Matthew 20:1-16

“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.”

Tim was one of our neighbors at St. John’s. He and his brother slept on our property most nights, usually under a bougainvillea bush. Tim was about my age, I think, hard to tell with folks who have lived on the streets for some years. He had a lip ring, dressed in baggy clothes, and walked with a limp. Most days I saw him panhandling at one of the major intersections near the church, holding a sign that said “anything helps, God Bless” in one hand and his cane in the other.

Tim never said much but he was always kind, thankful for the coffee I’d bring out, and the peanut butter from the food pantry. It was common for our neighbors to drift, spend a few days on our property and then be gone for a while. One day I realized I hadn’t seen Tim at all that week and wondered where he’d been. I walked around to find him, sure enough he was there. I asked him where he’d been. With more energy than I’d ever heard from him, he said, “I am great! I was working yesterday.” “Tim, thats wonderful! Where were you working?” “Oh just as a day laborer for a construction job”.

Immediately, I thought of this parable.

If there was ever a parable, a teaching of Jesus that was counterintuitive to our culture, insulting, that smacked in the face of what we teach in schools, at home, in the workplace, it would be this one. We get what we earn; that's only fair. Which is why this parable infuriates us. For most of us, I imagine we identify with the laborers who went into the vineyard first. You got up early, went into town before 6:00am and were off working shortly after agreeing to the usual daily wage. You’ve worked all day, endured the heat, plucked more grapes, pruned more vines, and then when it’s time to get paid, you’re a little frustrated that the people who came last get paid first and get paid the same amount you agreed to.. for a 12th of the work.

In your head, you start to do the math, “wow if she’s got that much, I’ll get 12x times that, it’ll only be fair”. Then to your absolute shock, you get whatever else got. And rather than rejoicing that these fellow laborers have what they need to feed their families for another day, you are outraged at them and the landowner; Never stopping to wonder why the folks were picked over in the first place or why they showed up later, you think “how could these people get the same pay?! They didn’t earn it, they didn’t work hard enough for it, they are not worthy of it”. And that sentiment, that feeling right there, is something we’ve all felt.

We question the worth of others all the time, from little things to big. “Well they don’t really deserve $15 an hour, it’s just fast food. If they aren’t working, why do they get medicaid? And why put that beautiful new park in that neighborhood, it’ll just get ruined”. We try to say what people are worthy and unworthy of all the time.

Yet here Jesus tells us that the way he works, the way God works is opposite to how our world works. God doesn’t give according to worthiness, but according to need. In fact it is because we are unworthy that God so freely, generously gives love and mercy and grace. But, surely I am not the only one who has thought, “but that person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Or how can God love me and that person the same?! They didn’t earn grace like I have!”

And there's the point to this parable, to the kingdom of heaven, to the way God works in this world… you can’t earn any of it! God’s grace is not dependent on you earning it through good deeds, or working hard, or how many hours you clock in at church. Everyone, regardless of how long you’ve been a follower of Jesus, how much or how little you think you sin, or the doubts you carry, everyone is offered the same grace, the same daily wage, including people like Tim.

I asked Tim how his day at the site went. He said “it was really good, especially because I got paid for a full day even though I showed up more than two hours late”… At first, I couldn’t help but think that Tim didn’t deserve that full day’s pay; he was late, given his physical condition he couldn’t have moved mountains at the construction site. But then I thought about all that Tim had to go through just to arrive at the job.

After sleeping outside under a bush, Tim had to wake up extra early so he could limp his way down to the bus stop. Hopefully he had some peanut butter or canned fruit left from the pantry to eat before standing in the phoenix sun all day. Then he had to take who knows how many transfers and pray the lines were running on time. No wonder he was two hours late, in fact it’s really an achievement he was only two hours late. And then I saw the large cup of coffee he had gotten from the gas station, the food from the Walmart down the street (enough to share with his brother and the others in his group). Why was I so quick to judge Tim unworthy? And unworthy of what, food? A Hot cup of coffee? He may not have deserved a full day's pay, but he certainly needed it.

As I walked away, I was glad that the construction manager, whoever they were, decided to be generous and not fair; just like the landowner, and just like God

If the parable tells us anything, it's that God isn’t fair. And isn’t that the best news we could hear today? Instead of being fair, God is generous. You can’t be both. God does not give to us as we deserve, but according to our need; giving more than we could ever earn, not holding back because of mistakes we made, the doubts we hold, the judgment we’ve passed on others, nor anything else.

The same decision lies before each of us as individuals and as a congregation. We can be fair, giving to others only what they deserve or what they’ve earned of our time, our trust, our money. Or we can be generous, and give more than what’s expected, meeting the needs of our neighbors.

The choice is ours.

Amen.

Luke 16:1-13

Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'

Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'

“So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

This is always a tricky parable, for a bunch of Christian Capitalists, like us. Jesus seems to be commending someone’s dishonesty, or “shrewdness,” as the story goes, for the sake of saving face and for the sake of saving his own behind. On the surface it looks like Jesus is inviting us to celebrate a shyster who was bad at his job, about to get fired for it, and who cooked the books in order to save his reputation and earn some favors – to set himself up for opportunities and prospects once he was out of a job, in a financial pickle, and looking for work.

But that can’t be, can it? I’m not sure Jesus would encourage the dishonesty or the book-cooking or the money-laundering of a 1st Century white collar criminal, would he? So I’ve begun to wonder over the years, if Jesus isn’t talking as much about money or business deals or management practices as we like to assume, Christian Capitalists that we are.

