Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
“It’s Not Fair” — Reflection by Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Jonah 3:10-4:11/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 20:1-16/NRSVUE)
Sometimes I stand behind this pulpit on Sunday mornings and wonder how the heck I got here.
Though church is obviously a big part of my life these days, this wasn’t always the case. My ancestors had belonged to the same faith tradition for centuries back in Europe and here in America, but my parents broke that streak (you know, it was the Sixties). They got married in the church, and I was baptized in the church, and then we just stopped going.
I’ve come to understand that their intentions were good: they really wanted my sister and me to have the freedom to come to whatever faith we had on our own terms, without being told by someone else what we were supposed to believe. But, from a purely theological standpoint, I was more or less raised in the woods by wolves, so it’s kind of weird that I actually ended up doing this for a living. And yet here I am.
But I have to tell you, I felt really awkward and out of place when I finally decided to head off to seminary. I mean, there I was, someone who’d grown up unchurched, suddenly amidst a bunch of very churchy people, most of whom had a lifetime of experience in this world that I hadn’t been a part of for very long and knew relatively little about. And I wish you could have been there on the night of my very first class when someone sneezed and thirty aspiring ministers fell all over themselves to see who could be the first and the loudest to say, “God bless you.” Yes, even ministers can be competitive sometimes.
Seriously, though, it was kind of intimidating. There were people who could quote from the Bible, chapter and verse; I myself could not. There were people who seemed to understand the United Church of Christ inside and out; I didn’t even understand the congregation to which I belonged. There were people who were able to recall the words to every single hymn ever written; I couldn’t remember any of them (frankly, I still can’t). There were a lot of what we in the trade call “PKs” — preacher’s kids (and even some preacher’s grandkids); and I definitely wasn’t one of them.
Thankfully, most of the people I encountered in seminary seemed to be incredibly accepting, welcoming, and respectful of my somewhat unconventional journey to ministry; and my relative lack of church experience hasn’t ever really created major issues for me. And yet, I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider in this world.
Now, is this a me thing, or is it the result of a subtext that’s lurked beneath the surface of at least some of the countless interactions and conversations I’ve had over the years? It’s tough to say, but it’s probably some measure of both. Like I said, even the church can be a competitive place sometimes; truth is, it always has been — even though it shouldn’t be. Just have a look at today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel if you don’t believe me.
Out of all the stories Jesus tells, this parable about the worker’s in the vineyard and the one about the Prodigal Son (which has a similar theme) seem to be the two that are most likely to strike a nerve with readers. And the reason for this isn’t too tough to figure out because we live in a world where people frequently get things they haven’t earned or don’t seem to deserve, which makes us uncomfortable and angry and resentful and all sorts of other things of that ilk. It’s simply not fair, it’s not the way things are supposed to be — at least in our opinion, for whatever that’s worth — and that really irks us.
“But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” are the words Jesus says to his disciples right before today’s reading begins — which is interesting, because he pretty much says the same thing (albeit in reverse order) at the end of our story: “So the last will be first and the first will be last.” This shouldn’t exactly be news to anyone at this point because Jesus has made it pretty clear that he came here to turn things upside down. But these disciples are starting to get the sense that this might mean a bit more than they’d bargained for.
Just think about what’s been going on with them lately. They decided to drop their fishing poles and leave their tax collector’s booths to tag along with Jesus a while ago because they sensed that he was the real deal and wanted to get in on the ground floor of this whole gospel enterprise. Sure enough, Peter, having seen what he needed to see, eventually confirms it out loud for everyone else to hear: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” But then Jesus tells them that their Messiah will suffer and die (and be resurrected) and informs them that they’re going to have to take up their own crosses and follow him. And that probably took some air out of the balloon.
But hey, they were there first, so at least they can count on being the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, right? Yeah, not so much because, apparently being disciples means being humble as children. And let’s not forget that they’re going to need to work tirelessly to work through conflict in the church — and oh, did I mention that they’re also going to have to give up their material possessions? I bet all of this sounded really great to them too.
