This is a kingdom-of-heaven-is-like
story, and as in the one about the mustard seed, it depends upon surprise and
astonishment for its impact. Remember the mustard seed story? “The kingdom of
heaven is like a mustard seed,” Jesus says, “. . . it is the smallest of all
the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a
tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” And anyone who’d seen a mustard plant – which
I’m sure most of his audience had – would’ve said “Hold the phone – a
mustard seed doesn’t produce a big, luxuriant tree . . . what is this
Jesus fellow trying to tell us?” And it’s very strangeness invites closer
examination, like “how can a kingdom be like this weird seed, this seed
that defies all conventional wisdom?”
Our story is like that, but it works
better for us today, because it needs little translation. The mustard-seed
story only works if you know that a mustard seed will never grow into a
tree, not in this life, anyway, but the story of the surprising landowner hits
us right where it counts: our whole economy, our whole system of value
is based on fair pay for an honest-day’s work. If I work an hour for somebody,
I expect to get paid an hour’s wage – no less, but certainly no more. But here’s a landowner – and in ancient
Palestine, landowner meant wealth – here’s a landowner who pays everyone the
same, regardless of how long they work. And Jesus says the kingdom of
heaven is like that?
Well, some folks might say that it’s
all well and good in the kingdom of heaven, but we’re right here on earth,
we have to live in the real world until the kingdom actually gets here. But
that dog won’t hunt – it’s clear in the gospels that the kingdom of heaven – in
Matthew, it’s what Jesus calls the kingdom of God – is in the present as well
as in the future. It’s a process, not a place, and it’s already here in a
sense. And the way Matthew uses it, like the other Gospel writers, it defines
what it means to be a community of Christians. And so shuffling these things
off into some heavenly future, in some distant place where God lives, and where
we go when we die, doesn’t cut it – the kingdom of heaven is here, and
we’re left back where we started, wondering what in heaven’s name Jesus means.
Are we supposed to pay everybody the same no matter what they make? How are we ever
going to get any work done? Pretty soon, everybody will want to work
just one hour for a day’s pay. Then where would we be?
Well, it’s pretty clear in outline: early
one morning, a landowner goes out and hires some workers and, after agreeing to
pay them the standard daily wage, sends them off to his vineyard. Three hours
later, he goes out into the market again, hires some more men and sends them
off to work. And the men were idle, standing around, they weren’t working
because they hadn’t been hired.
In Decatur, Georgia over by the
projects, just across the tracks from Columbia seminary, men gather in the
mornings . . . they wait in the chill and on into the heating of the day, on
into the humidity, waiting for the pickups to come carry them to jobs, so their
families can eat. You’d see the pickup trucks pull up, and men would pile into
the beds, but others would be left standing and waiting, and some wouldn’t get
work at all that day . . . like vineyard work, construction is seasonal and
temporary, and in the winter, when it’s too wet to do anything, there are many
left after the final pickup . . . like the men in the marketplace, they are
classic day workers, gathering where employers can find them, sometimes finding
work, and sometimes . . . not. And again, six hours into the day, the
construction boss drives out into the market and again he finds idle workers
standing there, and he hires them and they go onto the job site, and this
happens three more times, the owner goes out and hires workers to pick his
grapes, and the last time is at five o’clock in the afternoon, late in
the day, but he hires them and sends them into the yard. And when it gets dark,
he calls in the workers, and tells his foreman to pay them, starting with the
last ones hired, and the first ones stand there watching the last ones getting
paid, and they see that they’re getting the standard daily wage . . . and they
think they’re going to receive more, but they get the exact same wage as the
ones hired last, even though they’d worked eleven hours more in the hot,
searing sun. And note that the first-hired workers expect more than promised,
they tried to control the amount they received, not the landowner.
And so here we have it . . . the
kingdom of heaven is like some jerk who isn’t fair to his workers, who doesn’t
treat them all alike, who patently favors those who’d been idle all day,
even though it wasn’t their fault. He tells them he’ll pay them “what’s right”
– the Greek can also mean “what’s just” – and is that what’s just in the
kingdom of heaven? Is that what’s right? And when they gripe about it,
when they grumble to the landowner, he tells them basically to stick it – even
though he is polite about it, even though he does call them
friends . . . He can do whatever he wants with what’s his, and anyway, did he
cheat ‘em? Did he take ‘em for a ride,
pull the wool over their eyes, take ‘em to the cleaners? Did he not give them exactly what they’d
agreed upon, one denarius, a day’s wage? But the first-hired grumbled, saying
that the construction boss had made the last equal to the first . . .
and this seemed to gripe them to no end . . .
