“Not That
Parable Again!”
Matthew
20:1-16
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
September 21,
2008
I
hope I did not disappoint too much those of you who took an early peek at the
sermon title and were looking forward to what you undoubtedly thought would be
another preachment on the parable of the prodigal son.
I was tempted because it has been a while, but in the end I decided to
follow the lectionary’s direction for the day.
I
still remember the reaction of one of the members of an early confirmation class
I taught shortly after coming to this church to the parable we read today.
The young man was so angered, so chagrined, so beside himself over the
content of this parable that he threatened to quit the church before he even
joined it. A little conversational
triage that day kept him in. But, a
couple of months later, during a review of what the class had covered during the
year, I made an allusion to the profligate landowner who had paid the one-hour
workers the same amount of money as those who had worked all day and the young
man fairly shouted, “Not THAT parable
again!”
My
confirmation friend who, by the way, went on to become an accountant, surely is
not alone in disliking this parable that Jesus told.
To a lot of people it not only seems to be grossly unfair but also a
ridiculously impractical and irresponsible way to run either a business or a
society. “People
are not going to show up to work all day if they know they can wait and make the
same money by working only part of it.”
But
that misses the point of the parable. The
intent of Jesus was not to offer up an ingenius business plan or an enlightened
course in labor relations. The
intention of Jesus was to describe for his followers what life in the reign and
realm of God is like whenever and wherever it breaks forth.
It is a kingdom, or a kin-dom if you will, of generosity.
It is not complicated or convoluted.
Life as God dreams, desires, and designs it is that peoples’ needs get
met, all peoples’ needs, because people are generous.
Paul
Tillich, one of the great theologians of the last century, once said that he was
launched into his brilliant philosophic and religious journey when someone posed
to him in his teenage years the question, “Why something and not nothing?”
In other words, why did the creation come into being when at one time
there had been nothing? Tillich,
after reading and re-reading the book of Genesis, came to the conclusion that
God must have thought to God’s self something like, “This wonder of aliveness that I am, is simply too good to keep to
myself. I want others to know the
ecstasy of being and having and doing.” So
God began to create, not to get something
for God’s self, but to give something of
God’s self. Radical generosity is
the source, then, out of which all creation has arisen.
People
become generous when we really understand that life is a gift.
I came onto the stage of world history on September 12, 1955.
But where was I on September 12, 1954?
Obviously, I was nowhere. I
did not exist as me. I had no body,
no being. The late John Claypool, a
popular Chautauqua preacher a decade or so ago, describes our births as sheer
windfalls and, as such, we never can cry “unfair.”
Though I have. Many
times. And maybe you have as well.
But when life itself is grace and gift, it is a hard case to make.
The
book of Micah asks what is required by God of human beings.
The answer is, of course, one of the most famous sentences in scripture: “…to
do justice, to live kindness, and to walk humbly with God.”
Justice, while absolutely essential as a bedrock of our life in
community, is still the least of the requirements. It
is the base. People getting their
due. But kindness, one of
generosity’s loveliest faces, goes beyond justice to make life more humane,
more compassionate, more interconnected. Such
generosity leads us, then, into the even higher practice of what I call “the
glorious humility” that, as we said last week, finds us seeking not to take
God’s place but living fully and truly into our own as the children and family
of God. It is in the “glorious
humility” that we are able more fully, as we saw this summer in the beatitudes
of Jesus, to live as peacemakers, mercy givers, and seekers of right-relatedness
to each other, to our neighbors, and to the natural world around us in which we
live.
There
is an old rabbinic parable about a farmer who had two sons.
As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and
began to teach them everything he knew about growing crops and raising animals.
When he got too old to work, the two boys assumed the daily
responsibilities of the business and, when their father died, because they had
found their working together to be so satisfying, they decided to keep their
partnership. So each brother
contributed what he could to the effort and during each harvest season, they
would divide equally what they together had produced.
Across the years the elder brother never married.
The younger brother did marry and had eight good children.
As the children got older, during one of the harvests, the older bachelor
brother thought to himself one night, “My
brother has ten mouths to feed and children to put through school.
I have only myself. He really
needs more of the harvest than I do, but I know he is too fair to say so.
So I know what I will do. One
night after he is asleep, I’ll take some of what I have stored in my barn and
take it over and put it into his.”
At
that very same time, however, the younger brother was thinking to himself, “God
has blessed me with all of these wonderful children.
I’ll always have family around me and I’ll always be cared for.
My brother doesn’t have these riches.
He needs more of the harvest to invest for his old age.
But I know my brother. He is
too fair to say so. So I know what I
will do. One night after he is
asleep, I’ll take some of what I have stored in my barn and take it over and
put it into his.”
So
one night, when the moon was full, and as you may now be anticipating, the two
brothers came face to face, each of them on a mission of generosity.
Well,
that gives me an idea! I have a
proposal for a new mission statement for our congregation.
The one that is presently on our books is a good one, I suppose, and
lofty and eloquent in its own way. But
I bet you do not know what it is. I
don’t really know what it is though, if you give me half an hour, I am sure I
can find it. It’s too long.
It’s too careful. It’s
too churchy. So here is my
suggestion. “The
mission of the members of the First Presbyterian Church of
But
most of you already know that better than I do.
I really just preach to myself up here on Sundays so that I can catch up
with the rest of you. Case in point:
Paul Bentley chairs the Finance and Stewardship Committee of the church
this year. He and his committee have
set a pledging goal for our stewardship campaign this year of $350,000.
Now, the highest amount this church ever has reached is $297,000 and this
year it is in the vicinity of $280,000.
I tried to talk reason with Paul, telling him that just in people
who have relocated to other parts of the country this year we’ll be starting
the campaign $15,000 in the hole and the economy is not good and the gas prices
are high and how are we ever going to reach $350,000?
To which Paul said, “Well, Tom, you are a pretty persuasive guy.
Why don’t you just ask people to give more?”
I said, “Paul, I can’t even persuade you to back off the $350,000.”
So, as you will read in our next newsletter, the goal remains at
$350,000 because Paul Bentley and his committee believe that the mission of
First Presbyterian Church is to be generous. And God
knows that there are people in this community who need us to be.
There
always will be people who begrudge generosity, who think you cannot run a family
or a church or a business or a society that way.
The elder brother in the parable of
the prodigal son begrudged the generosity of his father in lavishing welcome
on his younger son who came home from calamity and catastrophe.
The vineyard workers who worked all day begrudged the generosity of the
landowner when he gave to those who had worked only a little the same wage to
which the all-day workers had agreed and were paid.
There are plenty of people who begrudge the social generosity of public
assistance. “You can’t be giving someone
something for nothing.” But
what if the problem is that we give not too much in assistance but too little?
What if collectively we would give to people who need help not just
enough to barely scrape by but enough to give them hope, to give them
opportunity?
What
I know is that our very lives
originated in the generosity of God. We
were not owed life. It was given to
us. A gift from a generous giver.
In the
“Not THAT parable again!”
Oh, but it is a great parable
for getting right to the heart of our lives as followers of Christ for it gets
right to the heart of God. I cannot
imagine any parable I would rather have you hear than this parable about
generosity, unless it is the one that begins, “There
was a man who had two sons. The
younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property
that will belong to me…” Oh,
but I guess we’ll save that one for another day!
Amen.