Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 (15th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 20), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
No comments:
Post a Comment