If you’re anything like me, you might hate being late. If it’s an appointment or an interview, I want to be early. Now, of course, we all know that it’s respectable to be fashionably late to a party. Very few people think of showing up early to a party. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes late is perfectly acceptable. The fun is only getting started then.
But if you show up at 8:15 p.m. for a 7 p.m. party that ends at 9, then don’t expect to have access to the best hors d’oeuvres; they’re probably in other people’s stomachs by now. That bowl of delicious guacamole is gone. The accompanying chips are just crumbs in a basket. And forget about the most popular drinks. If you’re seriously late to the party, you’re going to miss out.
Well, you do unless you’re in a kingdom of heaven party. In the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, it’s not exactly a party; it seems far from it. There’s hard work going on in this story. And unlike the latecomers to the usual party, those who show up to put in some work at nine, noon, three, and five o’clock end up reaping the same financial compensation as the laborers who have toiled since the break of dawn. How unfair is that?
We all know that you earn whatever is equivalent to the work you have put in. The owner of the vineyard is not operating in a logical system; in fact, he is out of touch with how things work. Who does he think he is to dole out one sum of reward to all the laborers, no matter how long they have worked?
Think about it: who is able to summon up charitable feelings towards the student in the large lecture course who never attends class but turns in the final paper, the only grade in the class, and then walks away with an A? And if you’re the student who has been dutifully present at every class and gets a B at the end, you could rightly be angry, even jealous of the slacker who gets an A.
Or think of the avid churchgoer, the person who is on every committee and is always eager to help, who has been a faithful worshiper all her life, who deeply resents the wayward, profligate sinner who repents on her deathbed and receives assurance of God’s forgiveness.
And should a recent hire at a company get the two full weeks of annual vacation after working only a month on the job? I think not. If he did, the longer tenured employees might revolt.
There is no corner of our civic arena that is left untouched by convictions about what’s fair and unfair in how we do business. The argument is frequently made that the poorest among us are unworthy of societal relief at taxpayers’ expense because, well, if they are unemployed or poor, they must not have worked hard enough.
This is the conceptual framework for how we view the world. It’s ingrained in our bones, and the slightest hint of unrighteousness knocks our bones out of joint. If you’re late for the party, then it serves you right to miss out on the creamy artichoke dip and the fancy drinks. Show up on time, and then you can enjoy them like the rest of the responsible people who arrived at 7:10.
But the news of today’s Gospel is that perhaps it is we who have gotten something wrong, not the landowner. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard gives us one window into what the kingdom of heaven is like. It offers us a new semantic system for deciphering moral righteousness.
As we have seen, it’s fairly easy to see how the moral boundaries of God’s kingdom reorient the world’s skewed ones. We don’t have to like what we hear, especially when we think the rules of the kingdom are unfair, but we can at least understand them. I would guess that most of us are inclined to put ourselves in the shoes of the laborers who were sweating under the heat of the scorching sun, all day. We can sympathize with their outrage when the two-hour laborers earned the same amount of money as they did after twelve hours in the field.
But how often do we put ourselves in the shoes of those who are late to the party? Do we ever identify with those who showed up at five o’clock, worked for an hour or two, and then walked away with the usual daily wage? Would we feel guilty about doing that? Would we be elated and proud that we had duped the landowner? Or would we be relieved at our good luck?
There is a strong tendency to assume that the laborers in the field were late to begin their work through their own laziness. Scripture tells us otherwise. When the laborers who are still standing around idle at five o’clock are questioned by the landowner, they reply that no one had hired them. Does this not, then, open up the possibility that those who are late to the party are not necessarily in the wrong?
Could it be that the car wouldn’t start at 6:55 p.m., and that’s why the couple arrived at 8:15? Was the train running late? Did an emergency phone call come in right as they were walking out the door? Or did someone simply forget to tell them there was a party? Then, if they are indeed late to the party, don’t they deserve some of that delicious hummus and warm pita bread?
But let’s also suppose, for just a minute, that the latecomers to the party are late because they are always late. They can never seem to get out the door on time. They don’t plan well. Is it still not possible to extend some grace to them instead of automatically assuming that they received their due?
This parable, as uncomfortable and challenging as it is, reveals something about our human nature. We are usually so quick to compare and make a competition out of something that is supposed to be an enjoyable party. The owner of the vineyard is right to point out to the jealous laborers who have worked all day that he has done them no wrong. After all, the laborers agreed from early dawn to the usual wage. They are not being deprived, even if it seems unfair that the two-hour laborers received the same wage. They got what they signed up for.
While we should be careful about drawing a direct comparison between the landowner and God, if this parable is treated like the holy simile that it is, there is something in the landowner’s behavior that is like God’s reign in his kingdom. This parable tells us something about how God operates. It tells us specifically about God’s freedom.
The all-day laborers’ view is the human tendency to believe that if God shows favor to another it is somehow taking away from God’s favor to us. It treats God’s generosity like the conservation of energy: the total quantity has to balance out in the end. This view simply reveals how little we believe in God’s mercy and compassion. We envision God’s graciousness as a finite supply that will eventually run out, and we want as much of it as possible for ourselves.
But we should rejoice that God has a freedom that is nothing like the boundaries and limits we create. God’s freedom also explains God boundless justice, mercy, and compassion. God’s freedom removes God from our petty divisions, grievances, grumblings, and competition. We should be ever grateful that God’s gifts are distributed as God chooses and not as we would choose.
And this is unbelievably good news for those of us who might be late to the party. In this parish, as we ask God to heal us from our past and seek a new future by the grace of God, we might feel like we are late to the party. Many other churches around here have been partying hard for the past twenty years, and now we are showing up, and all the food’s gone.
Today’s parable reminds us that those who are late to the party might not be trying to pull a swift one with God. They might actually expect to be treated as subpar to the ones who worked all day. They might feel insecure about being late to the game. They might feel as if they can in no way catch up to those who’ve been working since dawn. But the good news is that God doesn’t see things this way. There is still vineyard work to be done, and God invites even the latecomers into this. There is always the potential for more ministry to bear fruit. Sometimes the reason for being late is that no one has hired us.
The Gospel of Christ completely rejects the uncharitable posture of so many people of faith who long to see others get their due, especially when it’s God’s wrathful judgment. This comes from a self-righteous pride that sees any reward for the two-hour laborers to be a travesty of unrighteousness.
But Jesus gives hope to all of us who can identify with the latecomer to the party. We learn and rejoice that the gifts we receive from God are not meted out based on tenure. Those who discover God’s call to them late in life, have the same access to God as lifelong churchgoers. And some of us who have been struggling, get the usual daily wage when we show up late, through no fault of our own, and amazingly, even when we are at fault, if we can receive God’s gift.
When we enter into a faithful relationship with Christ, we sign up for the terms and conditions, and that includes the daily wage. This is the daily wage of God’s overpowering righteousness that re-balances the world’s petty envy and scorekeeping. And it assures us that, even when we are late to the party, there will still be fresh food coming out of the oven for us and delectable drinks to pour. When we have been standing idle in the field all day, desperate for someone to hire us, we will be hired, because there is always work to be done. And at the end of the day, God will give us the usual daily wage, of his unmerited but infinite supply of goodness.
A Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 20, 2020