Proper 20A
The Very Reverend Harry H. Pritchett, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta , GA
September 18, 2005
I have always assumed that there is something innately Christian about being fair. One of the highest compliments one might pay to another person is that they are fair-minded and deal fairly with everybody.
My wife, Allison, and I have always tried to be fair with our children sometimes to the ridiculous and meticulous figuring up how much each one would get for Christmas down to the penny in hopes that all would be dealt with fairly by Santa Claus.
And yet there is an element of unfairness about a lot of the parables of Jesus. There’s the one about the Prodigal Son, where the older brother receives little recognition for his faithfulness to his father, while the returning younger brother gets the red carpet treatment after squandering his money and shaming his family. I can identify with the older brother when he gets angry because it just isn’t fair, certainly by respectable moral standards.
And an even more outrageous bit of unfairness seems to occur in the parable in this week’s gospel. – the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
Here’s the story line again: A land owner needs workers for his business. He goes over by Home Depot and hires all the Latino guys he can find waiting there by the road for someone to hire them. This was early in the morning.. He agrees to pay them the going rate. Three hours later, still needing workers, he goes back and finds some more folks – the late risers, perhaps, and hires then at what he calls a “right” wage. There is no hint that he is not paying them enough or dealing with them unjustly or paternally. At twelve noon and at three in the afternoon there are additional hirings on the strength of a similar assurance. Five o’clock in the afternoon finds him again down at the street by Home Depot. The shadows lengthen and a few men wait for work. Appraising them at a quick glance—were they loafers or were they just unemployed?—he flings the question, “Hey guys, why are you standing around doing nothing all day?”
Of course they might have made excuses, maybe pleading the sweltering heat, or they might have cursed the economic order or acted sullen and dumb. But no, they simply reply by telling the truth, “Because nobody has hired us.” And then he gives the rather curt instruction, “O.K. You guys come along to work as well.”
Now we get to the real dynamics of the story. When the day’s work is finished, this employer—who can hardly be called efficient—pays everyone the same wage. The guys who came on the job at five o’clock, just an hour or two before sundown, get the same pay as those who have worked from early in the morning. I can imagine the screaming of injustice by the early-birds and I would have probably been leading them! Morally and even legally they had a very good case. And to make matters worse, those hired last were paid first. It is gross unfairness!
Well, the truth of the matter is that this parable is not an economic tract. Jesus did not attempt to lay down the principles on which the engines of industry should run. Neither is it a guideline for labor-management relations. Like all the parables, this one as well, has one point...it is a parable of God’s extravagant generosity… it is a parable about the divine grace at the heart of the universe. It is an extra-legal, extra-moral, extra-ordinary piece of truth about God. And God’s grace, as Jesus emphasizes over and over again, is an extra—an extra that goes beyond what’s legal, and what’s moral and even what is fair. There is no way to measure it… There is no way to make it happen…you can’t control it so it is sometimes messy… and above all, there is no way to earn it. It is God’s free gift, no strings attached!
Will Chapman was a well known preacher in the early part of the 20 th century who experienced a great sorrow in his life with the illness and eventual death of his daughter. His financial resources were completely depleted so he went on a long preaching trip just to try to make ends meet. On one occasion after a prayer and preaching meeting, a wealthy banker slipped a piece of paper into Chapman’s hand. Chapman looked at it and was surprised to find that is was a check written to his name and signed by his rich friend. But the amount was not written it. “You didn’t write the amount?”, Chapman exclaimed. The banker replied, “I did not know how much you would need. I wanted to be sure you had enough to meet all your needs .”
It is in this way that God’s grace is available for all our needs regardless of being first or last, winners or losers, rankings of any kind. The essence of the gospel it not about fairness or even about being good, except as some sort of by-product of gratefulness that God is who God it!
