Hilton Head Island, SC – August 26, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 20:1-16
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge me my generosity?” – Matt. 20:15 (RSV)
Why is Smith always sick, but Jones never is? Why does one family go sailing through life with favorable winds and never a storm, while another family has one stormy crisis after another? Why are Connecticut and New Jersey relatively so affluent, and South Carolina and Mississippi relatively so un-affluent? Why are rich countries so rich, and most of the countries of Africa and Asia are so poor? Why are the western states ablaze with so many fires, and the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest are currently free from serious natural disasters?
It is those kinds of questions we think about when we think about the fairness of God. We have all known wonderful people who had terrible diseases or ill health for unending years, and other people who are miserable cusses who are fit as a fiddle till the day they die at 97, having driven everyone else around them to an early grave. Why do those things happen? How does God allow them to happen? Is there anything so special about the Swiss that they haven’t had a serious war in their entire history? What’s wrong with the Swiss that they never seem to do what all the rest of us so readily do?
Those are all interesting questions, I suppose. And maybe they have answers. But if so, I don’t know what they are. And I doubt that God knows either. Well, I do have some suspicions about the Swiss. The reason they don’t get into wars is because they have maintained a posture of neutrality since just after the time of Adam and Eve. The Alps also help in discouraging would-be invaders of the mountainous nation. The last time a major army went through Switzerland was long before it was Switzerland, when Hannibal and his elephants set off on the invasion of Rome. Otherwise the Swiss just build more banks and get richer. But why Smith is always sick and Jones never is has much more to do with genetics or environment or statistical anomalies than with theology. It probably has nothing whatever to do with theology, even though many if not most of us ask theological questions in the face of such matters.
But that kind of divine equity or inequity is not what we’re looking at today. Today’s sermon topic was suggested by an adherent of The Chapel Without Walls who asked to have a sermon based on the parable of the workers in the vineyard. This parable, incidentally, is found only in Matthew’s Gospel. It seems to me more like something that should be in Luke than in Matthew, but there you have it: what Jesus said “when” and who recorded what he said “where” is one of those mysteries of life with which we are forced to live.
According to John Calvin, Jesus told the parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16 as an extended answer to the question posed by Peter in Matthew 19:27, which Jesus addressed in Matthew 19:28-30. After Jesus made the observation that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, Peter said to Jesus, “We have left everything to follow you. What then shall we have?” In effect Jesus said, “Yes, guys, you have given up much, and you shall receive much.” And then Jesus said precisely (at least if Matthew has it right), “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
To put this whole matter into context, therefore, the issue which caused Jesus to tell the parable of the workers in the vineyard was the question of how it is that God judges all of us, the one first posed by Simon Peter. Is God fair in His judgments, or not? Do we get a reward for good behavior, or not? That is a natural kind of question, a good question. An extension of it is why Smith is sick and Jones isn’t, or why Connecticut is rich and South Carolina isn’t, and so on and so on. But those things I’m not going to talk about at all, because the answer is “because” --- just because. Why are all those things so? Just because. “Because” never satisfied anybody, and if you want to know why, I’ll tell you: just because.
However, Jesus was willing to talk about Peter’s concern, namely, if we are righteous and do good things, will God reward us for it? Surely He will --- won’t He? Note how the parable begins. “For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire workers for the vineyard.” This is, in other words, an analogy for the nature of God and His Kingdom. It isn’t this, but it is like this.
Here we need to take a few moments to understand the agricultural economy of first century Judea. When the vineyard owner wanted to hire workers, he went to the village market before 6:00 AM. Working hours during the harvest season were 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. If you think a twelve-hour, six-day work week was too long, I can only tell you that the AFL-CIO had not been invented yet. Nor the Teamsters nor the US Labor Department nor Taft nor Hartley nor any of that other stuff. Besides, if you’re worried about a 70-or-80-hour work week, you’re probably just a wuss anyway. In every village market in every Judean village there was a place where unattached workers went to wait for someone to hire them. Thirty years ago it was like the Field of Dreams between the former Abe’s Restaurant and Motel and the Palmetto Dunes folly on William Hilton Parkway in mid-island. There’s a park-like open space there now, but back then Latinos came early in the morning, hoping to be hired. I don’t know where they go now.
