Proper 20A

For the past two weeks, the gospel readings have focused on what it means to live in community — a specific community called the church. Explaining what the church meant was very important for Matthew and so his gospel spends a lot of time on the necessary attributes of those who profess Christ and wish to be a part of Christ’s body. We have heard about the challenges that come with coexisting in this community — the honesty and humility needed to abide together, the necessity for radical forgiveness that far exceeds human measure, and the need for grounded faith. The gospel has reminded us of our prophetic commitment to speak in the name of God and for God. Now the gospel presents us with the unforeseen, yet hoped for, result of living in honesty, humility and forgiveness. In a story that is unique to the gospel of Matthew, we hear of God’s incredible mercy and forgiveness, a gift that can invoke a surprising response that comes from our limited understanding, a response that quite simply stated is, ‘What???’ [Sort of like the Israelites' reaction to the food from heaven, mannah, literally in Hebrew, manhu, 'what is this?']

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The story of the generous landowner in Matthew is so rich that it does not need repeating. It is as confounding a story now as it was to the workers in the story who had been working the whole day. When read in community, as we have just heard it, the story usually provokes a collective gasp which wordlessly says, ‘It’s not fair! How can the landowner do that?’

We do not think it fair because we connect wage and work and the value of one’s worth. If you don’t work, you don’t earn. And if what you do isn’t considered to be work by those in power — like the work of a parent at home or volunteering as a treasurer for a non-profit organisation — you aren’t paid either.

Jesus touches here upon the economy around him. In Matthew’s gospel, he frequently uses economic themes to talk about God’s reign: planting and sowing, wealth and poverty, buying and selling, hiring and firing, the just and unjust and here, the payment of wages. The gospel could not be divorced from economic and religious considerations then any more than it can be now. Jesus wanted to introduce a new social order. In this new social order, comes a new economy, one where the rules of the marketplace do not apply. (1) It is one, instead, where God’s grace is the currency.

Even knowing that in God’s economy our rules do not apply, we are offended by the generosity of the landowner. We are offended by God’s gift of grace so freely given to those we think are undeserving.

The offense lies not in any shady deals — no one has lied and no one cheated. It lies in God’s generosity to others. The offense of grace is not in the treatment we receive but in our seeing that others are getting more than they deserve. To our economically-conditioned minds, forgiveness and grace do not seem fair at all.

But God’s justice is over and above our formal human justice. God’s justice takes into account the greater needs of people, of those who are stuck standing around the marketplace at the end of the day because no one would hire them. God’s justice extends to everyone — including us. God’s justice comes from God’s grace. But sometimes understanding or even accepting that fact comes so hard for us. And it’s really, really hard to get beyond the sheer economics of the parable and miss the point.

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Surely the market is very much on our minds this past week, as we watch the stock market gyrate and worry about if our investments have tanked (even if we personally do not have any, the church does). We wonder if the entire US economy is going to fail the way it did in 1929; we know that the stock market sank to levels in the days immediately post 9-11. That is the market on a large-scale and its impact on us.

In an oddball collection of techno-electronica music I picked up in El Salvador, there’s a song (unknown artist or title) whose refrain says: Too much of heaven, can bring you underground, too much of heaven can bring your life around, too much of heaven, our lives are all hellbound, heaven, the killer makes no sound.

The quasi rap voiceover then states: Let’s talk about money — we’ve got too much of heaven. C’mon friends, let’s talk about money today. We’ve got too much money dependence today; people just keep getting their dollar bill into their pockets; they’ve got nothing else around, no friendship, nothing else, just a dollar bill coming into their bank account. And that’s not the only song on my iTunes collection that talks about our conflicted relationship with money. For, in our society, we still equate our worth in terms of money earned or our net worth. So when someone else who seems to work less than we do, gets ahead of us, it doesn’t seem fair. And that’s where the disillusionments come into play.

There’s the person who has worked for the past twenty years at a non-profit agency, giving of her soul and life to the cause of the agency and whose work largely has been the life-giving energy and creativity of the agency. And yet, when the going gets rough, her job is down-sized and integrated into someone else’s position, and she is now unemployed without severence or barely a thank you.

Or the man who has given his life for the church, and consequently believes that the church will reward him for the money and time he has given. Yet when the church justly says ‘no’ to a privileged request, the man rails against how unfair the church is and why shouldn’t he be rewarded?

In either case, the expectation is one of reward. But the reward is coming from an economy-driven way of thinking. Time in equals inherent worth and status out. When it doesn’t come to us, we get angry.

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How much more difficult it is for us to accept God’s grace freely extended to those whom we think unworthy! Two well-known stories demonstrate our human incapacity to understand God’s grace and mercy given, in terms of last week’s gospel, seventy-seven times, rather than seven times.

Think of Jonah, who got into a snit when he realised that the so-called wicked people of Nineveh actually were going to repent and return to God, instead of continuing in their ways. Instead of the getting a sound and light show of destruction he so wanted to see, Jonah witnesses God’s love for the people of Nineveh, who do not suffer the ultimate judgement. And he is furious.

Or, what about the most classic story of them all, the prodigal son as recounted in Luke? If anyone should be rewarded, it is the son who stayed at home, did not waste his father’s inheritance and, in general, behaved himself. How come he isn’t being rewarded when his profligate brother is? We know the answer. God’s mercy, God’s spendthrift love knows no bounds.

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How many times have we realised, really grasped, that we have received God’s mercy and compassion when we did not deserve it as the late afternoon workers did?

How many times have we gotten bent out of shape because we think we are owed something and someone else gets it?

How many times have we sat in judgement of others, forgetting that we are under the same spiritual scrutiny?
What’s so remarkable is even as we feel gypped by God or by whatever system, God’s mercy has already been extended out to us. As Julian of Norwich wrote, ‘God has loved us from before the beginning.’

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Frederick William Faber’s words of hymn 469/470 are a good reminder for us, hearing the story of the generous land-owner and our miserly responses to God’s mercy:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Saviour, there is healing in his blood.

For the love of God is broader than the measure o the mind:
And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word;
And our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.

As we come to God’s table this morning for nourishment and renewal, let us bring together those times in our lives that we have been like the six a.m. workers, and offer those moments up as symbols of our brokenness. Then, through the sacrament of the eucharist, let us find those moments transformed so that we might be transformed into reconcilers. Finally, let us be mindful of the many ways that God’s mercy has been extended to us, most of all in the gift of Christ, who died for us so we might have everlasting life.

END NOTE
(1) This paragraph is based on Joseph Donders, With Hearts on Fire (Mystic CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1999), 253.