Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 20:1-16, Sept. 24, 2023
Every parent, grandparent, aunt and uncle knows what I’m talking about. Picture yourself at a children’s birthday party or other celebration. Someone is cutting the cake. Some slices are bigger than others; some smaller. And then the protests erupt – he or she got a bigger piece of cake than I did!
Such a moment reveals a lot about human nature. Children have a keen sense of what they think is fair. But it’s not just children. Our sensitivity to fairness continues into adulthood – it’s just that we adults tend to be quieter about our protests. At a recent banquet for pastors at the convention center in downtown Phoenix, the servers were delivering the filet mignon on plates to the tables. As my table was served, I noted that my piece was smaller than most others at the table. I didn’t say a word, but I thought to myself: it’s not fair!
The reality of what we mortals think is fair is a centerpiece of today’s gospel story from Matthew. The workers who showed up first thing in the morning at the crack of dawn who worked all day in the scorching heat got exactly the same daily wage as those workers who were hired throughout the day. In fact, those who were hired an hour before quitting time got a full day’s wage. “It’s not fair!” murmured and grumbled those who were hired at dawn.
When people feel that they are not treated fairly, their anger can lead to lots and lots of human suffering and further injustices. For example, the notions of what we think is fair lead to government policies that restrict the aid we give to the poorest of the poor. The powers that be, often people who are bathed in the privilege of having inherited great wealth from their parents, put more and more restrictions on assistance given to the poor – often persons whose skin color is not white – because they deem them to be undeserving.
And the notion of what is and isn’t fair from our limited human perspectives also plays in to the sinister energies of vengeance and retribution. We tend to want to see others punished for what we perceive to be their shortcomings. They deserve punishment, we cry out.
When the Twin Towers in New York were attacked on September 11, 2001, there were those on the religious right who claimed that the terrorist attack that killed so many was God’s judgment on New York because of its support for gays and lesbians. They made this vengeful claim just days after the attack when the emotional wounds of that day were still raw.
So many of us want to see our perceived enemies punished. We want the punishment of the law to come down like a ton of bricks even if that ton of bricks also happens to fall on us.
We see that in today’s first reading from Jonah. Jonah was such a good preacher as a prophet that the people of the great city Nineveh actually did what he told them to do – repent of their evil ways. So, God withheld the cataclysmic destruction that God had threatened in judgement. But Jonah didn’t want God’s mercy for the people – he wanted to sit at a safe distance and watch the city get destroyed. When this didn’t happen, Jonah was angry and resentful enough to want to die! He cried out to the Lord, “And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” In his anger, he was willing to let the ton of bricks fall on him….
See how all these preoccupations with fairness and who’s deserving or not and wanting others to get what’s coming to them wreak havoc on the human soul and on human societies?
But here’s the thing, and it’s good news given our plight and frustrations: God’s ways are not our ways. God’s sense of fairness, of justice is very different from our mortal perspectives. For God’s justice is all about mercy and grace and giving unearned gifts to others, regardless of whether or not they deserve it.
Jonah himself knew this about God – as we heard in today’s first reading when Jonah addressed the Lord: “for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” (Jonah 4:2b)
And we also get an excellent view of God’s sense of justice and fairness in today’s parable from Matthew. If the landowner can be compared to God, then we see a God who turns upside down our human understandings of what is fair and just, because all the laborers get the same wage regardless of whether they started work at dawn or at dusk. That’s mercy, that’s grace, that’s God’s sense of what is right from God’s perspective.
When those who showed up first thing in the morning complained that they did not receive higher wages than those who came to work late in the day, the landowner – again, a symbol perhaps for God – replied: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius [which was the usual day’s wage for a laborer]? 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?”
We do well to stop our murmuring and grumbling about God’s mercy and God’s decision not to rain down hellfire and brimstone on those we think deserve it. Because when’s it’s all said and done, from God’s vantage point of the exacting divine expectations of us made abundantly clear in Matthew’s gospel, none of us is deserving. Each and every one of us in our own ways are like the workers who showed up at the eleventh hour right before quitting time. We’re all beggars in need of God’s mercy and grace. We’re all in the same boat, ultimately thankful that our God is, to reiterate and drive home the point, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (Jonah 4:2b)
As the story in Matthew unfolds, what immediately follows today’s passage is another prediction that Jesus makes about his impending death and resurrection. Which is to say, it’s on the cross and in the empty tomb that we get the clearest picture of God’s justice, which is a justice based on mercy and grace.
Jesus Christ did not deserve to get what he got on the cross – namely to shoulder the sins of the whole world, the whole of humanity for all time! And we did not deserve to be freed from the burden of guilt for our sins and our shortcomings individually and globally as a species. And yet, this is what God did, God spared us the punishment we deserved and in fact, saved us. So I repeat the good news again, because it needs to be repeated again and again until it really soaks in: our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Every time we gather at the font for baptism, we receive the gracious and merciful gift of God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love as are sins are drowned and we are raised to new life in Christ, forgiven, redeemed, though there’s nothing we did to merit or earn that grace.
Every time we gather at this table for the feast of Christ’s presence in bread and wine, we receive the same gifts of grace and mercy. Rich people like to hold 500 dollars a plate banquets, which only other rich people can attend. Yet, this sacramental banquet is far more lavish and consequential than anything we humans can imagine or contrive. We cannot pay our way to this table, and yet the God in Christ who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love says to each of us, “Friend, come up higher,” take your place at this table of grace.
And slowly, ever so slowly, washed and fed again and again here in this place Sunday after Sunday, our faith is renewed and deepened, our trust that God is truly gracious and merciful grows, and we learn how not to be envious, or grumbling or murmuring because of God’s generosity. Here we learn how not to begrudge God that sacred generosity.
And then we learn how to return to our own places of work and school and neighborhood and family and community, leaving this place with some semblance of God’s generosity, some growing sense of God’s justice that may not be fair from human points of view, but is merciful and loving – a gift that we, too, learn to bestow on others, though they may be undeserving.
And we come to see that such a life lived in God’s generosity is, as the apostle Paul says in today’s reading from Philippians, a life lived “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…”, “for God has graciously granted [us] the privilege not only of believing in Christ but of suffering for Christ as well.” (cf. Philippians 1:27a, 29) For to proclaim mercy in a world that angrily seeks vengeance and punishment can cause us to suffer. Our merciful message may not be well-received.
And yet, out we go, so that others may come to know our generous, merciful God in Christ evident in our words and deeds. Thanks be to God. Amen.
