September 20, 2020
Caldwell Presbyterian Church
Rev. John Cleghorn
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Last week, as we prepared for today’s worship, Gail took note of the title of today’s sermon – “Hey, No Fair!” She said it was a perfect title for a sermon about 2020 and that I should just say those three words and sit down.
Indeed, we took another body blow Friday night with the loss of one of God’s great champions of justice. May she rest in the arms of our Lord. And may we never rest in the remaining work toward equality she leaves us to finish.
But let’s start somewhere else this morning. I want to take us back in our memories. However, wherever, whenever each of us grew up, I bet we had somewhat similar experiences as kids. Maybe it was in a neighbor’s yard or out on the sidewalk of a city block. Maybe it was on a school playground or a park. We all played the same universal games – Kickball or Tag, Marco Polo or Foursquare or Hide and Seek.
We’d be playing along, having fun … until someone would inevitably bring the game to a sudden halt with the cry of, “Hey, no fair!” The aggrieved participant would make a claim that they had called “Time-Out” or that the pursuer hadn’t finished counting to 10.
Since childhood, we’ve been conditioned to call out what we think is fair and what is not. Maybe we learned it from our parents and siblings, teachers and friends, maybe in the Scouts or from a coach of a ball team. Those notions either remained concrete, just as we had learned in kindergarten, or they evolved over time as our grasp of the complexities of the world taught us to think critically, take in new facts and embrace the grayness.
If we grew up in the church, we learned another code of conduct, how to treat our neighbor and more. In the Old Testament, God’s people did their best to write it all down. The Ten Commandments, yes, but then dozens of other rules about what to eat, what to wear, who to touch, how to pray, who sat where in the Temple and whether to pull an ox out of the ditch on the sabbath. But what God intended, humanity inevitably failed in fulfilling.
When God came into the world in Christ Jesus, all these rules seemed to become more clear and more complex at once. Christ challenged the old black and white ways and, at the same time, gave us vivid examples of how to live. Christ made his followers think. Christ gave us the benefit of the doubt that we were smart enough to wrestle with the gray rather than live a life of simply painting by numbers.
There are no better examples of how Jesus did all that than the stories he told, what we call his parables. The parable Sue read today is a great example of how Jesus make us think.
A vineyard owner goes to the town square where people looking for work gathered. He hired a group to start work at 9 a.m. and promised to pay them a fair day’s wage. Then he went out at noon and hired another group, another group at 3 and another group at 5. When the day came to a close, he paid them all the same wage, regardless of how long they worked.
Wait for it ….
“Hey, no fair!” cried the first group that had worked all day. “You can’t do that! You can’t pay the people you hired at the end of the day the same as us!”
“Sure I can,” said the vineyard owner. “My vineyard, my rules. We agreed I would pay you a day’s wage. What I pay the others is up to me, not you and your sense of what is right.”
So, what exactly is going on here? What’s Jesus’ point? Well, there are a range of answers to that question – which is the way it goes with parables.
Traditionally, the church has landed on a few answers to that question. Traditionally, this story is interpreted as a tale about God’s grace. That who God blesses, who God saves, whose life God values is up to God. If we got the faith as little kids and walked in God’s ways all our days, then were like those who worked all day. If we got the faith at the end of the day, right before quitin’ time, then God blesses us all the same.
It’s up to God when to issue the invitation of faith and to whom, this reading of the parable says. In God’s eyes, all are equal. God’s grace is God’s business. It can’t be earned, no matter how long we walk with God or labor in God’s fields.
In telling this tale, Jesus, you see, was leading up to something. Later in Matthew he lets loose on the “holier than thou” crowd, the bunch who think they have special knowledge of God’s will, who think they’ve earned special favor from God, the ones who think they are in the first class cabin in God’s airplane.
And indeed, the group of workers assumed they should be paid more when, in fact, all the vineyard owner had promised was that he would pay what is right. And the laborers agreed. Judgment, envy, grumbling with God about what WE think is right, about who works harder or not at all, isn’t the way, Jesus goes on to say. It’s been said, after all, that “Assumptions are planned resentments.”
