Matthew 20. 1-16
+ If you’re anything like me—and I
hope you’re not like me—who would want to be like me?—one of the biggest
complaints, maybe rages is a better word, that I sometimes make at God is this
one:
“This is all so unfair!”
Usually I’m raising a fist to the sky
when I say it. And yes, I do rage at God sometimes. It’s a spiritually healthy
thing to do. And, trust me—God can take our little rages.
But I would say that my most common
rage at God is about the unfairness of it all. The unfairness of life. The
unfairness of the way things seem to work out sometimes.
After all, we’ve been conditioned, to
some extent. Things should be fair. A perfect world would be a fair world.
So, when it seems that God is not
fair, we rage. We get angry. God should be on our side on this one. But, it
seems, not always is God on our side on some things. The scale of fairness is not always tipped in
our favor.
To put it in the context of our Gospel
reading today, I often feel like one of the workers who has been working from
the beginning of the work day. The
parable Jesus tells us this morning is, of course, not just a story about
vineyard workers. The story really, for
us anyway, is all about that sense of unfairness.
If you’re anything like me, when you hear
today’s Gospel—and you’re honest with yourself—you probably think: “I agree
with the workers who have been working all day: It just isn’t fair that these
workers hired later should get the same wages.”
It’s not fair that the worker who only
works a few hours makes the same wages as one who has worked all day. Few of us, in our own jobs, would stand for
it. We too would whine and complain. We
would strike.
But the fact is, as we all know by
this time, life is not fair. Each of
here this morning has been dealt raw deals in our lives at one point or
another.
We have all known what it’s like to
not get the fair deal. We all have felt
a sense of unfairness over the raw deals of this life. But, as much as we
complain about it, as much as make a big deal of it, we are going to find
unfairness in this life.
Of course, our personal lives are one
thing. But the Church—that’s a different
thing. What we find in today’s parable
is exactly what many of us have had to deal with in the Church. The story of
the parable is that everyone—no matter how long they’ve been laboring—gets an
equal share. And in Jesus’ ministry,
that’s exactly what happens as well.
As one of my personal theological
heroes, the great Reginald Fuller, once said of this parable: “[This] is what
God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an
equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”
The marginalized, the maligned, the
social outcast—all of them are granted an equal share. To me, that sounds like the ministry we are
all called to do as followers of Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus is strive to
make sure that everyone gets a fair deal, even when we ourselves might not be
getting the fair deal.
And there’s the rub. There’s the key. Being
a follower of Jesus means striving to make sure that all of us on this side of
the “veil” get an equal share of the Kingdom of God, even if we ourselves might
not sometimes. That is what we do as
followers of Jesus and that is what we need to strive to continue to do.
But…it’s more than just striving for
an equal share for others. It also means
not doing some things as well. It means
not letting jealousy and bitterness win out. And that’s probably what we’re going to feel
when others get a good deal and we don’t.
Jealousy and envy are horribly
corrosive emotions. They eat and eat
away at us until they makes us bitter and angry. And jealousy is simply not something followers
of Jesus should be harboring in their hearts.
Because jealousy can also lead us into
a place in which we are not striving for the Kingdom. Those of us who are
followers of Jesus are striving, always, again and again, to do the “right
thing.”
But when we do, and when we realize
that others are not and yet they are still reaping the rewards, we no doubt are
going to feel a bit jealous. We,
although few of us would admit it, are often, let’s face it, the “righteous”
ones. We the ones following the rules,
we are the ones striving to live our lives as good Christians.
We fast, we say our prayers
faithfully, we tithe, we do what we are supposed to do as good Christians. Striving for the equal share for people, means
not allowing ourselves to get frustrated over the fact that those people who do
not do those things—especially those people whom we think don’t follow the
rules at all, those people who aren’t “righteous” by our standards—also receive
an equal share. It means not obsessing
over the fact that, “It’s not fair.” Even when it is unfair.
Because when we do those things, we
must ask ourselves a very important question (a question I ask a lot): why do we do what we do as Christians? Do we do what we do so we can call ourselves
“righteous?” Do we do what we do as
Christians because we believe we’re going to get some reward in the next life? Do we do what do because we think God is in
heaven keeping track of all our good deeds like some celestial Santa Claus? Do we do what do simply because we think we
will get something in return? Do we do
what we do so we can feel good about ourselves at the end of the day? Or do we do what we do because doing so makes
this world a better place?
This is the real key to Jesus’ message
to us. Constantly, Jesus is pushing us
and challenging us to be a conduit. He
is trying to convince us that being a Christian means being a conduit for the
Kingdom of God. In us, the Kingdom breaks through. Without us, it simply will not.
We do what we do as Christians because
whatever we do is a way in which the barriers that separate us here from God
and God’s world is lifted for a brief moment when we do what Jesus tells us to
do. When we live out the Law of loving
God and loving our neighbor as ourselves, the “veil” is lifted and when it is
lifted, the Kingdom comes flooding into our lives. It does not matter in the least how long we
labor in allowing this divine flood to happen. The amount of time we put into it doesn’t
matter in the least to God, because God’s time is not our time. Rather, we simply must do what we are called
to do when we are called to do it.
Jesus came to bring an equal share to
a world that is often a horribly unfair place. And his command to us is that we also must
strive to bring an equal share to this unequal world. And that is what we’re doing as followers of
Jesus. As we follow Jesus, we do so
knowing that we are striving to bring about an equal share in a world that is
often unfair.
We do so, knowing that we are
sometimes swimming against the tide. We
do so, feeling at times, as though we’re set up to fail. We do so feeling, at
times, overwhelmed with the unfairness of it all. And just when we think the unfairness of this
world has won out—in that moment, the Kingdom of God always breaks through to
us. And in that moment, we are the ones
who are able to be the conduit through which the God comes.
So, let us continue to do what we are
doing as followers of Jesus. Let us
strive to do even better. In everything we do, let us attempt to lift that veil
in our lives and by doing so, let us be the conduit through which the Kingdom
of God will flood into this unfair world. And let us do together what Jesus is calling
us to do in this world Let us love—fully and completely. Let us love our God, let us love our selves
and let us neighbors as ourselves.
As we all know, it’s important to come
here and share the Word and the Eucharist on Sundays. But we also know that what we share here
motivates us to go out into the world and actually “do” our faith.
As followers of Jesus, we are full of
hope—a hope given to us by a God who knows our future and who wants only good
for us. Let us go forth with that hope
and with a true sense of joy that we are doing what we can to make that future
glorious.
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