September 24, 2017 – Matthew 20:1-16
Matthew 20:1-16
Deserve’s Got Nothin’ to Do with It
Lectionary 25A – September 24, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The labourers were all invited to a place in the vineyard.
They were all invited by the landowner to come work and find a place.
And whether they came late or whether they came early, they were given the same wage:
enough to live on for that day.
Daily bread.
From one angle, you can see why the labourers who worked twelve hours,
through the heat of the day, were upset!
When they were paid the same wage as those who had only worked one hour!
This would upset us too.
Upset: well, Jesus is good at that.
At upsetting us, and our notions of how God deals with us, with all of us.
He upsets our notions of what God is like.
And the way Jesus figures, God is outrageously generous.
In many ways, God is not like us at all.
“My ways are not your ways,” God says in Isaiah.
No kidding.
Last week we heard about a God who never tires of forgiving.
Who forgives and forgives and forgives – excessively.
Who forgives an excessive debt of 4 billion dollars!
And who wants us to forgive – 490 times! The same person! Over and over!
This week we hear about a God who never tires of seeking out workers so they can have
meaningful employment and enough to live on for that day.
We hear about a God of almost unimaginable grace.
Okay: maybe not a very good business person –
as I’ve said before, maybe Jesus needs to go to business school!
But a very good God.
A God who is concerned that all have a place in the divine mission to
love bless and heal this world and every person in it.
And a God who is concerned that all have enough.
That is a pretty great God.
Now Jesus is not only concerned with making sure we know what God is like.
Jesus is also concerned about what our response is to such a God.
At the end of the parable Jesus has the landowner ask the workers who’d worked all day:
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
Literally it says in Greek, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”
Envy is such a destructive force.
In this case, it prevents the workers from seeing – and maybe rejoicing –
that everyone that day will get to go home and be able to feed their families.
And maybe envy prevents the workers from seeing what prevented those who were called late
from getting there earlier.
Maybe some of them had children that needed to be tended or who were sick.
Maybe some of them don’t have the support systems that others take for granted.
Maybe some were ill.
The good news in the story is that all were offered work, all were offered a place in the
community: all were offered the dignity of work and a place.
The person who had to take their kids to school was offered work.
The person who spent the morning in therapy was offered work.
The person who spent the day rebuilding their hurricane damaged house was offered work.
The evil envious eye prevented the workers who had been there all day from
seeing their neighbours with eyes of God, the eyes of compassion, the eyes of good.
But then, Jesus has sights set on us too.
When Jesus tells us the story, who does he think we assume we identify ourselves with?
Many of us from the time we were children have probably identified with those who came early.
With the hard workers.
With those who stayed.
With those who sweated and toiled.
With those who really deserve the day’s wage!
But the story reads very differently if you think about yourself being at the end of the line.
If you start to think about all the things you’ve been blessed with because of the
generosity of others, and not because of your own merit or work.
If you start to think of yourself as the recipient of grace, rather than as one who’s earned
every single thing they’ve ever gotten.
Some of us would not be here if it were not for the love and thoughtfulness and
kindness and generosity and encouragement of a particular person or people.
All of us are dependent in our global economy on countless countless others for the fact that
we have work and that there is food in our grocery stores.
And as I said last week, all of us are, I’m sure, the recipients of God’s forgiveness
pretty much every single moment of every single day.
We are surrounded by grace upon grace.
As Luther writes in his explanation of the first article of the Apostles Creed:
I believe that God created me, along with all creatures. God gave to me: body and soul, eyes, ears and all the other parts of my body, my mind and all my senses and preserves them as well. God gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and land, spouse and children, fields, animals, and all I own. Every day God abundantly provides everything I need to nourish this body and life. God protects me against all danger, shields and defends me from all evil. God does all this because of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, not because I’ve earned it or deserved it.
Maybe that is all the commentary we need on the story Jesus tells us today.
Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
Jesus wants to open our eyes to the grace that is all around us.
To a life that is in its very essence pure grace.
Think of what a gift it is to be alive, to have senses that perceive the people and places around us,
to experience beauty, to know what generosity feels like, to be able to think – and to be able to love.
What a gift. What a miracle.
Luther – and I think Jesus – is trying to get us to realize what a gift it all is.
They are trying to get us to perceive the world and the people around us in a good way
rather than an evil way.
To help us to see our neighbours not as competitors but as fellow community workers,
with their own struggles and sorrows.
Who each have gifts to share in the vineyard, that is, in God’s mission to
love and bless and heal this world and every person in it.
Where is Aurelia?
Kristy and Hartley, when you hold Aurelia you have a tangible real sense of
what a gift this life is, right?
And what a gift life in itself is?
Aurelia didn’t ask for life, but it was given her.
Aurelia didn’t ask for two of the most loving, kind people I know as parents,
yet that is what she has been given.
This morning, we baptized her, and she was given a promise of God’s love and
a place in God’s community and mission forever along with
everything she will need in this life.
She is given parents, grandparents, godparents, family, friends, co-workers in the vineyard,
a community of faith that will respect her gifts and nurture them for the common good.
She will be assured every Sunday that she is making this day special by just being her.
She will be assured that she is enough, just as she is.
She is given a place of grace because God has sought her out.
Just as God seeks each of us.
The great good news in the story is that the landowner went out, and went out,
and went out again, five times looking for people to give a place to.
God’s community is an inclusive one that seeks to give all meaningful work
in God’s great mission.
Aurelia has a place here – you have a place here.
On this day, Aurelia is baptized into God’s mission,
just as each of us when we are baptized are baptized into God’s mission.
The mission of the God who never tires of seeking out, who never tires of including,
who never tires of seeking to turn our evil envious eyes into good eyes,
good eyes that see with mercy, that see with love, that see the good.
Let us ever see and be thankful for the blessings we have,
for the blessing of our baptisms, for the blessing of Aurelia,
and for the blessing of one another.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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