Think about this question for a bit: the parable of the workers in the vineyard is about ____________________?
There’s lots of good things we can say about it: it’s about love, about God’s fairness, God’s mercy. There are probably as many different interpretations as there are people here today. here are a couple of things that it’s not about: the parable is not about being just, or fair, or working hard for a living and reaping the rewards of a good life.
Some deeply cynical part of me points out that this parable is also about the workers who are in the vineyard. If the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner, then the landowner has to continually deal with people who are a bunch of whiners. So, in another way, the parable of the workers in the vineyard is a story about how we usually feel that we could do a better (or at least more fair) job of running the universe than God can.
On some level that’s true, isn’t it? It was true for the Israelites: they are brought out of slavery – and bear in mind that slavery for the Israelites was something they’d chosen to avoid a famine; it was only after a Pharoah arose who didn’t know Joseph that it became a burden to them. They’d seen the parting of the sea, the great pillar of fire that led them by night, and the cloud by day. They were familiar; intimately familiar with the works of God.
Out in the wilderness, though, it was something else entirely. Out of the familiar confines of
We know how God provides for the Israelites: he sends quails at night and bread in the morning. This bread, called manna, covers the ground and the Israelites are to take what they need for the day, and nothing more – except on the sixth day, when they are told to gather enough to last them for the Sabbath.
There’s another interesting human factor to the story, as well: it’s what the Israelites call the stuff on the ground: manna. The word manna means…well, it means what they say, the same thing that your children, and mine, say when confronted with the intolerable reality of a
“What is this that you’re trying to feed us?”
“What is this that God is doing?”
“What is this stuff that we’re given?”
What is this? is our reaction to God’s grace in our lives. It doesn’t look like we think it should. It certainly isn’t fair – partly because our gratitude to God’s presence in our lives is always tainted with self-interest: what do we get from God in exchange for being ‘good’ people? But what God gives, thought unexpected, is good, and it is gift, all the same.
The secret of manna is that God gives out what everybody needs – and only what we need. You can’t ‘store up’ God’s grace; you can share it with others, but not store it up. That’s God’s manna way – that grace is more than just a simple prayer before a meal.
We can live out a manna way of our own – because when we know that grace isn’t just a simple prayer; it becomes a way to live.
Yet that way is kind of hard. The manna way doesn’t make sense in our lives – I’ve worked as a manager, and I know that many of you own your own businesses and farms. Look at the parable of the owner of the vineyard: does that make sense?
In a word, no. It makes us ask, what is this? All over again.
But as I often ask you: who are you in this parable? Are you the landowner? (if you think you are, you may have delusions of grandeur).
Are you among the first hired? Or the middle, or the last? Do we really have a ‘heirarchy’ of believers in the faith? I sometimes think we do – certainly, there seems a certain amount of respect accorded to people who have lived in the faith for longer.
Let me share with you something that all those workers have in common, though. Why are they in the marketplace at all? They are there because they are the dregs of their society. They are the people who do not have regular work, do not have a business of their own or a fishing boat, or a plot of land to farm. They are the desperate, the destitute, and maybe even the damned.
And the landowner goes out looking for them. Four times during the day, the landowner goes out seeking them. He doesn’t ask for applications, doesn’t check references, doesn’t interview and then do callbacks. He’s looking for labourers for his vineyard, and not just anyone will do – he needs everyone.
But at the end of the day, he calls those hired last – those who had given up all hope of hire, but who remained because they had literally no where else to go – and gives them the usual daily wage. And those hired first see it, and begin to do some mental arithmetic. This could be the greatest payday they’ve ever seen.
And they receive the exact same pay. One day’s wage. Not a weeks; nor a months; nor a lifetimes; but one day’s wage. And they take it, not as grace, but as insult. Instead of rejoicing at the poor who were helped on that day, they assigned a worth to each group, and they were at the top of the heap.
And as preacher David Lose points out,
Jesus tells [this parable] to illustrate the hardness of heart with which those who deemed themselves righteous considered those who by almost any standards were not, begrudging them the grace and mercy of God and the attention of God's Son. But there's also an existential dimension that speaks as truly to our own day, time, and lives as it ever did to Jesus' original audience. Because this parable lays before each and all of us a choice as clear as can be. When we look at our lives, do we count our blessings or our misfortunes? Do we pay attention to the areas of plenty in our lives or what we perceive we lack? Do we live by gratitude or envy? Do we look to others in solidarity and compassion or see them only as competition? The killer thing about this choice is that it really is a choice as unavoidable as it is simple -- you just can't be grateful and envious at the same time. So which is it going to be?
Jesus is eventually killed precisely because he offers this choice. That is, Jesus is crucified not just because he proclaimed that the grace, and mercy of God was available to all, even to those deemed so incredibly unworthy, but also because his declaration revealed the hardness of heart, the stone-cold entrenchment of spirit, that is part and parcel of the human condition. His boundary-breaking generosity revealed the envy and competitiveness of those in power. His vision of another way of being in the world -- he called it the
Yet God’s manna way continued, as the darkness of death faded to reveal a new bread from heaven broken for all people; fruit of the vine that brings to all people new and everlasting life.
Today is our stewardship Sunday – and maybe I think we need to rename it. In fact, I’m going to suggest it right now: instead of calling this stewardship Sunday, let’s call it ‘celebration Sunday’. Let’s call it “grace Sunday;” let’s call it “manna Sunday.” This is a day when we celebrate that we, who are hired last, who journey through the wilderness, we who are not worthy of the smallest tidbit of the grace of God, are given ALL.
This day is not a day when I’m going to flog you to open your wallets and “give”. This is not a day when we’re going to put a chart and graph, and say “this is where we need to be.” This is not the day when I raise up the ministries of the congregation and ask you to staff them.
I’m not going to do that because I already see your hearts open, and giving. I’m not going to do that because I know that when I tell you at the end of the service to “go in peace and serve the Lord” that you DO that; that you go out into the vineyard and work from sunup to dusk.
I want you to know that this is the morning we wake up and find God’s grace scattered on the ground so that we can live. I want you to celebrate God’s faithfulness and gifts to this community – and I ask you to celebrate the future we share together, because of that faithfulness and gift.
Today we will talk about a new initiative for our congregation’s future; we’ll talk about our hopes and dreams and visions. Most of all, today I want you to talk about you; we have shared in our labours together, and now we rejoice at the end of the day.
And for anyone who doubts that the Church lives like this parable of the workers in the vineyard, that the Church models the landowner who welcomes every labourer and gives to them freely, remember this: even if this is your first day in our home – or even if this is your fifty thousandth – you are welcome to join our celebration.
God has sought you out; you have been brought home. Join us, celebrate with us the great miracle of God’s manna way: that grace isn’t just a simple prayer before meal; that it isn’t a philosophical condition; that it isn’t a theological concept –
Brothers and sisters, grace is a way to live. Be at peace, for you serve the Lord and your reward is certain. Go out and find those who are desperately seeking; look for those who have given up hope. Bring them into the Lord’s vineyard and know that they, too, will receive all that they hope for – and just what they need.
Let the people of God say amen.
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