GOD'S LOVE KNOWS NO RESTRICTIONS

September 22, 2002, 20-A, Calvary Church

Text: Matthew 20:1-16 (Gospel for the Day)

Now that is a Gospel to occupy your thoughts for quite a while! Its inherent sense of unfairness never ceases to puzzle a modern congregation -- that Jesus would seem to approve the unfair employment payments that the Gospel speaks about is something we just cannot understand. I think may people would say, Call a strike!

People hired at 6:00 in the morning and people hired at 5:00 in the afternoon, as well as people hired at various times during the day, all get paid the same amount when pay time comes at 6:00 in the evening. It's so unfair. Call a strike!

What's more the landowner (the employer) is arrogant about it and says in effect, "Look, that's what you agreed to when I hired you and that's what you get. Furthermore, it's mine to give away in whatever manner I wish to do so. What's it to you?" I say, Call a strike!

Of course something like this would not pass union negotiations today, nor would laws allow such a thing. People weren't stupid in biblical times either. So what's going on with the story? What is it really all about?

First of all, Jesus is getting your attention with this outrageous story. I've never known anyone who didn't think the story was scandalous. Undoubtedly that was true for the first readers of this Gospel as well. Its unfairness is not only apparent to 21st C. congregations. It surely was apparent to 1st C. ones also.

It is so outrageous and so unfair that it gets your attention, and I think that is one strength of the story: it's a story you remember because you know there is something wrong with it.

So now having remembered the story, what more comes out of it? It's not enough for it to be outrageous. It must have a message in it, and I believe it does, and I'll try to help you to see what that message is.

You will recall that I picked two things out of the story just a moment ago. First, the landowner paid people unfairly. And secondly, he said he could do what he wanted with what was his. Those are the two things I'm going to talk about, and when we come near the end, I plan to direct your attention to an institution on Lexington Road. "Hmm, what do you suppose he's talking about there?" Perhaps that will help to keep your attention for the next few minutes!

This is not a story of unbridled capitalism, nor is it a story of taking advantage of employees, nor is it a story of uncontrolled greed. If you want those stories, then get your morning paper and read about CEO greed and corporate corruption and loss of employee pensions and lack of government supervision. That is unbridled capitalism. But that is not what this story is about.

This is a story about God. Believe it or not, that's what Jesus is talking about in today's Gospel: what God is like. God is like that crazy landowner who paid everyone the same and then got on his high horse about doing what he wanted with his own.

You say, Well, God wouldn't do something like that. God isn't unfair. Try to stretch yourself a little bit and forget the shady ethics in the story because that's beside the point. It got your attention, didn't it, and that's what a good story does. This one purports to tell you about God.

Let me give you a little background to Matthew's Gospel that may help you to understand this story. I have told you more than once in past months to remember that the Gospels were not written for you At least in one sense they were not written for you. They were written for specific, small congregations in the 1st C. without any realization that they would be read in the centuries to come.

So, whom was this Gospel written for? We may never be 100% certain because it doesn't tell us in so many words, but biblical scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew was written for a small Jewish-Christian congregation around the year 80 A.D.

Though Christianity was to become largely a Gentile movement by the end of the 1st C., its roots are, as you know, in Judaism, and many of its early converts were Jews. It would appear that the mix of Jew and Gentile was beginning to change in the Church when this Gospel was written. Soon it would be no longer predominately Jewish because of the large number of Gentiles who were responding to this new teaching. But should those Jewish Christians have a special place?

So let's untangle the message in the light of what I have just told you, that this Gospel seems to have been directed toward Jewish Christians; and I think you will see that it untangles very easily and you will soon understand what this parable is all about.

The Jewist Christians saw themselves as the the people who had been laboring in the vineyard since 6:00 in the morning. After all, they had been loyal to the One God for untold centuries and they had looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. The Gentiles were the johnny-come-latelys who arrived for work at 5:00 in the afternoon, so to speak. Surely the Jewish Christians would be more blessed by God because of their long association with God than those Gentiles who had only so recently been involved in corrupt pagan rites. Surely the Jewish Christians had special privileges because they had been "at it" longer.

Well, you and I might think there is some justice in that argument, but everyone is treated the same, we are told, whether they recently came to the One God or have acknowledged that God for centuries. This gives us a little window by which to view life in the infant Christian Church, and it wasn't without strife or division. That ought to make us feel a little bit better. After all, they were people, just like you and me, with the same flaws that we have.

The love of God is so overwhelming and so limitless that it does not need to make distinctions that we might think were proper to make. There is no distinction in the household of God between Jew and Gentile, between old families and newcomers.

This has wonderful relevance in parish life when there is tension between old families and newcomers, which, I am happy to say, does not appear to be the case at Calvary Church. If it were, I would trot out this parable for the congregation's consideration because I think it would have something to say to a situation like that and others as well. But that's another sermon, isn't it?

So that ought to give you some understanding of what seems to be the inherent unfairness of the story: Gentiles will not have a lower place in God's new covenant community than Jews even though they began work later, so to speak.

Now what do we do with that other thing, the landowner's reply when criticized for his payment practices, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?"?

I thought of this parable a couple of weeks ago when I went to a neighborhood meeting in Crescent Hill where I live. It was a presentation of the pros and cons of designating it an historic district. Sure enough, the meeting hadn't gone very far before some sore head, not knowing he was being biblical, said, "You mean someone is going to tell me what to do with my property? It's my property and I can do what I want with what belongs to me."

Hello, there. Where have you been? You can't put a McDonalds on it. You can't build your house up to the property line. You can't raise chickens. He would have been very surprised, I'm sure, if I had told him that my mind had gone to a parable of Jesus: the householder saying "I can do what I want with what is mine."

Since we are meant to see the householder acting as God acts, then this belligerent utterance of the householder is also God speaking. And of course, it has nothing to do with irresponsible ownership or arrogant replies. It has everything to do with what God is like. And God is like that householder. God lavishes God's love in ways that seem foolish and irresponsible to people like you and me. But God's love is without limit. If God chooses to be generous beyond belief with God's love, what skin is that off our noses? Who are we to tell God where God's love should be lavished? Can't God do what God wants with God's own?

Now let's come to Lexington Road. I told you we would end there, and that's what we are doing. You may recall some years ago, at this very time of the year, as a matter of fact, at the time of the Jewish High Holidays, our friends on Lexington Road, at that once-great educational institution, launched a crusade to convert the Jews, so certain were they of who was in God's favor and who was out of God's favor.

I wondered then, and I wonder today, in the light of this Gospel, "How are you so certain that Jews need to become Southern Baptists in order to get right with God?" Didn't the householder/God say, 'Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?' How do you know the mind of God so clearly?"

You see, my sarcasm comes out of my frustration with so much Christianity today which seems to know too much about God and is quite certain who's in and who's out. I don't know where they get that direct line to God. Maybe they have been singing that Gospel song, "Hello Central, get me Jesus" too much.

It seems to me in this complex world in which we live that it would be well for Christians to express a little more humility and a lot more openness to being surprised by God. I am really glad to be an Episcopalian because we don't mind admitting to not knowing, except in the broadest terms, the mind of God. The God I worship will always be a mystery, will always work beyond my understanding, and will always be more generous than I can ever imagine. And to that I say, Thank God.

So you see, this parable isn't crazy after all. It's filled with interesting possibilities, not the least of which is not to be too certain as to who's in and who's out. Leave that up to God, and expect lots of surprises.

Richard H. Humke