That's Not Fair!

September 24^th, 2017    “That’s Not Fair!”    Rev. Heather Jepsen

Matthew 20:1-16

          I have to admit that today’s parable of the laborers in the vineyard is my favorite parable.  I love this parable so much because it is so offensive.  No matter where you stand or how you spin it, this parable rubs you the wrong way, and in that I always find space to learn and grow. 

          Jesus’ story is simple.  The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who goes out early in the day to hire workers for his field.  The sun is just rising and now is the time to start a full day of work harvesting grapes.  The landowner hires his workers and agrees to pay them the normal daily wage of a denarius.  Nothing out of the ordinary here.

          At about 9 o’clock the landowner goes out again and finds more men waiting to be hired.  He sends them also into the field saying he will pay them whatever is right.  The story gets strange as at noon and 3pm he goes out again and continues to hire the laborers he finds waiting for work. 

          Finally, at 5pm he goes out one last time to find men still waiting to be hired.  Even though there is only an hour left in the working day, he sends these men into his fields to pick grapes.  He doesn’t agree on a wage or even say he’ll pay them, he simply tells them to go into the field and work.

          The rub comes when the landowner gathers the workers to pay them.  He begins with those hired last and generously pays them a full denarius, the amount for full day’s work.  These guys only worked an hour and are getting paid for a whole day and they are rejoicing.  Now those hired first begin to be excited.  “Hey,” they say among themselves, “if those who worked only an hour get 1 denarius, we who have worked all day should get at least 10!”  These workers are eager to reap their just reward for a hard day’s work. 

          But things begin to go south when they notice that the landowner seems to be giving one denarius to all the laborers.  By the time the landowner hands them their one denarius they are fuming.  “That’s not fair!” they cry.  “Oh but it is,” the landowner responds, “Did I not agree to pay you one denarius for a day’s work?  I can do what I want with what is mine.  Or are you jealous because I am generous?”

          So, what do you think, is it fair?  Of course not!  It’s not fair at all!  If you work more, you should be paid more.  We all agree on that.  This parable pits justice against grace, and it violates our sense of right and wrong.  If God is the landowner, what does this mean?  That God isn’t fair?  Perhaps.  That God’s sense of justice is different than ours?  Probably.  That God’s grace is beyond anything we can imagine?  For sure!  That we are jealous because God is generous?  Most likely.

          Now there are a lot of directions one can take with a sermon on this parable, which is probably another reason why I love it so much.  One way to spin it is to ask “What is the reward, the denarius or the work?”  Maybe the reward is simply the privilege of working in the vineyard and the denarius doesn’t really matter.

          Have you ever seen men waiting around to be hired for a day’s labor?  I don’t think I have ever seen it around here, but when I lived in California I saw it a lot.  There was a place you could go in town where you would find men standing by the side of the road, waiting to be hired for a day’s labor.  These men were most likely illegal immigrants, and they were looking for a way to support their families by working for just a day.  Sometimes they would be hired by contractors to work on long term projects.  Sometimes they would be hired by homeowners to paint a room, or help cut down a tree, or some other day project.  In fact, when we moved from California to Washington we even saw men standing around the U-Haul place, waiting to be hired to help people move.  I would imagine that these guys would agree to do just about anything for a day’s wage.

          These guys were everywhere in one part of town and it always made me uncomfortable to see them.  Though they were clearly strong men, they also seemed so vulnerable.  If you hired them and promised to pay them but then reneged in the end, who would know?  If you hired them and they got hurt doing the work, then what happens?  If you hired them and drove them out to the boonies and left them there, how would they get back home?  Despite the risks involved they were always out there. 

          In the summer you would see them sitting in some meager bit of shade as they waited for the opportunity to work.  In the rainy season there they would be, standing out in the rain, hoping for a chance to work.  And as the day grew long, you knew that their chance of getting hired for work was slipping away.  There simply wasn’t enough to support all of them and you knew that even though they were willing to work, every day some would go home without anything.   

          If we use our imaginations this morning we can envision people like this all over this country and all over this world.  There are laborers out there who wish to work, who are looking for jobs, but there are not enough jobs for everyone.  To have a job in today’s world economy is a privilege and a blessing.  To have been hired to work in the vineyard is a gift itself.

          Perhaps this parable is about how God wants everybody to come and work in the Lord’s vineyard.  There is plenty of work to be done in God’s harvest and we are all equal workers.  You can come early or you can come late, God will offer you a place to work.  God does not want us to sit idle through life, wasting our time watching TV and drinking beers.  God wants us to be laborers in the vineyard; spending our days working on the harvest by coming to church, working for justice, and sharing the gospel throughout our lives.  God doesn’t want us sitting on the couch; God wants us working to bring about the kingdom of justice and peace.  And so, no matter how late we come to get hired, God always offers us work.

