When I was a youngster, my little home town had five movie theaters. That was before every home had a TV the size of a couch. Of course, back then we called them “picture shows.” If you were lucky and got your chores done in time on Saturday, you might just get a quarter to go to the matinee. If you did your chores real good, maybe there was an extra dime for popcorn and a drink. If the movie was popular, there would be a line. In my home town, the Gem Theater was the hot ticket. The Gem is still there today and still showing movies. When I was in high school, I landed a job at the Gem. I worked every day from 4PM ‘til closing at 11PM, except for baseball season. Seventy five cents an hour. Those were the days. When I worked an Elvis movie, the line would go around the block. Hundreds of people would line up for an Elvis movie. Sometimes the line would start forming right after the feature started and the wait would be two more hours. Remember doing that? And saving people a place in line? That was not so popular, was it! Not fair!
As I read the parable of the workers and the vineyard in Matthew 20, I try to imagine if my boss at the theater had let me go out to the end of the line of an Elvis movie and start selling tickets. It might have started a riot. That’s not fair! You never start at the end. You always start at the beginning!
In my law practice. I do quite a lot of Wills, Estate Planning and Decedent’s Estates work. I’ve probably written well over a thousand Wills. That scene you see on TV with everyone showing up in the lawyer’s office to have the Will read? It almost never happens. But this does: Betty takes care of her dad for years. She raises her own family, but always gets by to see Dad, to take him meals, to shop for him, take him to church, to the doctor, to the dentist. When his health finally begins to fail, he moves in with Betty and her family. Betty’s teenagers Susie and Sherri have to share a bedroom now to make room for Dad. Betty collects no rent from her dad, but the food bill and the heat bill go up. Then there is taking care of Dad’s house and the yard. Betty’s brothers live within thirty miles, but they always seem to be so busy. Her sister Brenda, who lives in the next town five miles away, has to be called for every special occasion. She never shows. Until Dad dies. The sister is the first to arrive and the brothers are close behind.
After the funeral, sister Brenda produces a Will. She says she had Dad to the lawyer’s office a few months ago that day when she showed up unannounced just to take him to lunch. The Will is simple. Four equal shares, one for each child. After all, Dad loved all his children equally. Isn’t this fair? This scenario has played out in my office more times than I can count. One child does all the work, often for many years. All the children share equally. Fair? Depends on your definition. Poor Betty sounds a lot like the workers in Matthew 20 who labored all day for the same pay as those who worked only an hour.
In this lesson, Jesus tells us a parable about a landowner. The parable is often called The Workers and the Vineyard. Maybe it would be more appropriate to name it something like: Owners Make the Rules. I don’t know about you, but this is not my favorite parable. It sounds undemocratic. Why would I ever want to work for a guy who pays me the same pay for a long hard day of labor as he does some joker who just showed up an hour ago? And if you’re on the management side, it makes even less sense. The owner’s foreman must be going nuts. He’s probably thinking about the next time he has to go out and recruit day labor. He’s thinking he won’t be able to get anybody until five o’clock in the afternoon! The word will get around. Why would anyone work all day for the same pay they could get for just an hour?
But this is not a story about management and labor. It’s not a story about fairness either, except to point out that fairness as we define it is not God’s way. We should stop here and just say Thank You God. Thank you for not being fair to us. Thank you for not judging us by what we have earned or done or by what we merit. No, this is not a story about fairness. It’s a story about God and God’s absolute discretion to be arbitrary, should He want to be so. This is a story about God’s absolute power to reward, to bestow, to give, to be generous, to exercise mercy, for no reason other than that’s part of who God is!
The book of Genesis is a pretty good example of the way God works. Abraham gives his beautiful wife away twice to rulers whose lands he wants to cross. How unfair and selfish to hide behind his wife! And yet God reckons Abraham a righteous man. Rebekah lies to her own husband. Rahab the harlot and Ruth the Moabite wind up in the hall of faith in Hebrews. Jacob wrestles first with his older twin in the womb, then later with the angel of God. He runs away from his own family to save his skin. Yet Jacob becomes the father of the twelve tribes of Israel
I have a Greek professor who says that if you want to understand what the Bible says, you have to remember three words, three concepts: context, context, context! Let’s see if that helps here. The story before this parable is about the rich young ruler who went away, having been asked by Jesus to give it all up and to give it up now. It is too much for him. This prompts the disciples to look for some reassurance. After all, they had given up everything to follow Jesus. So Jesus promises them twelve thrones in glory. But then he throws in the qualifier…that many who are last shall be first. The story after this parable is about the pecking order in the kingdom. The mother of James and John wants to make sure her sons are well recognized for their efforts. She lobbies for their positions relative to Jesus. Jesus warns that they are asking not for a scepter but a crown of thorns, not for a throne but a rugged, splintered cross. These stories are the bookends to the Parable of the Generous Landowner. To truly understand the middle, we should also read the head and the tail.
It would have been a familiar setting to the disciples. A grape harvest is being rushed in to beat the rains. Every available hand is needed every available hour until the harvest is ended. Day-laborers gather at the town square knowing that there is work.
Jesus uses this common and familiar story to make his point...that we who would want so much, who seek our own idea of fairness, are the very ones who will most likely be standing in the back of the line, or coming up short when we count up all the help we didn’t give, or in so many other ways finding that judgment and fairness are the absolute last things we really want. Jesus knows this. He is talking to his beloved disciples and he loves them! He wants them to understand that they, and we, are eminently better off relying on the generosity and grace of our heavenly Father than His divine and perfect justice. For if “fair” is applied to our lives as a yardstick for judgment, then heaven can not help us. We are condemned. It is far better to be given according to the generosity of God’s grace than to stand the scrutiny of real fairness.
So reading the three stories together, we see our Savior using the disciples as an audience to get our attention about who God is and how He works. William Barclay reminds us that it is the paradox of the Christian life that he who aims at reward loses it, and he who forgets reward finds it.
Listen. “Ii is my will to give everyone the same.” Can you hear our Savior telling about our heavenly Father? Listen. “Can I not do what I like?” He’s talking to his disciples. He’s talking to Paul, who later says to both Jews and to new Christians: “There is no longer Jew nor Greek.” He’s talking to Peter, who tells us that God wants all of us. Listen. “Are you grudging because I am generous?” Jesus is talking to us. He was sent for us. He is God’s generosity. He is the wages of grace. An unearned gift.
Fair? No thanks. I’ll take grace any day.
Let us pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment