but instead to share what he has. He is lavish. He is extravagant. He is gracious.
This parable is meant to help us learn that again about the God we serve – that he doesn't just give to us in return for our effort – he gives to us out of his love. The good news in this story is that God does not give us what we deserve. We like to think we can look around and judge who is or isn't worthy, who is or isn't deserving, who has or hasn't earned God's love – but then we come to the foot of the cross, and standing there, seeing what God has done for us in Jesus, how can any of us say we deserve that? Who can look at Jesus as he lays down his life for us and think that we could ever do anything to earn a love that deep, a love that wide, a Love who stretches out his arms to embrace the whole world? Not one of us deserves that kind of love, and yet, at the end of the day, that is the love each of us receives, whether we're at the front of the line, or way in the back. This is the love that God gives to each, doing what God chooses with what belongs to him – generously, extravagantly, lavishly – beyond what we could expect, beyond what we can earn. May we live our lives in gratitude for that love, learning to see the abundance God has poured out on us, and rejoicing that God gives abundantly to fellow workers in the field. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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