“Generosity – and Grace!”

Matthew 20:1-16 – September 24, 2023

            I often think of my four children. I sometimes remember them as younger children. I can remember very well those times when I went to school to help out in classrooms, or to chaperone on field trips. I especially remember the times when I overheard arguing and bickering in the classrooms, in the halls or on the playground between the school kids. “It’s not fair!” was one thing repeated over and over.

            Let’s see how the Rabbi Jesus begins this parable. Jesus is on His was to Jerusalem, and it will not be long before the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday and the Passion Week. It’s perhaps a few weeks before all those weighty events begin to happen. I am certain Jesus wanted to be certain to get some very important truths across to His disciples and to the crowds.  

            As is common with the Rabbi Jesus, when He wanted to teach some very important ideas and truths, He used parables. You and I know that using stories really helps to cement ideas into our heads! So it is with this story. That same complaint, “It’s not fair!” seems to come forth from some of the workers in this parable of Jesus. In our Gospel reading, “Jesus tells a story that reflects a completely different way of looking at things. It is a story about a vineyard owner who pays his workers on the principle of generosity, rather than on the principle of merit.” [1]

            In our parable today, Jesus tells what the kingdom of heaven is like. This is another parable in His series, in response to questions asking about what the kingdom, what heaven is like, for real! “Come on, Rabbi! Tell us! Enough with this confusing religious mumbo jumbo! Give us some straight talk about what we can expect from God!”

             Remember how the parable starts:

“Early one morning a man went out to hire some workers for his vineyard. ² After he had agreed to pay them the usual amount for a day’s work, he sent them off to his vineyard. ³ About nine that morning, the man saw some other people standing in the market with nothing to do. ⁴ He promised to pay them what was fair, if they would work in his vineyard. ⁵ So they went. At noon and again about three in the afternoon he returned to the market. And each time he made the same agreement with others who were loafing around with nothing to do.”

            Remember, Jesus is answering a continuing question: what is the kingdom of heaven like? What will happen when we get there? In other words, another way to ask this same question is, what is God like? What can we expect from God when we get to heaven?

            I know this might be difficult, especially if you’ve been prudent with money all your life, but try and put yourself in the place of the workers who were chosen, who were sent to work at the end of the day. Imagine being a day laborer. There is no Social Security, no social safety net. Such a hard life! Imagine earning just enough to support you and your families for just one more day.

            “What we now call food insecurity is their norm, and so it’s easy to imagine their excitement when they finally get an invitation to work – they won’t earn a full day’s wage, but enough perhaps to scrape by. That excitement only multiplies when the manager unexpectedly and inexplicably pays them for a full day! I suspect that equal measures of relief, joy, and gratitude suddenly coursed through their veins as each received their payment.” [2]

            When people in the crowd or among His group of disciples continue to ask, the Rabbi Jesus is telling us that in the kingdom of heaven, God is generous! The loving, kind generosity of the owner of the vineyard is truly evident from this parable! Which brings us to the workers who were hired first, the ones who have seen all of the others, the workers hired later that day, already receive their wages for the day. Let’s hear Jesus describe the scene.

 “¹⁰ The workers who had been hired first thought they would be given more than the others. But when they were given the same, ¹¹ they began complaining to the owner of the vineyard. ¹² They said, “The ones who were hired last worked for only one hour. But you paid them the same that you did us. And we worked in the hot sun all day long!”

            Can’t you just hear these workers say, “It just isn’t fair!” Face it, their reaction ‘is almost exactly what most of us would have felt had we been in their shoes. Because what happens to them simply does not add up and so doesn’t seem fair. Never mind it’s what was contracted – if those who worked an hour received a day’s wage, then those who worked so much longer deserve more.” [3] But – the owner of the vineyard is generous. Generous to everyone, no matter who, no matter what!

            Another word for this lavish, overabundant generosity is GRACE. Have you ever received grace for something you absolutely did not deserve? Many people read this parable, and say “That’s not fair!” That is exactly the point. If God were absolutely fair, none of us would be loved by God, none of us would be embraced by Jesus our Good Shepherd. No one. None. It is only by the Lord’s love, grace and mercy that any of us are welcomed into God’s family. It is all God’s grace and generosity. It is NOT about working in the vineyard, or working for salvation, at all.

                  We all have had grace extended to us here in the real world, haven’t we? – a grace period to turn in homework you did not finish or the work project you needed to finish last week. What about the landowner paying the last hired workers a whole day’s wage? And what about God forgiving us even when we don’t deserve it, or when we do things and say things that make God sad or even angry? That is grace. That is God’s generosity. God does not have to, is not obligated to forgive us and be gracious to us. But – that is exactly what God does.

      We don’t have to do more or be better in order to ensure that God loves us, because God loves each of us completely already. As Desmond Tutu puts it, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more” and “there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”  It is a strange kingdom indeed where there is nothing to earn.[4]

As Jesus said, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. It’s fairness, God’s way. ”Everyone who is now last will be first, and everyone who is first will be last.” Abundant grace and generosity for all, no matter what. Thanks be to God! Alleluia, amen!

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

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[1] https://thewakingdreamer.blogspot.com/2011/09/nothing-to-earn-mt-201-16-1-i-have.html

[2] https://www.davidlose.net/2014/09/pentecost-15-a-love-or-justice/

[3] Ibid.

[4] https://thewakingdreamer.blogspot.com/2011/09/nothing-to-earn-mt-201-16-1-i-have.html