In any nation in any economy anywhere in the history of the world, the day-labor market is one of the least hopeful for would-be workers. It is the Joad family in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It is the Great Depression or the years immediately after World War II, when many men were desperate for work. “Will Work for Food,” the signs said. A few signs still say it. When I was a young boy I remember what we called “hobos” coming to our house on a fairly regular basis, because somehow they knew our mother was a soft touch. Fifty years ago I was on the board of the Chicago Christian Industrial League in Chicago, where homeless men came to live temporarily. Every morning employers would come by to choose fortunate workers, driving them away to job sites all over the city. If they didn’t work, the League would feed them, but if they worked enough hours and saved up enough money, they could become independent and go rent a place of their own. Spot-labor workers are marginal workers. They are the kind of people whom the economy and society force to the sidelines, the margins of life.
So, said Jesus, a vineyard owner came to hire workers to pick his grapes. I read in the commentary that when the grape harvest is on, you have to get the grapes in quickly, first, because they will spoil if they aren’t picked quickly enough, and secondly, they will spoil because the autumn rains in Judea came in late September, and grapes would spoil in the rain. And if you ask why, I’ll tell you: just because. Such a nudzh you are. What do I know about grapes? I’m only telling you what the commentary says, and I don’t know if it is correct.
So the vineyard owner hired some workers at 6:00 AM, and then, because he realized he would need more workers, he came back and hired some more at 9:00 AM, and then more at noon, and more at 3:00 PM, and still more at 5:00 PM. And if you wonder why he didn’t get as many as he needed at 6:00 AM, so that the whole job would be properly finished by 6:00 PM and he wouldn’t have to keep coming back to get more workers, I’ll tell you you’re a regular pain in the neck for wondering that, and you only want to mess up a terrific parable. You’re not just a nudzh; you’re a nudnik nudzh. Just go along with the program, for crying out loud.
At the end of the day the vineyard owner came out into the vineyard to pay his day laborers. The going rate for such workers in those days was one denarius. The footnote in the RSV says a denarius was worth about twenty cents, but the RSV was translated in the mid-Fifties, so maybe now, with inflation, it would be worth a dollar or two. However much it was, it wasn’t much. But it was considered a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work for the kind of workers who could get only that kind of work. But when the five o’clock guys got a denarius, the three o’clock and noon and 9:00 AM and 6:00 AM guys thought they were going to get an increasingly large bonus. Not on your daily pay stub. Not on your 1099. Not on your Form 1040, EZ or regular. They all got the same pay. And that’s not fair! It isn’t just! It’s a rip-off! What kind of vineyard owner is this vineyard owner in this parable of this parable-teller, Jesus of Nazareth? Doesn’t Jesus understand labor law? Doesn’t he understand fairness and equity and justice?
Well yes, he does, which is precisely why he tells this parable. But if John Calvin was right, remember that this parable was prompted by Peter wanting Jesus to pat him and the other disciples on the back for being such good workers for Jesus. So in effect, Jesus was telling them, “Sure, you’re good workers, guys, all of you. But the Kingdom of God” (or the Kingdom of Heaven as Matthew was wont to call it) “doesn’t depend on good workers, or good works, It depends on grace. Good works count for making the world a better place, but the only thing that makes the Kingdom of God God’s Kingdom is GOD’S grace.” Jesus is telling us that God is the vineyard owner, and that God admits us into His kingdom solely by His own grace, freely given.
The biggest obstacle to a full and complete submission to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the mistaken idea that God judges us on the basis of how good our behavior is. A misplaced emphasis on the importance of righteousness is the most serious barrier to comprehending the nature of God and of His kingdom. Righteousness counts; don’t misunderstand that. God watches what we do. He wants us to do the right - - - always. But being righteous has nothing to do with being saved. Did you hear it? BEING RIGHTEOUS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING SAVED! God is not fair --- thank God! If God was fair, nobody would be saved, because no one is sufficiently righteous to merit salvation; no one. In far, far too many places the Bible indicates that we must be righteous in order to merit God’s love and His salvation, but that is wrong! It is skewed theology and spurious religion! Psalm 1 is illustrative of that kind of thinking. Holy Willie’s Prayer is a poem by Robert Burns. It is a an explosive denunciation of such sanctimonious thinking. These ideas lead oodles of people down the primrose path to destruction every day, because they think that every day they must earn their salvation. The only thing we can count on for salvation is the unfairness of God, not His fairness. If He were utterly fair, we all would be utterly doomed.
