Warning: this is a sermon! It is about God and Jesus and the Bible and scripture interpretation. If those ideas offend you, you can choose not to read this and avoid getting yourself riled up.
Recent talk about the “unfairness” of student debt relief, and people who are angry that they paid their loans in full while others are getting a break, reminded me of this sermon. So I step WAY out of my comfort zone and post it here for those who might be interested.
SoundCloud link to the 15 minute reading, and a transcript, are below the jump.
The text of Matthew 20:1-16, the gospel passage the sermon is based on, can be found at this link.
Life isn't fair—the check your privilege parable
Proper 20A
Today's gospel passage is a privilege test:
how you feel about generosity toward those who have nothing
has a lot to do with whether you yourself have nothing
or whether you know what it is like to have nothing
and suddenly be showered with generosity you do not have to repay.
The parable of the workers in the vineyard, as it is usually called,
is a scriptural privilege test.
How do you react to it? Which group of workers do you identify with?
Every time this parable is preached it gets an incredibly angry rise out of some people:
the men who worked a full agricultural twelve hour day
got paid the same as the ones who only worked one hour?
That's just not fair!
Then, to make it worse, the preacher says what the landowner did
is a reflection of the way God offers salvation to the world?
What the ...?!
Look, I understand that life isn't fair, but I thought I could count on God to be fair!
If God is just as unfair as the unfair secular world,
what is the point of believing in God at all?
One of the glories of the Bible just as a piece of literature
is the timeless way it reflects on human nature.
Written so long ago, and yet, it says things about what it means to be human
that are just as true now as thousands of years ago.
It is a fact of human nature that when we complain about life not being fair,
it's because we have lost out on something:
something is taken away that we already had,
something we wanted very badly is given to someone else
who doesn't want it as badly, or who, in our eyes, doesn't deserve it.
But is extremely rare to see people get worked up about the unfairness of life
when someone ELSE is on the short end of the stick.
Think about it: when the unfair distribution of money, access,
or some other kind of privilege benefits YOU,
have you ever pounded the air with your first and shouted “Wait! That's just not FAIR?”
When my best friend of 40 years got me Hamilton tickets
right before the original cast left Broadway,
did I stamp my feet, throw things at the walls and say “Damn it, that's just not FAIR!”
I mean, it WASN'T fair.
And as I walked past all the people on the street
who wished they were going inside the Richard Rodgers Theatre with me
I might have felt a little guilty, but not guilty enough to give away my precious ticket.
It is human nature to accept or simply ignore unfair treatment
on those occasions when WE benefit from it.
It takes mature spiritual attention to even notice it happening
when the unfairness of life works in your favor,
when the unequal distributions of life help you and hurt someone else.
At those times, most of us are secretly, maybe even shamefully,
grateful that life isn't fair.
Every single one of us here lives a privileged life in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Sure, some of us have financial problems and might be poor
compared to the standard of living in larger US cities.
But if you have more than one pair of shoes, easy access to fresh water,
and can choose to eat something different today than you ate yesterday,
then billions of people, not millions, billions with a B
BILLIONS of people around the world
see you as incredibly wealthy, beyond what they can imagine for themselves.
Our economic privilege relative to countless billions of others
is invisible most of the time. We hardly think about it. It just is,
because the folks in the two-thirds world are not the ones we compare ourselves to.
This culture encourages us to compare ourselves to celebrities on TV & social media,
or the well-off neighbor down the street or across town,
and if that is who you choose to identify with, you will always feel cheated
and believe you deserve, or should have, a lot more.
So.
How strongly do you identify with the laborers who worked twelve hours?
Do you feel the men who got a day's pay for a day's work got a raw deal?
I will admit the first time I heard this passage I said “What? That's not fair!”
It took me years, it took me decades, to see the glory in this passage.
So if that is your reaction to this gospel reading there is NO SHAME in that.
Just take it as a marker of where you are.
But know this: if you identify more strongly with the 12 hour workers,
that means you think people who already have a lot, deserve to get even more.
Again: if you identify most strongly with the 12 hour workers,
it means you think people who already have a lot, deserve to get even more.
The men who worked all day and got a day's pay are top dogs in this story.
They are the people of privilege in this story.
They don't worry all day where their next meal is coming from
or whether their children will go to bed hungry;
their families know first thing in the morning
that the financial needs of the day are going to be met.
The 12-hour workers are the strongest, the most able-bodied.
They always get hired first. They probably get offered work every day!
It is not unusual for most people in this culture to identify with them
and feel the landowner has been unfair
to pay the one hour workers the same amount.
But in the rest of the world, in the two-thirds world, the majority world,
where the gospel is spreading like wildfire,
in poorer parts of the world where shoes and fresh water and variety in the diet
are seen as luxuries and NOT taken for granted, people see this passage differently.
