Sermon — September 20, 2020
The Rev. Greg Johnston
If you’re listening to this sermon right now, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re a “first-hour” kind of person. If you’re willing to log on to the twenty-eighth week of online church or to sit on a folding chair outside, you’re probably a pretty committed person in general. Some of you have kept the church functioning during a long, hard interim period. Some of you have been the linchpin of the office, coordinating everything while people are working from home. Some of you are the ones who always check up on your family, or your friends, or your neighbors, to make sure everything’s okay, because you know that you’re the one who everyone relies on. In a hundred different ways, in all different parts of life, you’ve worked hard in the vineyard, you’ve “borne the burden of the day and the scorch of the heat.” (Matt. 20:12)
Even if you’re not quite so diligent as these early birds—maybe you’re a third- or a sixth-hour person—I’m guessing that you’ve all had experiences of those eleventh-hour workers. The co-worker who always seems to have an excuse for why they can’t do their job. The neighbor who can’t be bothered to shovel out their own parking spot, but is happy to take yours. The friend whose name on your caller ID makes you think, “I wonder what she needs this time.”
It’s easy for us to feel resentment toward these people. We bear the brunt of the work, and they benefit. We pull our weight, and, well, we pull theirs, too! It’s infuriating.
And so, for some of us, Jesus’ parable today is more than a little outrageous. The boss goes out early to hire some people to work in his vineyard, and they agree on a price. A few hours later, he goes out to hire more people; and he does the same at noon, and three, and then again at the eleventh hour, at five o’clock, when the day is almost done. And as everyone gets ready to go home for the day, he starts handing out paychecks. The workers who’ve only been out there for an hour get a full day’s pay. Now, the early birds are excited. If the boss is so generous he’s paying twelve times as much as he should, what will they get? But then the people who’ve been working for three hours are paid just the same as the ones working one hour. And the ones working six hours—just the same. And by the time the boss gets to the people who’ve been working all day they’re pretty annoyed. “Are you serious?” they think, “You’re paying these moochers the same as you’re paying us? We did all the work, and they’ve gotten just as much credit. This is no way to run a business!”
And they’re right. But the kingdom of heaven isn’t really a business. The vineyard and the landowner, the workers and the wages—these are a metaphor. The kingdom of heaven isn’t really a business. It’s more like a household.
Did you ever go on a chore strike as a kid?
I think I tried to, once. It makes a certain amount of sense, to a ten year old. “If you give me a weekly allowance,” I thought to myself, “and you ask me to do certain chores, then the chores are my job. You’re paying me to work.” And so, one week, when I had decided that I did not want to wash the dishes or water the plants, I thought, “Well. I don’t need my $5 this week. I’ve got a couple bucks in my pocket, and I’ve got all the baseball cards I need, so… I think I’ll take a week of unpaid leave.”
Nice try, but—not how it worked in the Johnston household. At work, of course, you do your job, in exchange for money. It’s a contract. At home, though, you do your chores; and, if you’re a child, you probably get an allowance. But you’re not trading one for another. A young child living at home doesn’t work for her room and board. Her parents provide everything she needs to live, whether she does her chores or not. Compared to the huge financial and emotional support good parents provide, that weekly allowance means next to nothing.
And so it is, Jesus seems to say, with God. God wants us to work in the vineyard. God wants us, in other words, to grow in our spiritual lives; to love and serve our neighbors and our world; to spread the good news of God’s love in word and in deed. But these things aren’t a job. We don’t earn God’s love by doing our religious chores. That’s what the “daily wage” (Mt. 20:2) is all about. The “daily wage” isn’t just what you’ve earned after a day’s work; it’s what you need to live for a day. And so the landowner in the parable isn’t paying an hourly wage for the work done. He’s providing what his workers need to live another day. God gives us each day our daily bread, and—like the food our parents put on the table when we were children—it’s not something we’ve “earned.” It’s what we need to live.
As Christians, I think, we don’t do good things so that God will reward us. We do good things because God loves us, and we love God. Like little children, we start out trying to be good because we think it will make God happy, but as we grow up, we realize that God will love us one way or the other. And this unconditional love frees us from the anxiety of trying to be good enough, and frees us to respond in gratitude to God’s love.
Now, this is a risky thing to say in your first sermon as a new rector. Maybe I should be cracking the whip, telling you to roll up your sleeves and get to work, quoting from the classic hymn: “Come, labor on! Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain?” (It’s a great hymn.)
But this isn’t really Jesus’ M.O. In fact, Jesus has one of the worst volunteer recruitment pitches of all time: “Take up your cross and follow me.” It will be hard. It will be dangerous. And God will reward you exactly the same, no matter how much or how little you do, whether you’re out working in the vineyard at dawn or you’re still in bed at 3pm. So: want to join the Stewardship Committee?
Of course, nobody serves on the Vestry, nobody delivers groceries to a neighbor, nobody gathers donations for the food pantry, because they want to be rewarded in heaven. We do it out of love. And this is the remarkable thing about the church. Like a whole community built on Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, we give what we have, and receive what we need. When we have the strength to work long hours under the sun, we do it. And when we’re tired and low, we receive the gift of others’ care and support.
And we do it all out of love. We spend our days laboring in the vineyard, in our families and our jobs and our neighborhoods, trying to love one another, trying to live lives that are shaped by gratitude for what we’ve received—and, still, more often than not, finding ourselves grumbling about whatever everyone else is or isn’t doing.
So this is who I pray for us to be. Not a well-oiled churching machine that’s earned every drop of God’s love that we’ve received, but a community of love, a community who grow together, who rejoice with one another when times are good, and lift each other up when we fall; a community where, to paraphrase the landowner, “take what belongs to [us] and go” (Matt. 20:14) back into the world, that we find grace and generosity in the Church and we bring it back into the rest of our lives, that we slowly reshape our world to look a little bit more like the kingdom of heaven. Amen.