And key to entire passage is the wording
of their complaint: “you have made them equal to us” say the
first-hired, and clearly to them – and is it the same way with us? – clearly to
those chosen first, the last were not equal. What is right to the
landowner, what is just, is that all are held equal. The parable
is about the landowner, not the workers, even though they’re the ones
doing the complaining, even though we – many of whom are workers ourselves –
tend to identify with them. It’s about the action of the landowner, the
owner of the vineyard, and what does he do? He makes them all equal. He gives
them all the same amount no matter what they have done, no matter how long they
have worked. The kingdom of God is like a landowner who gives the workers
equality, who gives them a life-giving wage no matter what they have
done, or more to the point, no matter what they have not done. And the
last will be first, and the first will be last.
I was associated with a church one
time, and there was this new member named Susan, a young, eager member, who
hadn’t been a Presbyterian all that long, and didn’t know the ropes all that
well. She was also just a little rough around the edges, not quite as
well-spoken as the others, but after a year she just couldn’t hold it in any
longer, and she made it known that she would love to serve the Lord on
the session, but she was told – not unkindly, but with great clarity – that she
hadn’t been a Presbyterian long enough. In that church, Susan always felt she
was something of an outsider, and wondered how long it had to be before
she could be considered equal to the other members, and she suspected that never
was the proper word.
But there was this other church, and a
guy named Lee came who used to be a Baptist, and who really wasn’t very much
like the other members – he was conservative, for one thing, and they were
liberal – and he didn’t know much about Presbyterians, but when he’d been there
a year, he was elected elder, just like that. And if you want to know the
truth, I was just a little bit ticked off, ‘cause I’d been there a year longer,
and I hadn’t been elected elder yet, but when Lee came to me just
flabbergasted, and feeling that he wasn’t worthy, I had to tell him about our
church, how it was the most egalitarian I’d ever seen, how egos were submerged
and power was shared, even among all the professors and deans and university
vice-presidents who went there, everyone had a place.
Which church do you think is a better image
of God’s kingdom on earth? In one, the first were . . . well, first . . . and
the last didn’t have an equal place in the congregation’s life. The other
congregation was just the opposite – oh, there were power issues all right –
the director of Christian education comes to mind – but people felt included,
needed, wanted . . . they felt their opinions made a difference, and they
actually counted in that piece of the kingdom. And that church continued to
thrive, it continued to be a place that nurtures the faith of its members . . .
in one year alone, they sent seven members to Columbia seminary’s inquirers
weekend. Of that seven, one is in seminary and three have been there and
graduated Two of those are Presbyterian pastors, and one of them is me.
There are no perfect church
communities, but some give more room for faith to grow. If you’re always
worried about what your brother and sister are doing, or your place versus
theirs in some hierarchy of control, there’s not time for much of anything
else. There are no perfect Christian communities, just as there are no
perfect secular ones, but ours are supposed to be different – and our
passage points to one of the primary ways. The secular world rewards people
according to what they do, but in the kingdom of God, they are rewarded irregardless
of that.
We have a word for that, don’t
we? It’s called grace, and it’s free, no
matter who you are or what you have done. Grace is like a landowner who does
what he wants with what is his, he’s not bound by others’ expectations, or
others' notions of what’s fair. Like the mustard seed that becomes a tree, it
overturns worldly expectations. A little tiny seed, worth the least in
the kingdom of humans, growing lush and beautiful. Day-workers, dependent on
seasonal labor to feed their children, paid a living wage no matter how long
they work. The kingdom of heaven is like that, and infinitely more. The last
shall be first and the first shall be last.
I think the biggest hindrance to
evangelism is that many church communities don’t look or act very different
from anyone else. What motivation is it for people to join a church if the same
stuff goes on inside as out? What incentive when what members are taught inside
has little bearing on how they act when they leave the building, or indeed,
when they’re inside? The biggest incentive we have, the greatest gift to a
hurting, insecure, pain-filled world, is what’s in this parable: in the kingdom
of God, all are equal, no matter what they have done, or what they have left
undone. God’s bounty, God’s grace is given not according to the world’s
standards, but to God’s. We don’t have to scrabble for it, we don’t have to
compete for it, we don’t have to count beans for it. We don’t have to
clock in at eight and out at five for it, we don’t have to
get-ahead-on-the-ladder-of-success for it. It’s not given in proportion to how
many committees we chair, or how many times we read the bible, or how long
we’ve been warming one of the pews. That’s the Good News in a nutshell, what we
have to share with our neighbors: we don’t have to follow the world’s
rules, only God’s. And the world’s rules bring pain and heartache and,
ultimately, death. God’s rules, on the other hand, bring life. Amen.
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