          That’s great and all, you are probably saying but the rub is still there.  What about the pay?  Is it true that I can work my whole life for the Lord and receive the same reward as some bumpus who comes in at the last second?  That’s not fair!  Nope, it’s not.  But God is not fair, God is generous.

          In her wonderful sermon on this parable, Barbara Brown Taylor gives it another great spin by asking us a powerful question.  What makes us think we have labored all day anyway?  How come when we read this, most of us assume that we are among those who have borne the brunt of the work and now are grumbling at receiving so little?  Perhaps, she muses, we are the ones at the back of the line. 

          Maybe we are the ones who meant to get there and work but something came up and we were late.  Today was an off day for us and we didn’t get out to the square to be hired because our kid has a cold and didn’t sleep last night, or because we were stuck at home in a fight with our spouse over money, or because we missed the bus that morning.  Maybe we are the ones at the back of the line, who were happy to come and work for an hour and who are overjoyed at the generosity of the Lord.

          Barbara points out that we are the ones who have set up the rules for who deserves more and who deserves less.  We are the ones who think that there should be a ranking where the first are first and the last are last.  And frankly, we think we should be the ones to put people in what we believe is the correct order.  This parable challenges all of that, as God turns our ideas of good order and what is right, onto their heads.  “The last will be first” Jesus says “and the first will be last.”

          Barbara writes “God is not fair, but depending on where you are in line that can sound like powerful good news, because if God is not fair, then there is chance that we will get more than we deserve – not because of who we are, but because of who God is.  God is not fair, God is generous, and when we begrudge that generosity it is only because we have forgotten where we stand.”

          I think the overwhelming reason this parable bothers us so much is because it shows us how equal we all are.  Last Sunday Paul was telling us that it didn’t matter so much what we thought about eating meat, or special days, or even politics.  That in the end, we all simply stand before the Lord as individuals.  Jesus is reminding us this morning that when we all stand there, we are all equal to each other.  There will be none of the divisions and ranks that we are so fond of.  No dividing ourselves according to class, gender, sexuality, income, race, age, or anything else we love to obsess over.  Nope, we are all equal.  And it won’t matter if one of us was a pastor and one was a sometimes visitor to sinner’s row, we are all equal and we all get the same reward. 

          When the laborers get mad they yell “You have made them equal to us!”  You have made those others, those who are less than, those who worked less than, just like us.  We hate that.  We want God to note all the differences we note and we want God to rank us like we rank ourselves, the first (me and those like me) should be first, and the rest should be last!  Jesus reminds us that it is never that way with God.  Never.  God is always radically generous, and it is that radical generosity that we find so offensive. 

          What is the kingdom of heaven like?  It is like a landowner who hires people throughout the day and then pays them all the same in the end, no matter how long they worked.  That’s not fair!  No it’s not fair!  That’s God and God isn’t concerned with being “fair”, God is concerned with being generous.  Amen. 

 

The Community of Forgiveness

September 17^th, 2017  “The Community of Forgiveness”    Rev. Heather Jepsen

Matthew 18:21-35 with Romans 14:1-12

          This morning’s readings are all about how to be the church together.  Last week we found Jesus offering us a step-by-step process for addressing conflict in the church.  This week he is answering Peter’s question regarding forgiveness, and we find Paul offering ideas for how we can be the church together if we are all so different.  I thought both of these readings had good things to offer us in our modern context.

          We will start with Matthew.  Peter asks just how many times he is supposed to forgive someone in the church who sins against him.  He offers the number of seven times, thinking this is a perfect answer since 7 was considered a perfect number.  Jesus’ reply of 70x7 shows Peter that he shouldn’t even be counting, rather our forgiveness should be limitless. 

          In case his disciples failed to understand his point, Jesus offers a parable.  It is a story of exaggeration and excess.  Somehow a slave has amassed an incredible debt, more money than can be imagined, and when he asks for mercy he is forgiven by the master.  Jesus is painting with a broad brush for drama here as no slave could ever amass such a debt, or could ever imagine earning that much to pay it back.  No master could be imagined to forgive such an impossible debt either.

          After having been shown such extravagant mercy, this slave turns around and is a jerk to his neighbor.  One who owes him a small debt is violently mistreated and told to pay up or else.  Again, the story is told with drama and zeal.  When these unscrupulous actions are reported the master calls the ungrateful slave back and offers him the punishment he really deserves.  He is given over to be tortured until he dies because he will never be able to pay his massive debt.  It is a shocking ending, and Jesus intends to shock, as he threatens God will do the same for us if we are as merciless as the slave.

          This is rather frightening if we decide to take the whole thing literally.  God will torture us for all eternity if we are unable to forgive with the same overwhelming grace and mercy of our God.  I’m not sure anyone can meet those standards.

