It's All Grace | A Sermon on the Parable of the Generous Landowner
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for the people of Saint George’s Episcopal Church on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (A) on Sunday, September 20, 2020
Matthew 20:1-16
Human beings are captivated by the idea of justice, and never more so than at times like these - when injustices populate our newsfeed and moral reckonings are being driven understandably to the surface at a breakneck pace.
In some ways, our obsession with justice is meet and right; worthy and necessary work in service of God and our fellow human. Do justice we are told in Micah.
In other ways, our obsession with justice is perverted; taking a sharp turn towards judgment and relying too often on our own concept of what is right, what is just. Relying too often on our own ability to sort it all out. Walk humbly, Micah also cautions.
This week, as I watched the finale of The Next Great Baker, I was outraged to see one of the final three contestants turn up the oven of another contestant when they weren’t looking. She looked straight into the camera, shrugged, and said, “This is a competition, and I’ll do whatever it takes to win,” and I thought, “She better not win; she’s clearly not a nice person.” Later, when she does not win, sweet justice, she cries and speaks about how she really needed the promised reward money and the confidence boost winning would have granted her. And, then I felt a little more understanding of her competition tactics. And, I felt a little ashamed of myself: obviously for being so invested in this show, but also for falling victim to my own need to see justice served. And not just justice served, but served based on my own idea about what justice is and who is and is not deserving of good or bad outcomes.
In today’s reading, we hear about a certain landowner with, what seems to be, a very large, an extravagantly large, vineyard. We know this because apparently he can use all the workers he can get. At multiple points - from the wee hours of the morning until the sun is readying to set on the work day - he goes to the marketplace, looks around, and pulls an Oprah. You get work and you get work and you get work.
He takes them all, anyone who wants work, even though towards the end of the day it must have been, as we say in Alabama, pretty slim pickins. Those who are engaged first, early in the morning, contract for an acceptable days wage, while those who come to the work later in the day are told that they will be paid whatever is right.
Note here that all of them ultimately depend on the honesty and sense of justice of the landowner.
All is well and good on the vineyard until the day draws to a close and it becomes obvious that this is a parable and not an illustration of a logical point.
Because, as one preacher puts it, “The landowner doesn’t seem to think that there's a great deal of difference between the industrious ones, the heavy lifters, the sun-burnt and sweat-soaked ones, and these last who, for any mixed bag of reasons, worked only for the hour before it was time to clock out.”[1]
All of them are paid the same. This is obviously offensive. And yet, those who have been working all day break it down, just in case: You have made them equal to us. We have borne the burden of the day and you’ve made them equal to us.
There is no objection to what is received. The landowner has been honest, upholding the contract they made at the beginning of the day. The objection is with the generosity of the landowner. The abundance with which he has treated the last of these has triggered the righteous indignation of the first to work. Any sense of achievement for a solid days work suffocated. Any gratitude soiled. Any joy stifled.
Simply because what is good is good for everyone.
And yet, their reaction is familiar because it’s universal. We can be obsessed with fairness. In a society that reveres success, privileges independence and self-sufficiency, and idolizes the “self-made man,” we even suspect that gifts should be deserved.
Are you envious because I am generous? Hear that, for a moment. Are you envious because I am generous?
The answer is yes. For them, and for many of us I’d wager. If we place ourselves in that receiving line, it is tempting to identify with those who showed up to the marketplace early. Who were hungry for work and who then worked hardest and longest. Who lined up to be paid and felt slighted by the hand dealt to those who were less deserving. Who thought, this isn’t fair! But who couldn’t quite put a finger on why not, just that we knew better. As if fairness and justice were ours to own and to distribute as we saw fit.
Are you envious because I am generous? Yes. But what if we identified instead with the workers who got more than they expected to — imagine their surprise at receiving such generosity. Imagine the feeling of it in their hands. Imagine the plans they made in their heads, plans to settle debts, feed the family, or just buy themselves a little something nice. Imagine the opening of their hearts. For a minute, they might have escaped into hopefulness, joyfulness, and gratefulness. What grace!
First or last, envious or ecstatic, we are actually all of them. All of them, whether we rejoice in that fact or not. Because, really, this isn’t about the workers at all, it’s about the landowner and the kingdom.
Remember that the story begins, For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
That was our first clue that what we thought we knew about the world might be turned on its head, a little like Alice entering wonderland. For the kingdom of heaven is founded not on our ideas of prestige and hierarchy, not on our human potential or intervention, not on our feelings about fairness or outrage over perceived injustice, but on God’s own divine generosity and the triumph of grace.
It’s all grace.
It’s offensive as all get out, because it doesn’t conform to our expectations, it doesn’t play by our rules, it can’t be calculated, and, at the end of the day, this makes it disruptive. If it didn’t disrupt it wouldn’t be grace.[2]
This is God’s vineyard, after all. And, God deals in grace. Creation is founded on it and in it. As Rachel Held Evans wrote,
We don’t make the invitation list and we don’t dole out the gifts. And it’s a good thing too because no doubt we would try to make it all fair. No doubt we’d make sure everyone got what they deserved. But God isn’t fair. God is irrationally and irresponsibly generous. His mercies are infinite, offensive, new every morning.[3]
We all stand in a line to receive a gift that none of us have earned or could earn. That’s grace. But, that’s not all. Because the gift is not even what we think it is; the gift is not payment at the end of the day but the work we share in during the day and a God who invites us to the work, a God who just can’t seem to stay out of the marketplace, collecting all who are willing and none who actually deserve it. Amazing Grace, indeed.
And, as Evans wrote,
If we want in on this Kingdom, if we want in on this work, we best set aside our small notions of what it means to deserve, what it means to be fair, and what it means to earn. Because what makes God’s grace offensive isn’t who it leaves out, but who it lets in…starting with you and me. Fair's got nothing to do with it.
We serve at the pleasure of a generous master; there is plenty of good work to do. So let’s do it.[4]
Amen.
[1] The Reverend Aaron Miller, “The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like That,” a sermon preached for University Hill Congregation, Vancouver, on Sept. 24, 2017, https://uhillcongregation.squarespace.com/sermons-archive/2017/9/25/the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-like-that.
[2]George Hunsinger, “Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth,” (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001), 16-17.
[3]Rachel Held Evans, “From the Lectionary: A Generous Master,” 2014, https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/lectionary-workers-vineyard-landowner.
[4]Ibid.
