Matthew
20:1-16
A couple
years ago, MSN published an article on how people spend their time. Based on
numerous studies and surveys, the authors calculated how much time people would
typically devote to certain activities, assuming they lived 75 years. Some of
the results were predictable: in that lifespan, the average person spends 26
years sleeping and almost four and a half years eating. But some other things
were surprising, at least to me: the average person spends just 27 days being
romantic (which includes things like kissing and hugging), 115 days laughing
. . . and 5 months complaining. The numbers are just extrapolations, of
course, but they ring true. Human beings do like to complain. And so it makes
sense that the Bible, filled as it is with human beings, contains lots of
complaining. In Exodus today, the Israelites, who have recently been set free
from slavery in Egypt, exhibit a “what have you done for me lately” attitude
towards God as they grouse about life in the wilderness. And we hear it in the
Gospel, where the laborers in this parable are also complaining. The Greek verb
used there is wonderfully expressive: they were egungozon, “grumbling.”
Nothing bad has happened to them, mind you: they are grumbling because good
things have happened to other people, which of course is even worse than if something
bad had happened to them. You heard the story: some folks work all day while
others work part of the day, and still others only for an hour — but they all
get paid the same. Terrible! . . . or so it seems to them.
I suppose
one way to make this story go down easier is not to automatically and
self-righteously identify with the guys who have been laboring in the hot sun
all day. If we identify with the ones who show up at the end of the day, the
story feels much different. Seeing it from their perspective might encourage us
to realize how much we have that we don’t really deserve. We could then count
our blessings and be thankful, rather than grumble.
And that
would certainly be a decent approach to this passage. But it does not go nearly
far enough. Jesus did not come to tweak us here and there: he came to transform
us. He doesn’t ask us to modify our outlook: he calls us to die and be born
again. So his parables are not meant to be comfortable: the goal is not t0 find
some way of interpreting them that doesn’t upset us too much. The parables of
Jesus are designed to shatter our narrow worldview so that we can envision and
experience something far, far greater. And what is being shattered today is any
semblance of a reward system, any pretense that we can earn anything from God.
And I use
that word “shatter” deliberately, because so many people function with the myth
that you should get what you deserve. But, let’s be honest, it is a myth. There
are people who inherit money or live very comfortably off investments while
others do back-breaking labor their whole lives and barely get by. Some people
eat well, exercise, take care of themselves and die young, while others eat,
smoke, and drink their way into a ripe old age. Some morally upright people
suffer horrible calamities; some blatantly immoral people thrive. Natural
disasters devastate the innocent as much as the guilty. But we still cling to
this idea that we will get what we deserve so much that abandoning it would be
shattering.
But
that’s exactly what Jesus tells us to do: abandon it. Let it go. At the heart
of Reality is not a system of rewards and punishments, but the infinite love
and generosity of God. Actually seeing that, truly recognizing that, will
change your life. To do so is to live in the Kingdom and to experience the
reign of God. We don’t have to love and do good to get into heaven: heaven has
been given to us, and we are now free to love and do good, filled with God’s
Spirt, for the sheer joy of it.
And,
consequently, that sets us free from that most invidious form of complaining,
which comes from comparing ourselves with others: resenting their success,
envying their blessings, somehow feeling like we have less if they have more.
But it doesn’t work that way. God’s generosity is infinite: you can have an
infinite amount of it, and I can too. Everyone can. And it will come to us in
the ways we need it to come, ways that have nothing to do with whether we’ve
earned it or not. I was speaking with a parishioner this week who told me that
it has been hard for her to maintain a disciplined prayer practices in part
because she thinks she’s behind the ball: other people have been doing this for
years, so she feels like she can’t even begin to catch up. But it doesn’t work
that way. God is not like that. I have been praying for decades, but somebody
could pray for the first time today and experience just as much love, just as
much grace as I have. And that’s not unfair: that’s awesome! I am not made less
by that. I’m not made less when others have gifts I don’t have or make more
money than I make or enjoy success that I cannot attain to. I am loved
infinitely and forever. Each one of us is loved infinitely and forever. It
really is all good.
I don’t
know how many months of your life you will spend complaining, but even one day
is costly. If we honestly measured all the time and energy we devote to
resenting other people, envying other people, wishing we had their luck, their
looks, their lives, grumbling in our hearts about them, grumbling to other
people about them, the amount would probably stagger us. That is wasted time we
will never get back; that is squandered energy we could have devoted to far
better things. Jesus, our Savior, comes to set us free in so many ways, and
this is certainly one of them. And here’s the best news of all: God will set us
free any time we want. We don’t have to go to church for years or pray
for hours a day or fast from chocolate during Lent or do anything to get God on
our side. The only way to experience the infinite generosity of God is to
accept it. And it is offered always. Even when the Israelites are whining in
the wilderness, God’s response is to give them food and shower them with love.
You could have been a mean-spirited, grumbling crab your whole life, and if you
want God’s love to fill you, you can have it right now. All of it. Just as much
as if you had been a faithful, loving, praying believer for years. You don’t
deserve it. I don’t deserve it. Deserving it is not part of God’s economy at
all. It’s a gift. Take it -- and let it change you.
Another excellent sermon!
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