          But, if we understand this as a parable, as a story pointing us to a deeper truth, than we can understand that while He might not require perfection, God does require us to forgive.  This is especially true within the Christian community.  Remember, Peter was asking about how much he needed to forgive another member of the church.  Folks in the church community know how much God has forgiven them, they know how great their debt is, and so they of all people should know that they are called to forgive each other.        

          Only when we truly acknowledge our own sin, can we truly understand the depth of God’s mercy.  And as forgiven people we are called to show that mercy, to share that peace, with those around us.  As we say “Peace be with you” each Sunday we also say “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  At least to some measure, our ability to forgive is connected to our own forgiveness.  If we can’t show grace within the church community, then we won’t be able to show it anywhere else.  And, I imagine we will have a hard time receiving it ourselves.

          In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul is also talking about grace and mercy within the church community.  The church of Rome was made up of two very different kinds of people, the Jewish followers of Jesus and the Gentile citizens of Rome.  These two groups were people from very different backgrounds.  One was used to being the chosen people; being holy, separate, other, and special.  They showed their “chosen-ness” through specific behaviors like practicing ritual cleanliness and only eating kosher food.  The Gentile Christians were citizens of the empire.  They were followers of Rome, not part of the “elect”, and not ones to practice fancy rituals of purity. 

          As I am sure you can imagine, when these two groups got together to form the church, it was difficult to blend.  Paul is referencing their meal fellowship when he discusses who would eat meat and who wouldn’t.  Kosher Jews would remain vegetarian at meals as a means of avoiding something that wasn’t prepared following the kosher laws, but Gentile Christians would partake of meat without any worries.  “Is one better than the other?” people were wondering, “Is one stronger in their faith?”

          Paul encourages the folks to look to their similarities instead of their differences.  “Who cares if you eat meat or not” he seems to say, “and who cares if you think one day is better than another.”  Paul wants us to know that the only thing that matters is how we stand before God.  And when it comes to God, we are all the same.  “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

          Paul encourages us not to judge each other in the Christian community.  We may notice differences but we shouldn’t use this as a basis for judgment.  Only God has the power to judge us, and when we stand before God, we will all stand the same way.  Paul doesn’t want us to waste time holding grudges or comparing ourselves to each other.  In the end we are all only accountable to God.

          In the modern church, we aren’t likely to get up in arms about who may be eating what at the potluck.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t notice the differences in this community and secretly judge each other in our hearts.  Paul is concerned that certain differences will prevent true fellowship in the body of Christ.  I don’t think we are going to get upset about food choices here, but I am sure we can get upset about other things.

          Take politics for instance.  Can a Republican and a Democrat share a pew or the same table at a potluck?  I am sure Paul would remind us that one may follow Trump and one may long for Obama, but we are all one in the Lord.  What about other divisive issues?  Homosexuality, abortion, racism, feminism, immigration, and global warming are just a few of the topics with the power to divide. 

          There is great danger in allowing opinions on these issues to have power in our lives.  Once we start to associate someone with the opposing view to ours, then we begin to dehumanize them.  As we continue to mentally identify people with the issue that they disagree with us about, then they become less of a person and less of an individual child of God.  To use Paul’s example, before we know it, we are no longer seeing Sally the church member, rather we are seeing Sally the meat-eater and bad Christian.  We can hardly stand the sight of this person anymore, let alone gather around the table in Christian fellowship. 

          Paul reminds us that it doesn’t matter what we think, how we vote, or what foods we consume.  It doesn’t matter if we have our NRA bumper sticker or our Bernie Sanders bird logo.  It doesn’t matter if we voted for Trump or just started reading Hillary’s new book.  “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live or if we die, we are only ever the Lord’s.”  This is a community that practices peace and forgiveness, so this has to be a community where we can tolerate opinions that are different from our own.

          Today I chose the Apostles Creed for our declaration of faith because I think it reminds us of our unity under the big umbrella of the church.  We share this confession with Christians of all stripes, the church universal.  And yet, we all understand the words a little differently.  You might believe in the virgin birth as a historical reality and your neighbor in the pew might believe in it as a theological truth instead, and yet we can all stand together and say “I believe.”  You might believe in an afterlife of bodily resurrection and your neighbor might believe in a resurrection of a purely spiritual body, and yet we can all stand together and say “I believe”.  This confession unites us as a church, even while we gather as diverse people under that one name.

          Our readings for today remind us that the church is a place of diversity, grace, and peace.  This is a place where we are called to forgive each other countless times.  This is a place where we are told to gather together, even if we have different opinions about the table we are gathering around.  This is a place where all are welcome, stranger and neighbor and where we join with other Christians from all times and places under the one big umbrella of the church. 

          Today I am glad we are all gathered together in this community of forgiveness.  I thank God for the church and I pray we may continue to be a place of grace, peace, love, and diversity.  Amen.