September 24, 2023 First Congregational Church UCC, Auburn MA
Matthew 20:1-16 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?. So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
(The Message) “He replied to the one speaking for the rest, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn’t we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous? Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.”
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
God shows no partiality.
God shows no partiality.
God welcomes each of us, as we are, when we come.
God does not judge us on what we’ve done, or how well we’ve done it.
God does not welcome us onlyif we’re good enough.
God does not welcomes us only if we’re Red Sox fans.
God shows no partiality.
But we do. We show partiality all the time.
We give raises to those who work harder.
And we generally think that if we work harder we’ll get more. We think we get what we earn.
Certainly the vineyard workers thought that way. It’s pretty clear that they all thought that the longer they worked, the better they’d be paid… or to turn it around… the first ones in knew they’d get a dollar a day, and so they assumed that the workers who came on board later in the day would get less money — start at noon, perhaps make 50 cents, start just before quitting time, well get a dime, or even a nickel.
But then quitting time comes, and it doesn’t quite turn out the way the workers expected. They all get the same wage, whether they worked 8 hours or 10 minutes. Now this is good news, right? If we understand that the master of the vineyard is God, and we are the workers, some early, some late, but all loved and accepted it’s great news.
And at the same time, it’s challenging news. Because, you know, it looks exactly as if some are getting more than others. Turns out, the Bible tells us, it’s all in how you look at things. Because, as it turns out, we don’t all start from the same place.
When I was in high school we lived in south Florida, where my father managed a 1000 cow dairy farm. Two crews of men worked eight hour shifts to milk the cows twice a day. The men were from southwest Georgia, from a world where children routinely dropped out of school after the first or second grade to go to work in the peanut fields.
Their children rode the same school buses that my brother and I rode. We went to the same schools. Sometimes, especially in elementary school, we sat next to each other in class.
But when it came to picturing our futures, we did not start in the same place. My father had been a school teacher, my mother was a nurse. They both read books for work and for pleasure.
Their parents didn’t read at all. None of the adults had gone beyond third grade. My parents expected me to go to college. Their parents expected them to get married by ninth grade. Though it might look as though we’d had an equal start, and had equal futures, it wasn’t so.
Look back at our Gospel story. On the face of it, some people were enterprising and came to work bright and early, ready to go. And some slept late and didn’t show on time, some didn’t make it until late in the day. So, the obvious thing is that some were honest, hardworking and on time, while the others were lazy, maybe even sleeping it off. And maybe that’s true.
But maybe it wasn’t, maybe it isn’t. Maybe our “usual assumption” when we see someone show up late for school, or work, or whatever, is keeping us from seeking the real story.
On my travels between here and home, I’m listening to a memoir by Theresa May, former Prime Minister of England,. She talks about duty, service, and taking responsibility and one of her examples of this gone wrong happened in 1989, when overcrowding at a sports event in Yorkshire led to the deaths of 97 people, contained in a standing-room only enclosure.
In subsequent investigations, it became clear that the single most defining expectation of the day was that the fans had to be controlled, that the police expected the fans to cause trouble and any sign of distress would be proof that someone was starting a riot.
So, when two of the enclosures became so over-crowded that people were being crushed against the fence, the police assumed a riot was starting. They reacted in fear, not compassion. When the ambulances finally made it onto the field, some of the attendants refused to leave their vehicles because they assumed the attendees who were trying to get out of the enclosures would be coming for them. And 97 people died who should have lived.
An additional 766 people were injured with 300 in the hospital. Theresa May said there are people who were there that day who have never been able to go back to the stadium, that their memories of the day are horrific. So, probably more than a thousand people had their lives changed in painful ways, because there were people whose assumptions kept them from seeing what was really happening.
It was so hard for anyone to wrap their mind around the idea that the police had let their assumptions govern their response, and were responsible for the deaths that it was 2012 before the truth came out. And even then, people struggled to believe that the police had lied about what they saw and did.
Assumptions, incorrect assumptions caused a great miscarriage of justice.
Now – let’s go back to that story of the laborers. Jesus’ lesson for us – well the first lesson – is that God welcomes everyone, no matter what time of day, what season of their life, they come to follow God. But in the squawking of those who worked the full day, there’s a gentle push from Jesus to think a little more about the backstory, about where people were coming from, what their lives were like.
Why did those who came late, come late?
Why do those who fail, fail?
When we know the whole story, then we can work to make our world better.
That’s our calling, to be God’s accepting love in the world.
Today’s lesson is really good news for us and for all the world. It tells us that not only are we known and loved by God, whether we come to God early or late, but that we are loved no matter where we started our journey, no matter what we’ve lived through, no matter where we come from. God knows and loves us as we are, where we are.
And today’s lesson is good news because it helps free us from the assumptions which block our vision, which keep us from seeing the barriers that mar our world.
Today’s lesson gives our lives meaning and purpose, for this is our work.
to makes the invisible barriers visible,
to challenge assumptions that put limitations on some,
and to share God’s love with our world.
Amen.
© 2023, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 