And that’s where it gets sticky. It’s impossible for any of us to go through this world and not make the mistake that first group of workers made. We’ve all cried, “Hey, no fair!” … or “Hey, it’s not right”… or, “Hey, I know best” … not just as children but as adults. We’ve applied the world’s rules to God’s business, God’s generosity, God’s idea of what is right, what is just, what is fair. God just gently shakes Her head a bit and reminds us that She makes the rules, not us.
Jesus seems to me to be saying that we are to do our best as Christ taught and died for … and leave the judgment business to God.
That’s good stuff … but that’s often where the traditional reading of this parable usually ends. Theologians and scholars usually interpret this parable as being just theological, as being just about God’s love and grace and desire for radical equality. And, in these traditional interpretations, the lesson ends at the church sidewalk. This example of radical equality isn’t translated into how we live together in the world on the Monday that comes after Sunday.
And that’s where I scratch my head. I can’t help but wonder if Jesus really means for us to leave it there. Jesus came to show and teach us about God’s vision for the world but not in purely theoretical and hypothetical ways. Jesus didn’t just tell stories. He challenged the status quo. He afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted. His ideas kept temple officials and Roman rulers up at night, posing so grave a threat they killed him for it. And in his death we are resurrected to live as he showed us. In his death, we are called to die to our old selves and live anew according to God’s vision.
This month, we have all been invited to spend time every day expanding our understanding of America’s original sin, the deeply imbedded racism that shapes virtually everything around us. How might we read this parable in light of the truths we are taking into our souls in these days?
One of the most vivid measures of America’s failure with race is the wealth gap between white and Black people. For every 10 dollars white folks have, Black folks have 1. Ten to one. White Americans created that desperate gap by blocking access for African-Americans to the many ways wealth is created. That includes access to equal education, the GI Bill, federal aid to buy homes, redlining by banks that prevented people of color from getting mortgages and on and on.
In America, it is as if the vineyard owner in Jesus’ parable went out early that morning and hired only white folks, gave only them access to opportunity so they could earn their day’s wage. Black folks were left waiting in the town square.
And let’s be clear. Jesus’ parable is not really about work and earning. It’s not a Harvard Businesss Review case study about labor economics in a capitalistic society. Remember, it’s a metaphor. It’s a metaphor about what God’s idea of what is right and just looks like in the world. It’s about what Sunday theology could look like on Monday in our common life together.
And that brings us to the question of reparations, the question of what America must do to repair all the ways it has disadvantaged people of color. At the very mention of that word, I know, some backs stiffen. Some ears, minds and hearts close tight. But let us remember that we get the word reparations from its root word, repair. Repair is needed where damage has been done. The repair, most thought leaders on the subject say, should take many forms, should focus on institutional and systemic change as well as financial renumeration. And the repair must be commensurate with the severity of the damage.
As Gail mentioned last week, we all seek racial reconciliation. But starting with reconciliation is like starting a runner on third base in baseball and hoping he can somehow get home to score a run, even if he has to steal it. And, in the record books, that does not go down as an earned run.
The Bible, God’s story with God’s people, gives us multiple examples of how true and lasting reconciliation comes about. Take, for example, the story of Esau and Jacob’s reunion. Acknowledgment and apology for the wrong is first offered, followed by repentance and repair. And then reconciliation.
We know this will not be an easy part of the dialogue underway in America. We can already hear some cry.
“Hey, no fair, I earned what I have,” even when they inherited some or much of it.
“I deserve every penny of what I have made,” even though laws, policies and regulations have lifted white wage earners above Black ones for generations.
“Everyone should make their own way,” even as they turn a blind eye to all the privileges and advantages they received because of the color of the skin.
Yes, we will hear it over and over again, “Hey, no fair!”
Remember how the all-day laborers complained about those the vineyard owner hired at the end of the day? Remember how they expressed their outrage?
“You have made them equal to us,” they said to the vineyard owner even as he paid them what they had agreed to at the outset.
And what had the vineyard owner promised all along?
“I will do what is right.”
“I will do what is right.”
So let it be, O Lord, so let it be.
Amen.