Here’s a story I heard a week ago told by one of the brightest and most “successful” young priests in the church. Years before in high school, he had been first academically and was senior class president. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota with considerable scholarships and loans. During his sophomore year he had signed up
for a particularly dull psych class which he decided innocently enough to drop.. So he filled out the requisite form and went to the registrar. To his great surprise and delight, he was informed that since he was dropping the course during the second week of the term, he would get back 80% of his tuition. Swell, he thought. Unexpected pennies from heaven—about 3000 of them. Well, not heaven exactly, it turned out, but pennies back from his student loans. So he pocketed the cash, took his three remaining courses that term and when the winter term rolled around, he again enrolled in four courses, and dropped two—but during the first week of class. Hence a 90% return and 8000 pennies from heaven this time.
And spring followed and summer and fall and winter and… well, he said, he eventually was dropping all his courses the same day he enrolled in them, collecting the cash back from his loans and six year’s later was still technically a sophomore with the student loan debt of a doctoral student.
Troubling for him? Well the University of Minnesota certainly thought so. They sent him a very succinct letter informing him that due to the disproportionately large number of withdrawals on his transcript he was herewith and henceforth “suspended.” And he was advised to make an appointment with the Dean of Students at his earliest convenience.
The truth of the matter, according to my friend, is that his academic problems with the University were just the proverbial tip of the proverbial iceberg because the money he thought he was so cleverly amassing was for the most part going to support a ballooning drinking habit which at that point was the size of the Hindenburg and was about to crash and burn. He had also wracked up a heavy credit card debt, and had alienated not only his roommate, but most of his friends. And to top everything off, the day before he received the letter from the University, he had fallen down the steps in a drunken stupor and had broken his ankle. But he did make an appointment with the Dean of Students, hobbled in on his crutches, and sat before her as the pathetic mess that he was. She said straight out,” Mr. Smith, do you have a problem?” Given everything that was wrong with his life, he says he didn’t know exactly what to say. So he didn’t say anything. Instead, he started to cry…deeply sobbing. And then this happened: The dean got up from behind her desk, closed her office door, handed him a box of Kleenex and sat down beside him. Two hours later he left her office, re-admitted to the University and headed for an AA meeting. And 18 years later he said last week, “I stand here before you as one whose life is a credit to the words, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first … through the indiscriminate generosity of God.”
Regrettably, generosity often seems too discriminating. We tend to dole it out in a limited and careful way. And it can be very messy as well since we can’t ever predict the end result of our truly generous actions. Most of the time I like to adhere to established rules and predictable routines because I can usually anticipate the outcomes in advance. But with graceful actions you can never tell what the consequences will be.
Nevertheless, it’s important to remember as followers of Jesus that at the end of the day, the neatness of routine and rigid adherence to rules greatly limits the possibility of new life for us and for those we encounter.
This parable of the laborers and for that matter the whole life of Jesus is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God being available to all without regards to past performance or ratings for efficiency, or being first in anything. It is messy because the first, the middle and the last live without any distinctions whatsoever for rankings—economic, social or moral. And while Jesus certainly does not defend people who do wrong or evil or are irresponsible, immature or incorrigible, he does go like the Dean in this story, and stand beside them. And in doing so, he unmasks the intentions of those who are too zealous for judgment and being first. That probably includes all of us because I know that I’ve got my own personal list of where other people stand and I bet you do as well. And further more, I would bet each one of us is way up on somebody’s reject list. So we all know in the deep of night full well what it’s like to be in need of generosity. But the mystery of God’s kingdom is that once we’ve received generous grace, we want to pass it on and on and on, until indeed it virtually flows through us. And we know that it’s working when we stop enforcing rankings informed by rigidity, resentment or self righteousness, that block the possibility of new life. Because God’s perfection is shown most fully not against flaws noted or scores and rankings kept and settled. But in the extravagant embrace of us all. Because to put it simply, in God’s realm there are no real losers, no ones who are last, late, or outside. It may not seem fair, but who cares! Because by the overarching grace of God every last one of us is first….forever and ever. Amen.
Comments? Contact Dean Pritchett at: HPritchett@stphilipscathedral.org