So, I think it matters that all of this starts out as just another parable, in a string of parables. And a parable, we know, is nothing more and nothing less than a story about one thing that is often used to teach us about something else, entirely. Last week, when Jesus talked about a lost coin being found and about a stray sheep being brought back into the fold, he wasn’t actually talking about coins or sheep, was he? He was talking about lost souls, and sinners and outcasts, being welcomed into and cared for by God and God’s people.

And in a similar parable, just before what we heard today – the one about the Prodigal Son? – Jesus wasn’t talking about someone he knew, or someone who actually lived and breathed in 1st Century Galilee, necessarily. He was telling a story about what may have been a make-believe father and some make-believe sons. And he was showing how that father – who loved both of his boys, in spite of their selfishness and sin – was a picture of the God we’re called to know in Jesus, himself.

Are you with me? Jesus tells parables about pearls and fish; about mustard seeds and fig trees; about slaves and virgins; about weddings and wheat fields, wineskins and weeds. A parable is a parable … a story … nothing more and nothing less. And Jesus’ parables are very often – most often, perhaps – not at all about the things in the stories that he tells, in any kind of literal sense.

So what if, in this difficult parable of the shrewd, sneaky, dishonest steward we just heard, Jesus isn’t really talking about business management practices, or about debts of money or oil or wheat or other “things” valuable in the eyes of the disciples to whom he was teaching?

What if the “shrewd, dishonest steward” was being creative and crafty with the riches of the Master’s kingdom. And what if that “Master,” as in the rest of Jesus’ parables, represents the God of the Universe. And if that’s the case – and I’d bet you a hundred jugs of oil and eighty containers of wheat that it is – then the riches and resources of which he speaks aren’t oil or wheat or property at all, but things like love and mercy, justice and humility, repentance and forgiveness, and so on?

So, this might be a little theologically risky – and again, I could be wrong – but I read this week that Amy Jill-Levine (one of the most wise and respected Jewish New Testament scholars alive today) says this parable “defies any fully satisfactory explanation”, so I’ve taken it upon myself to re-write this parable, in an attempt to cut the confusion and to make Jesus’ parable say what I think he means and mean what I think he might be trying to say, without the mystery and confusion and consternation this parable has caused so many over the years.

So, what if the parable just went like this:

"There is this God, full – not of oil or wheat or things you can track in a ledger – but full of love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. And God had a disciple he charged with sharing those blessings with the world around him. When God found out the disciple was squandering what he’d asked him to tend to, to care for, and to share, God summoned that disciple and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you? That you’re being selfish and holding grudges and judging others; that you’re counting sins, and keeping people out, and pretending you have more power than you do or should? If all of that’s true – if you’ve been withholding grace and blessing and mercy and love – you cannot be my disciple any longer. I can’t have you going around pretending you do all of this in my name, for the sake of my kingdom.”

So the disciple said to himself, 'What am I gonna do now that God, my master, is taking this position and privilege away from me? How could I have been so selfish and blind to the needs of the world around me? How could I have withheld from so many others, what was so generously shared with me in the first place? I’m not strong enough to have earned this grace on my own. I’m as ashamed as anyone to need the forgiveness God offers. And I never earned any of it in the first place.”

“I know what I’ll do. I’ll do what I should have done all along. I’ll be as generous and kind and forgiving with others as I woulda/coulda/shoulda been all along; which is all that was ever asked of me in the first place.”

So, summoning God’s children one by one, the disciple asked the first, 'What is it you feel like you owe to God? For what sin are you holding onto such guilt?' And when this lost and broken soul confessed his sin, the disciple said to him, “Don’t’ worry about it another minute. Your God – our Master – is a gracious, loving God of forgiveness and mercy. Receive the good news of that, go on your way, sin no more and return the favor of this kind of forgiveness to someone in your life.”

And the disciple did the same with another fellow sinner, and another and another – extending grace, announcing forgiveness, and expressing love for the least of those in the world around him. He got so crafty and so creative, so generous and so extravagant with the love of God for all people, that some called him foolish… and reckless… and un-faithful, even. But God smiled, because the disciple had finally learned where true value and real riches and actual worth and new life are found in this world.”

Doesn’t that sound more like something Jesus might mean? Isn’t it more likely what Jesus was inviting his disciples – and the likes of you and me – to be shrewd and sneaky and generous-to-a-fault with the things of the Kingdom – with forgiveness, grace, love, and mercy? And once we see this parable through that kind of lens, the rest of it makes more sense, if you ask me.

Jesus said, "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” In other words, even a little bit of faithfulness with a little bit of God’s love goes a really long way. And even a little bit of misuse or abuse of God’s goodness can do a whole lot of damage.

And he said, “…if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” In other words, if you can’t share, with generosity and grace, what is God’s in the first place, then you haven’t truly received it, yourself.

And finally, Jesus said, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." And all of this puts into perspective the truth of what is valuable and worthy in God’s kingdom vs. what is valuable and worthy in the eyes of the world.

And I wonder if that might be Jesus’ point with the parable. Maybe the story is about money, but only in-so-far as we see how money doesn’t matter much in God’s economy, unless or until it’s being used to bless and benefit God’s children in life-giving ways. But grace and forgiveness and mercy and the love of our creator, are another story. And Jesus is inviting us to be extravagantly careless with that love, to give it away – recklessly, with abandon, in ways that seem surprising, that go against conventional wisdom, that seem other-worldly, even, which is just the way our God lives and breathes and moves and is revealed among us … and through us … for the sake of the world.

Amen

God's Not Fair

A Different Take On a Difficult Parable