19 PENTECOST, PROPER 20

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE STANLEY

21 SEPTEMBER 2008

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

Some complaining is a good thing, as in telling your doctor about your pain so she will know how to treat you. Silent struggle is not always wise when you’re sick and trying to get better.

But then there’s the whining sort of griping that we humans are so good at. God had no sooner rescued the Hebrew people from the Egyptian Pharaoh, with Moses at their helm as God’s agent, than they fell to complaining because the eats in the desert weren’t as good as they had been back in Egypt: “If only we had died back in Egypt, rather than endure this wilderness,” they whimpered to Moses.

And then there were the vineyard workers Jesus tells about, who’d labored all day long in the scorching heat and at the end of the day they watched in astonishment as the people who’d worked for only one hour got paid the same as they themselves.  They were furious, and they grumbled against their employer. “You’ve made THEM equal to US!”

And the point is, of course, that in God’s realm, things are done according to God’s standards, not the standards of the world.  The kingdom of God, the realm of God, is made up of “alternative households,” as one author has put it, where things are not done as usual.

“The Alternative Households of God’s Empire.” (Warren Carter)

The Hebrews were starved in the wilderness, so God sent them food. But it wasn’t what they were used to eating.

God invited everyone into the vineyard and paid everybody the same wage, with no regard to how long they had actually worked that day. God treated them all equally. The economy according to God.

At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has finished his northern, Galilean phase of his ministry and now, as he moves south to Jerusalem and the cross, he is beginning to teach about how things work in God’s realm, different from our “normal.” For God, there are no hierarchies. God’s gospel preaches an egalitarian ethic; that’s how people relate to one another. Jesus talks about families, about marriage and money and rank and privilege and children, all in the context of life in God’s egalitarian kingdom.

“You’ve made them equal to us!” complained the workers who had slaved all day long. It wasn’t fair. The landowner had paid a decent wage to everybody that day, not a huge amount, just a “good wage,” says the story. But it wasn’t fair, as anybody with half an ounce of common sense could see.

The landowner kept going back to the marketplace for more people to hire. More people to invite to his vineyard. Did the landowner have pity on the people who had come late that day and so were left standing around waiting to be hired? “Why are you just standing around like this in the marketplace? he asked. “Because no one has hired us,” they answered.

Have you ever been “not picked?”

I was a total wallflower in 8^th grade, at least at the dances we had. What a nightmare. I was geeky, too, and I knew it, although we used different words in those days. Boys would run up to us girls as we stood in a line. They’d run up and literally slide as they got near the girl of their choice. And it wasn’t me, or my geeky friends. We had to dance with each other, or just chat and pretend it didn’t matter. I hated those dances! My mother made me go, said it was good for me.

I hated those dances, but I got over it. “Why are you standing here idle all day?”….”Because no one has picked us, nobody has hired us.”

I got over it, but it’s harder for people who have lost a job and don’t get picked for another one. Anybody who has been out of work and has felt as if nobody wants them, because nobody does right now, knows something that people who have never been in that situation can’t fully understand.  Who knows why those not-hired people in Jesus’ story were late coming to the marketplace that day? A sick child at home? They lived a long way and had to walk a distance?

Looking for work can often be harder than doing the work itself. You get up, you put on your work clothes (the self-help books say to do that, something about helping morale if you’re wearing your work clothes). You comb the want ads, send out blind resumes, make phone calls, network, use a head hunter if you can manage that. You try to put on a good face and when you stop for a cup of coffee somewhere you pretend you’re on a break from your job…

“….no one has hired us….”

How many more people just like that will hit the roles of the unemployed after what has happened last week? The topmost people in the giant companies may keep their positions as they transfer to the companies that have purchased the dying one. But the trickle-down effect will no doubt cause many, many workers to find themselves out of work. And how it affects all of us remains to be seen.

God constantly surprises us, as God surprised the hungry Hebrews and the unemployed laborers. But God is no maverick. A “maverick” is someone who surprises us but is inconsistent about it. You never know quite what to expect from a maverick. God is no maverick. God always shows preference for the weak, the cast out souls, the downtrodden, the ones standing around in the marketplace because “no one has hired us.” God looks out for the weakest among us and wants them to be cared for. We know what to expect from God.

Jesus, in today’s parable, makes that perfectly clear.

But I believe something else is going on in this parable, something more than God’s consistent, preferential option for the poor. I believe Jesus is wanting us to know something even bigger about God than simply that God reaches out to the people on the edges and wants us to do likewise, huge as that is.  I believe Jesus is telling us about God’s grace.  The grace of God which is so enormous and so sweeping that God doesn’t even stop to figure out who has how much and who has done what so God can then make a decision about who to help and how much to help.

A man whose last name is “Boring,” but he is far from boring! has written the following:

“Grace is always ‘amazing’ grace,” writes this man, Professor Boring. “Grace that can be calculated…is no longer grace.”  (M. Eugene Boring)

In the desert, God reigned down manna for all the people, the complainers, the non-complainers, the good folks and the not-so-good ones alike. They were hungry, and suddenly there was food. Bread and meat, manna and quails. There by the amazing grace of God.

The landowner invited everyone he saw and when it came time to settle up, he gave them all a living wage so they could go and provide for their families. No figuring, no arithmetic—everybody treated alike.

How did we let ourselves get into the financial mess we have created for ourselves and for the rest of the world? What can we say to our leaders and would-be leaders? How does today’s gospel speak to us?

I don’t know diddly about the intricacies of economic policies, and I’m glad I’m not in charge of fixing our mess. But I do know, as you do, too, what the gospels teach us about God’s reach to the poorest among us. I know, as you know, that God’s grace extends indiscriminately, amazingly, to us all. I know, as you do, that there are times when we are on the short end of the stick and times when we are just fine. I also know, as you do, too, that God counts on all of us to help God, to make sure, somehow, that nobody is left standing, uninvited, that all of us are swept into the vineyard.