Sermon 9/20/2020 “What’s fair?”

Sermon 9/20/2020 “What’s fair?”

Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection at VTS in Alexandria, VA
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Day: 16Pentecost, Proper 20, Year A, during a pandemic

I am auditing a course here at the seminary that explores how biblical texts get portrayed by the movies. This week’s movie was the 2014 epic Noah, who built an ark at God’s behest and—well, you know the story. But in THIS telling, which was based on the Jewish scripture tradition, Noah’s antagonist was Tubal-Cain, a man whose ethic embodied the notion that we humans are made in God’s image and thus are entitled to subdue and dominate all other creatures and to take what we want. To Tubal-Cain, this was fair.

Tubal-Cain was angry at God because, he said, God wouldn’t speak to him. But Tubal-Cain demanded that God speak to him and then never stopped to listen. To Tubal-Cain, this was not fair. In Tubal-Cain’s world, cosmic fairness involved God treating him as an equal. After all, Tubal-Cain said often, he was “made in God’s image.”

We are, indeed, made in God’s image, as our and the Jewish scriptures say. But clearly our sense of fairness and God’s sense of fairness don’t match. Tubal-Cain’s arrogance toward God gives a glimpse into why our sense of fairness and God’s don’t match. We forget that God is God and we are not God.

God has all the power. But who doesn’t want enough power to at least gain some control over life? Because God rarely uses the “supreme being card,” we can forget that God’s sense of fairness trumps our ideas about what’s fair.

For example, is God being “fair” when, in Jesus’ parable today, the vineyard owner paid all the workers the same wages, regardless of how long and how much and how well they have worked? Our sense of unfairness is heightened by the knowledge that the later in the day workers are AVAILABLE to be hired makes them suspect as workers. “What defect kept them from being hired in the first place?” we wonder.

We begin our judgment with “I was hired first,” omitting mention of the Vineyard owner who hired us and pays our wages. Pretty soon, though, we say “I began work first,” making us the primary “actor,” instead of the Vineyard owner and his gift of allowing us to be present in and work in his Vineyard.

What today’s parable intends to highlight is God’s goodness and to remind us that God is the owner of the Vineyard, the one who gets to decide who gets hired and what our “wages” will be. And in God’s economy everyone gets a job offer and everyone gets the same wages without regard to merit of any kind. And to God this is fair because the owner gets to decide these things and we are not owners.

The Very Good News about God’s fairness is that God CALLS ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE to be in and work in his Vineyard. God doesn’t use a merit-based system because there is nothing we can do and nothing we can be to earn the gift that God gives freely to absolutely everyone. God keeps inviting us, no matter how late the day is getting, to come to his Vineyard and pays everyone who comes the same, the fabulous gift of life and work that makes our lives meaningful.

Thank God there is no distinction between those who come earlier to the Vineyard and the “Johnny-come-to-Jesus-lately” Vineyard workers. Because the truth is that none of us—no, not one—deserve to be in God’s Vineyard, God’s Kingdom. We can’t take what we want in life, if what we want is the Vineyard owner’s place and power. We are “made in God’s image,” but we are only a likeness, not a clone.

This is a tough message to preach at Church of the Resurrection, filled as we are with long-time Vineyard workers, especially because Resurrection enthusiastically welcomes everyone into its corner of God’s Vineyard.

I wondered whether Christ Jesus would give US a different parable to ponder, if Jesus were here in person today, preaching. After all, WE aren’t the Pharisees at whom Jesus directed this parable. But then I realized Christ Jesus probably would stick with this parable. Christ Jesus would still make his main points that, for any of us to be here at all is God’s great gift to us, and none of us are more deserving in God’s Vineyard than any other person. There are no elites in God’s Kingdom. More importantly, though, to blame God for not being fair is to blame God for being God. Blaming God for not being fair is substituting my judgment for God’s, making God the worker in MY Vineyard and docking his wages for not doing things my way. As if! That’s right down there with complaining that “God won’t speak to me” when the complainer doesn’t listen for God to speak.

So, where does this leave us? Perhaps the emphasis for Church of the Resurrection today would be to remind us where his Vineyard is. We Church People, like the Pharisees of old, tend to think the Church IS the Vineyard. But the Church is the Vineyard’s schoolhouse where we come to learn about the Vineyard owner. The Church is also the Vineyard’s chapel where we give thanks to the Vineyard owner for the work that he has given us to do. This means that primarily God’s Vineyard isn’t AT or ON our property, isn’t in either our old church building or our new one. God’s Vineyard isn’t here on the “Holy Hill” of the seminary, either, where Vineyard workers are trained.

God’s Vineyard is out there, where the growth of new hope needs tending, where the weeds of despair are threatening to choke the vines with the fruit the owner is growing. In THAT Vineyard, we are the late comers, not the long-time workers. God is calling us to step out of his schoolhouse, step out of his chapel, and join the others who have long been tending the vines. God promises us fair pay: the gifts of life and meaningful work.