Even in less privileged parts of this country,
where standing around on the corner hoping to get hired for day labor
is a normal part of community life,
this parable about the senseless ridiculous generosity of a liberal God
gets a very VERY strong positive response
because those people automatically identify with the one hour workers.
They see themselves in the men who stood around for eleven hours
hoping against hope they might still have a chance to earn some money that day.
For them, this parable has a surprise happy ending:
Oh my goodness! Wow! You mean God is generous like a boss
who would pay me a whole day's wage for one hour's work?
Yeah! I want to know more about a God whose love is like that!
Now let's look exactly at what the privileged ones are complaining about.
They agreed to work all day for the usual daily wage and that's what they got.
So what are they upset about really? Are they upset about the pay?
Let's look at the words of their complaint: “you have made them equal to us”
hmm… “you have made THEM equal to US”
"We are the strongest ones, we are the best ones, we were on top
and you have made ones on the bottom equal to us? That isn't fair!"
No, it isn't fair. It's not fair at all.
But it's exactly what social justice work is all about.
We proud social justice warriors spend a lot of time
trying to even out the inequalities of the world.
The whole point of inclusive justice ministry is about
working to make the ones on the bottom feel equal to the ones on top:
feeding those who have no food, giving shelter to those who have no place to live,
providing hope to the despairing and companionship to the lonely.
And whenever you do that, WHENEVER you do that,
you can ALWAYS count on somebody somewhere complaining,
and complaining with FIRE in their eyes: WHY are you doing THAT?
“Why are you giving those smelly drunks
a home-cooked hot meal every Wednesday evening?
Can't you just give them a cold sandwich and a bag of chips?”
You get to the point where as soon as you hear that tone of argument,
you know you are doing something right.
Whenever you are standing before angry people of privilege who are complaining,
“You have made THEM equal to US! That's not fair!!!” the heart of God is smiling on you.
The parable of the workers in the vineyard isn't fair, and life isn't fair, and God isn't fair.
You know what? we should be glad that God isn't fair.
We should be glad that God does not keep score the way the world keeps score:
marking it down against us without fail every single time we mess up,
making sure we pay the proper penalty for very single instance of our wrongdoing,
never letting us get away with anything.
if God were fair, we would always be punished according to our wickedness
and always pay the harshest price every time we sin,
each and every time we reject love and turn away from truth.
If God were fair, that's how God would deal with us.
Instead, God forgives.
God forgives countless, horrible, thoughtless, careless things we have done,
transgressions against God and against one another and against ourselves,
and is still, out of an abundance of love, willing to shower us with the same blessings
given to people who have been more consistently faithful.
This is a cause for rejoicing. This is the Good News!
When we rename this passage “The parable of the generous landowner”
then the focus is on God instead of on us.
Distribution of God's blessings is not measured by how deserving we are,
but by how generous God is: how generous and liberal and extravagant God is,
optimistically scattering salvation seeds everywhere,
full of love and affection and blessings and grace,
still searching for folks to come and join the work even at the 11th hour.
So if you are new to Christianity, i hope this parable will encourage you
to keep making yourself open and available to Christ.
Keep standing on the corner, keep watching for the divine invitation,
even if you've been doing something else with the first eleven hours of your life.
God welcomes all who come in sincerity, with open and humble hearts.
God still wants to invite you in and offer you the same loving reward
as people who have been with God much much longer.
And if you have been a faithful Christian all your life
and you hear sermons about this passage with maybe a bit of resentment
that some reprobate's deathbed confession
might lead her to receive the same salvation promised to you,
consider this: even we lifelong Christians have only worked one hour ourselves.
We are the Johnny come lately, we are the last ones on the scene.
The covenant with the Jewish people was established
not just eleven hours but thousands of years before we came along.
In the big picture of salvation history, we are the ones sliding in at the last minute
and yet we are offered the same share of God's love and blessings.
Aren't we glad that God is not fair?
God only has one payment to give: infinite love, abundant grace, eternal life.
And again, that's not about who we are, but about who God is
It's about the boundless generosity that defines the very heart of God
no matter how many hours we spend turning away, falling short, resisting God's will,
disappointing Jesus, murmuring and grumbling that God's great provision isn't enough,
grieving the Holy Spirit and breaking God's heart.
Again and again even until the very end of the day we are STILL offered
forgiveness and acceptance, eternal life with Jesus,
and the chance to reunite with those we love.
So let's not give God a hard time for being generous.
Is God not free to do whatever God wants to do with God's abundance?
If you were born first in line, or the world picked you to be first in line
or you managed to claw your way to the front of the line,
you do not deserve to get more from God
than those who for whatever reason got stuck at the end of the line.
All who align themselves with God's will, receive the same heavenly reward.
It is infinite. An infinity divided by an infinity is still an infinity.
It cannot be divided. Latecomers can't get one-twelfth of it.
God isn't fair, and that is worth rejoicing over,
all of us have already received so much more from God than we deserve.
We are all one hour workers.