Further, in light of what Peter was hinting at just before Jesus told this parable, we learn that there is no seniority in Christianity. Peter was probably thinking because he and the other disciples were the first to sign on with Jesus, they would be first in the Kingdom of God. But, said Jesus, there are no firsts in the Kingdom or in heaven: not really. Jesus was very egalitarian. Remember how George Orwell said that on the Animal Farm all the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others? Well in the Kingdom, either here on earth or later in heaven, everyone is truly equal. Nobody is more equal than anybody else. All are completely equal. And if you don’t like that idea, you won’t like the Kingdom. But if you can accept it, and live with it, you’ll live easily in the Kingdom. You might even learn to like it
Further still, Jesus seems to be saying by means of this particular parable that in the Kingdom, there are no chosen people. Jesus was a Jew, and most of the time he talked to Jews. And according to the Bible Jews were and are the chosen people. But in the Kingdom of God, nobody in particular is chosen, and everybody in general is chosen. And it is God, and God alone, who does the choosing. If you don’t like that idea, you won’t like the Kingdom. But if you can accept it, and live with it, you’ll live easily in the Kingdom. You might even learn to like it. Everybody is welcomed by God into His Kingdom, regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, past deeds or misdeeds or past goodness or moral superiority.
Listen, the Kingdom of God is not about rewards or about compensation for services rendered. It is about grace, and grace alone. We don’t get into the Kingdom by our righteousness, because we can’t get into the Kingdom by our righteousness. We can get in only by God’s grace. And God is the kind of God who will let anybody in at any time he or she is willing to accept the invitation, whether that is at dawn’s early light or mid-morning or noon or mid-afternoon or only an hour --- or minute --- before quitting time. Remember the thief on the cross? Jesus said to him – and presumably he was a classic criminal – “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus didn’t say, “You’re too late, fella. Sorry; you don’t pass muster.” Jesus didn’t ask him for a resume` of righteousness. Jesus said instead, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” It doesn’t sound to me like that man did anything to merit being there, but Jesus insisted “there” is where he would be.
None of us can ever do enough to merit God’s grace, and none of us can ever do so little as to negate God’s grace. God’s grace is offered to everyone, and ultimately it will save everyone, if not in this world, then in the next. God’s grace, as St. Augustine said, is irresistible. Temporally people may resist it, but not eternally, not forever. God has a vineyard, and He wants everyone to be included into His vineyard.
A father was on the beach with his two children. His four-year-old son, the older of the two, had run ahead. With a look of consternation on his face, he came back and led his father and little brother to a place where a seagull lay dead, close to the dune. “What happened to him?” the boy asked, pointing at the bird. “He died, and he went to heaven,” said the father. Puzzled, the boy asked, “So did God throw him back down?”
God doesn’t throw anybody back down, ever. Thank God He doesn’t. He is a God of compassionate inequity, who long ago concluded, for reasons known ultimately only to Him, that none of us shall get what we deserve. Instead, we will get what God wants us to have, which is grace. And grace, be definition, is the unmerited love of God.
Jesus was the most popular with social outcasts and misfits and widely recognized sinners, because they knew how good the Good News was that he preached. “Good people” didn’t think it was so good, though. The Gospel Jesus proclaimed suggested that no one is good enough to make it on his or her own. And that notion grates on good people. Fortunately, however, everyone is good enough for God, because everyone belongs to God.
Is God unfair? You better believe it! Otherwise you’ll be forever trying to win your way into God’s good graces. And all along He will have been telling you that you’ve already been won. That was the essential message of Jesus of Nazareth. It is what Jesus called Good News. I’m not making this up. It’s what you could call the Gospel Truth.