Which is probably why Peter finally decides to pipe up and voice his frustration to Jesus: “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” is what the rock upon which Jesus will build his church, the one who’s just received the keys to the kingdom of heaven, says to one who gave him those keys in the first place. I have to say, it took a whole lot of chutzpah for Peter to respond to Jesus’s call to a life of discipleship by essentially saying, “Okay, but what’s in it for me?”
In fairness, though, Peter and the other disciples seem to have good reason to be concerned — at least by this world’s standards. By those standards, when you hitch your wagon to the Messiah, you expect your life to get better, and none of the stuff that Jesus talks about really sounds better — again, by this world’s standards. And what finally seems to prompt Peter into asking his rather pointed question is Jesus’s declaration that no one – including, but not limited to the disciples — can actually earn their way into heaven.
So, how does Jesus choose to respond to Peter? Well, after saying some weird stuff about all of the disciples getting to sit on thrones and judge the tribes of Israel in the end times, he utters that line about the first being last and the last being first before launching into this parable about the landowner and the workers in the vineyard. Here’s how it goes…
A landowner gets up at the crack of dawn in order to recruit workers for his vineyard. He agrees to pay them the usual daily wage (likely, a single denarius) and send them into the fields. He goes back to the marketplace some time later (at nine o’clock, to be precise) to get more workers and agrees to pay them the same wage, despite the fact they are working less hours. He goes back at noon and three and five and does the exact same thing. When evening rolls around, the landowner settles up with all the workers and the ones who worked more hours are none too happy that they got paid the same amount as those who worked less hours. And what is the landowner’s response to all of this grousing? First, you agreed to work for what I said I’d pay you. Second, it’s my money and I’ll do what I want with it. Third, why are you envious over what they got? Why are you jealous because I choose to be generous with what I have?
So the last will be first, and the first will be last? But that’s not fair!
Come on, be honest: the idea of things not being fair, of people getting more (or less) than what they deserve or what they’ve earned, really gets under our skin because it’s generally the basis for the way we think and go about our lives in this world. But fairness isn’t the governing principal in God’s reign, and it shouldn’t be the governing principle in God’s church either — and that what’s this parable is really all about.
You see, in this new movement that will soon become the church, Jesus’s disciples — the ones who have been with him from the start — are already jockeying for position and seeking to assert their privilege over those who become followers after them. Just consider all of the things they’ve been thinking about and asking about lately:
“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
“Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
And Jesus’s answer to all of this?
“You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
In other words, the disciples have it all wrong.
God has always promised to provide us — all of us — with all that we need. We can’t and don’t have to earn God’s grace — and we sure as heck don’t deserve it. God gives it to us simply because God can and because God wants to —
whether we’ve been faithful all our lives, or only since this morning, or continue to struggle with doubt;
whether we’ve read the Bible every day for years, or look at it only occasionally, or have never even opened one;
whether we go to a church like ours, or to a very different one, or to no church at all.
No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, and all that.
And yet, people who profess to be believers in God and followers of Christ continue to agonize about the fairness of it all. Every single week, Christians all over the world come to places like this and pray the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, saying, among other things: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Not just me. Us. All of us. The bread of life, for each and every one of us.
God’s grace is boundless and infinite, it is a gift freely given to one and to all; it’s not a finite resource to be competed for and divvied up as if it were the last pizza on earth.
But be honest, do we really think about it that way? Do we really want everyone to have that bread of heaven?
Or do we worry that we won’t have enough of it?
Do we worry that someone else has more of it than we do?
Do we worry that someone else having it means that we might not get any?
Do we look at someone and think they haven’t earned it like we think we have?
But if we really believe in God’s promises like we say that we do, if we really believe that God can and will provide us with all that we need like we say that we do, then why would we care about any of that?
How many more times does God need to tell us? How many more times does Jesus need to remind us? Each of us deserves God’s grace as much as anyone else does, each of us deserves to be a part of God’s beloved community as much as anyone else does, which is to say that none of us does. And yet, here we are.
For this and for so much else, thanks be to God.