Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
Sept. 25, 2011 Proper 22
Matthew 20:1-16
'For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; 4and he said to them, "You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, "Why are you standing here idle all day?" 7They said to him, "Because no one has hired us." He said to them, "You also go into the vineyard."
8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, "Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first." 9When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, "These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat."
13But he replied to one of them, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?* 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"* 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.'
When modern biblical scholars look at any one of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels, they impose a certain sniff test to question whether the saying sounds like something the later church would have created because they needed for Jesus to have said it or was it something they might have wished he had not said. Anytime the gospels gives us a saying of Jesus that seems to be inconvenient to the later church.... Something they might have wished that he had not said, then we are more inclined to believe that it is historical.
The saying before us today is awkward, so awkward, in fact, that it is something of a wonder that it was preserved... which while it makes it more likely to be a reliable teaching of Jesus, we are still left to wonder what it could have meant.
We read this story where a land owner goes out and hires day laborers at four different times on a workday: 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. So some people worked 9 hours, some six, some three and a few folks only worked for an hour. The land owner pays them all the same amount but the amount he paid was the standard price of a day's work.
The people who had put in nine hours of hot back breaking labor were outraged that the people who had only put in an hour got the same pay that they did. No one had been cheated but still, it is clearly unfair. And we might expect Jesus to weigh in on the side of the laborers who felt cheated but instead he takes the other side.
Ironically, the people who got a day's pay for working a full day, would not have complained if the other workers had been paid less! That is, you gold brickers don't deserve to be treated as well as we are being treated.
The land owners reply, well, the English translation goes to great lengths to make it understandable but the literal translation is a bit more abrupt and more of a punch in the face.... It actually says something like, "Is your eye evil because I am good?" Perhaps a better way to word it is, "You see me doing something generous and it makes you mad? What does that say about you?"
The saying is so obscure I would be dishonest to tell you that it means some certain thing but one thing I think we can be fairly certain of that it was a part of a core of Jesus saying that is dismissive of our economic assumptions. Jesus is not big on ownership, property, wealth or money. The historical Jesus is not a practical person and the church has always done violence to his memory when they try to make him sound practical.
If Jesus had been made the ruler of some small nation I'm not sure that any of us would want to live there.
His teachings would not amount to a very well run and stable state.... He is a bit permissive about crime, indifferent about economics and didn't seem to put a lot of stock in things like going to work and raising a family. But we turn to the teachings of Jesus to question ourselves, our values, our assumptions.
When it comes to what you are entitled to, what is yours, what you deserve..... Jesus is not likely to help you out very much. I don't believe that the historical Jesus was in anyway indifferent to the violence of poverty or social injustice but I am inclined to think that he was nearly entirely dismissive of human competition to be better than, more wealthy than, more comfortable than anyone else.
In eastern thought there was an inclination among spiritual people to be more devoted to self denial than makes sense to us in a modern capitalist society. I do not doubt that the last phrase of the last point we print on our bulletin covers each week is the least read and least understood part of the eight points.
We say that we: Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege..... OK, but what privilege exactly are we renouncing? Ironically, we in middle class America very often do not see that we have any privilege at all.... Life is hard, demanding, filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. Fear and self preservation drive us towards greater individualism and pours conflict into our politics and into our families as we fight for survival.
We tend more and more to think of ourselves as individuals and we see ourselves as being less and less connected to one another.
If you will allow me to make something of a leap by illuminating a teaching of Jesus with a teaching of Buddha:
Buddhism teaches that one of the fundamental mistakes we make is to convince ourselves that we are separated from everyone else. They actually call this a primordial ignorance and the first of the three poisons out of which arise the other two poisons, greed and hate. We experience envy and anger and even become violent with others because we cling to this false perception.
The realization of wisdom is that this separation is an illusion. Even the "I" we think is so permanent is an illusion. Buddhism teaches that through the path of enlightenment we may be freed of the pernicious effects of the three poisons. When we understand that the causes of hate and greed are illusions, hate and greed -- and the misery they cause -- disappear.
This isn't an easy concept but the more you meditate on it, the more obviously true it becomes. Our willingness to renounce privilege has a very practical implication for society.
I was very impressed this week with something Elizabeth Warren said in response to all of the recent talk about class warfare. She said:
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there--good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea--God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
I hope that this very frank and very factual description of the fabric of our capitalist democracy will form a space where conservatives and progressives can have meaningful conversation. We are connected to one another. No one in America is a self made millionaire. There is no disputing the fact that some are more productive than others, some are more burdensome to society than others.... We are not the same, we don't have the same intellect, habits or genetics but we are connected to one another.
People who work harder or longer than others, in spite of what Jesus may have said in this parable, do deserve a bigger piece of the pie but they don't deserve the whole pie. And shame on you for wanting to take the whole pie and leave everyone else hungry.
We don't have to feel guilty about being warm and well fed if we aren't trying to keep other people from being warm and well fed.... If we are actively working to give everyone a chance to make it, to have a place at the table. This whole, "I got mine, everyone else keep their hands off," is just not a spiritual world view. We are connected by history, dna, and culture to the poor, the unemployed, the uneducated, the elderly and sick. The belief that separate is an illusion.
This week, when the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" came to an end, all of us who are straight but not narrow minded could rejoice with our sisters and brothers who are gay. Because we are connected we say, "Do ask! Do tell!"
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We may have come to America on different kinds of ships but we're all in the same boat now."
