September 21, 2014 – The 15th
Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20A
© 2014 Evan D. Garner
Have you ever had those
moments when you hear yourself teaching your children the same lessons that your
parents taught you, which makes you stop and think, “How did I ever grow up to
become my parent?” One of the lines that I heard often as a child seems to come
up a lot in our house right now, and I’m sure it’s one you know as well: “Life’s
not fair.” She got a bigger piece of cake than I did! I’m sorry, son, but life’s
not fair. Why does he get to use the iPad longer than I do? Well, honey, because
life’s not fair. But, daddy, you promised that you would let all of us have a
turn. I’m sorry, kids, I know I did, but life just isn’t fair. Considering how
much I hated hearing that when I was a child (and how much I still hate hearing
it today), I’m surprised how often I say it to my own children. But you know
what? Life isn’t fair, and that’s one of those lessons we all have to learn the
hard way.
But what happens when
life gives us more than we deserve? No one ever says, “Life’s not fair,” when something
good happens. “I got an A on my term paper even though I threw it together at
the last minute. The boss gave me credit for all of your hard work. You’ve been
playing golf all your life and have never had a hole-in-one and I got one the
first time I teed it up. Oh well, life’s not fair.” No, we point to the
unfairness of life when we’re not happy with the way things turned out—when we
got the short end of the stick. That’s because we go through life expecting to
get what we deserve, and, when we get less than what we are owed, we whine
about it until someone reminds us that life isn’t fair. But, when we receive an
unexpected, undeserved windfall, what do we do? We usually go quietly about our
way, hoping that not too many people noticed.
That’s the message behind
the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The question isn’t whether life in
the kingdom of heaven is fair. It’s not. The question is whether we’re
grumbling about it or sneaking away when no one is looking.
You don’t have to read
the parable very carefully to realize that Jesus is using our sense of fairness
against us. The owner of a vineyard went out at six o’clock in the morning and
hired some laborers to work on his property, agreeing to pay them a
denarius—the usual daily wage. Then, he went out again at nine o’clock and at
noon and at three o’clock, and hired additional workers, each time promising to
pay them what is right. Finally, at five o’clock in the evening—one hour before
quitting time—he went to the marketplace and hired everyone who was still
standing there. But when it came time to pay the workers, he gave all of them
the exact same amount—a denarius, the usual daily wage. As we would expect,
those who worked all day wanted to be paid more. They were furious. “How can
you make them equal to us?” they asked. “We did all they work. We deserve more
than they do!” Now, Jesus doesn’t tell us what happened to the workers who were
paid first, but I’d bet they slipped away as quickly as they could, hoping
their angry colleagues wouldn’t find them. And my question for you this morning
is this: what sort of worker do you think you are—one who started first thing
in the morning or one who showed up at the last hour?
Of course, the parable
assumes that the hearer thinks of himself or herself as one who worked all day.
It wouldn’t be a very interesting story if it didn’t play against our sense of
fairness and hook us because we think we deserve more than those
Johnny-come-latelies who show up at the last minute. You’re dang right we
deserve more! We’ve been here from the beginning. We’ve been serving the Lord
our whole lives. Although we’d rather not talk about those years when we were
in college…or in our twenties…or those Sundays during football season…you’d
better believe we deserve more than those lifelong heathen who only recently started
going to church. They’re only here because their new wives expect them to be.
But that’s not how the
kingdom of heaven works. That’s not how God works. Instead, in the person of
Jesus Christ, we discover that God loves the sinner as much as the saint…the prostitute
as much as the Pharisee….the drug dealer as much as the DEA agent…the abuser as
much as the victim. And we don’t like that. It’s ok for Jesus to show his love
for the societal outcast as long as it’s the kind of outcast we’ve never met.
But we don’t like it when people who have spent the majority of their lives as
deadbeat dads and child molesters undergo a last-minute change of heart and
then get to sit next to us in heaven. They don’t deserve it. They should, at the
very least, have to spend eternity in a lower state of paradise—the public
housing section of heaven, perhaps. But they don’t. They’re right there with
us.
And, if that were all
this parable had to teach us, it would be enough. One of the greatest struggles
of being a Christian is accepting that God grants repentant sinners of all
stripes a full share in his kingdom. We could spend a lifetime striving to
grasp the concept of God’s indiscriminate love. But accepting that others
receive a full share is only half of the lesson. The other half—the much harder
half—is learning to accept that we are just as undeserving as they are.
What’s more
infuriating—that the lazy-good-for-nothings get paid as much as those who
worked all day or the fact that those who worked all day only got as much as
those who barely worked at all? In the parable, all of the workers were paid
the same amount. In other words, no one was compensated on the basis of the
work he did. No one was singled out for doing a good job. No one got a pat on
the back or a thank you for what he did. Why? Because the intrinsic value of
the laborers is based not on what they contributed but purely on the fact that
the master called them to work. It’s hard enough for me to accept that other
people get a full share in the kingdom, but I also must accept that I don’t
deserve the kingdom any more than they do. That’s the double-edged sword of
grace: anyone gets in because no one deserves it.
Our place in God’s kingdom
is a gracious gift; we didn’t earn it. Whether we were called at six o’clock in
the morning or at five o’clock in the evening, we are all invited into the
vineyard. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how long you work. That isn’t
fair, but thanks be to God that it’s not. You belong in the kingdom not because
of what you’ve done but because God has made a place for you. That’s good news.
If you’re grumbling at the master because of what other people are getting, you’ve
missed the point of God’s love. No, they don’t deserve it, but neither do you.
Would you rather have it any other way? Amen.
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