15th Sunday after Pentecost, 09/21/2014

Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16, by Allison Zbicz Michael

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And 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?' They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.' When 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.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘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.' But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last" (NRSV).

A small gravel parking lot sits behind a hardware store not too far from where I used to live. At about 5am, the day laborers begin to show up, in the hopes that one of the farmers or contractors coming through will put them on the back of a pickup truck and take them to work that day. The work might be planting, painting, or harvesting. Without question, they'd take whatever work it was that came their way. In order to get noticed, they'd jostle and shout and do their best to make themselves look eager and strong. Some would be treated fairly by their employers and would be paid reasonably, but others would put up with unfair treatment when an employer decided that he would only pay half of what he promised them. These were not men who could afford a lawyer, and even if they could, there was no way any of them could prove their case. They had no written contract, no safety net. They lived their whole lives at the mercy of others.

These were the sorts of vulnerable men waiting for the landowner in the parable Jesus tells. They were not lazy men, though I expect that in any crowd we will find "all sorts and conditions of men." All of them, though, were desperate men, who needed work in order to eat. They wanted to work. They wanted to live. They were at the mercy of others.

Here enters the generous landowner, who hires groups of people throughout the day, who pays those who worked very few hours just as much as those who worked for many. This landowner, like our God, is clearly more concerned with human beings than with their resumes. Set alongside Paul's bold proclamation in Philippians, we also get a glimpse of God's will concerning the work we are called to do. "For to me," Paul writes "living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer" (Philippians 1:21-22).

We have a strange relationship with work these days. On the one hand, many make an idol of it. Some brag about working 24/7, about never taking a vacation day, about never resting, perhaps because they see the job itself as a status trophy, or because they want more and more stuff to fill a bigger and bigger house, or because they want to pay other people to do the messy sorts of work that they don't want to do themselves. At the other extreme, we have this nearly unprecedented concept of retirement, this idea that the goal of human life and labor is to save up money so that we don't have to work anymore. Work hard, so you can play hard, or so they say.

This parable resists both idolatry of work and the apathy which avoids the work which God has given us to do.

First, the full-day workers are not given a bonus beyond what they were promised. The work of tending the vineyard is good and important enough in itself that they should not grasp for something beyond what they agreed to in the morning. This constant desire for more-more pay, more status-lies behind so much workaholism. The vineyard workers have done a good job, and the pay is sufficient to provide them with what they need. The landowner is not interested in payment as a reward for hours worked. He is not interested in creating some hierarchy because some have abilities and opportunities that others do not have. He is not interested in the rat race for higher pay. The landowner is interested in paying people so that they can have what they need and so that the good work itself can be done for the sake of others.

Second, although work and pay and status are not idolized, neither is work condemned as something to be avoided. The opposite is true. The truly sad part of the parable is not that some men had to work a whole day in the vineyard, but that some men were still waiting around at that meeting place at 5 o'clock in the desperate hope that someone might need them for an hour or two. Something is deeply broken in a world where men are hungry enough for work that they wait nine hours in the heat of the sun for very unlikely chance that they would earn enough money, not to satisfy their growling stomachs, but to buy a few crumbs of bread. Their weather-worn faces were marked by exhaustion and disappointment. Among their numbers were likely the older men who were no longer strong enough to do the work of the young men. Perhaps among the latecomers were also young men who had been injured in an accident, or who suffered some illness that sapped them of their strength. Whoever these men were, their persistence was evidence that the burden of their unemployment and underemployment outweighed the burden of the humiliation and desperation they felt as they waited through that long day.

Some of these may have been men who would have been unable to work a full day, and still the vineyard owner dignifies them by inviting them to do what they can. He goes beyond that, though. The vineyard owner refuses to tie their worth as humans to their productivity or their ability. He pays them what they need, and more than they deserve by the standards of hourly pay scales.

The call of God to all of us is to tend the vineyard, which is the kingdom of God, with Him. To do this, we help one another grow in faith, we share the Good News, we live generously as followers of Jesus. This does rule out some lines of work. Christians shouldn't go into drug dealing, pornography production, and Ponzi scheme organizing.

But fortunately, there are still many and varied ways that we can and do join in the work of the kingdom.

The work in the vineyard does not belong exclusively to pastors and organists and church staff. This work can be done by a mechanic who works diligently and honestly, by a garbage collector who shows joy in the midst of unsavory smells, by a doctor who treats every patient with compassion, by a truck driver who hauls loads with the utmost care for the safety of others on the road, by a teacher who treats every student with respect, or by a lawyer who cares about justice more than billable hours. It can also be done by volunteers or parents or friends whose work is done for no pay at all. The value of our work in before God is not tied to our paycheck or to the status associated with the job. Nor is it tied to our physical strength or our innate abilities. The person who cannot do any physical work but who who prays dilligently each day is no less honored by God than the person who finds a vaccine for Ebola. Whether our contributions to tending the vineyard seem small or great, they all share in the same great work.

Helen Keller stated it well when she said "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."ⁱ

The work of the Kingdom of God is moved along by the worker who shows up at the crack of dawn, and by the one who shows up at midday, and by the one who shows up when the day is almost over. The work of the Kingdom is moved along by people with generous ideas and deep pockets, and by the widow who has only a single coin to give. The work of the Kingdom of God is moved along by those who are strong and highly educated, and by those who are weak and unable to read. Each humble task, when done for God, is great and noble. Each contribution is precious and valuble for the Kingdom of God.

At the end of the day, at the end of life, those who have seen the goodness of the work that God has given them to do will not be ill contented with the pay.

Still, all of us will find that wages will, by God's grace, far outstrip our contributions to the cause.

Rev. Allison Zbicz Michael
Seward, NY
E-Mail: zbiczmichael@gmail.com

Zusätzliche Medien:
i Attributed to Hellen Keller.-Charles L. Wallis, The Treasure Chest, p. 240 (1983).

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