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Lenten Noonday Preaching Series Calvary Episcopal Church Memphis, Tennessee March 9, 1999
Compared
to What?
I began my
sermon yesterday by acknowledging that surprise is an important factor
in memorable truths. When a story takes an unexpected turn, it has a way
of awakening our interest. It has a way of making a deepening impression
upon us. And, therefore, it is true that familiarity breeds contempt.
It is also true that familiarity has a way of breeding dullness and apathy.
Jesus knew this quite well, because in so many of his parables, surprise
was a constituent element. People thought he was going one way and suddenly,
in the turn, they saw things that they'd never seen before, were awakened
to things within themselves. Therefore I've decided, in the three moments
that it is my grace to be with you here at Calvary this year, that I would
return to three of the most famous surprise stories of Jesus, and hope
that perhaps in revisiting them, the deep magic that came through them
to those who first heard them might come again to us this day. I spoke yesterday
about that most surprising parable: where it was a Samaritan, despised,
outcast, racial half-breed, that Jesus shockingly suggests was really
more Godlike than a priest or a Levite of the temple. Today I want
to talk about this story that began in a very, very familiar pattern.
Namely, it is harvest time for the grapes of that particular place, and
a vineyard owner realized that he needed to have extra help with the harvest
before the grapes spoiled. And so before dawn one morning, he goes to
the gathering place in the center of the little village close to where
he lived, where traditionally day laborers would come hoping against hope
that they could be hired for a day. These were folk who had no regular
jobs, they didn't own property. They were much like the migrant workers
in our own culture, absolutely dependent on somebody else for their livelihood
for that day. And so just for the sake of understanding it, let's say
that 30 people like that had gathered before dawn, gotten up hoping that
they could get something that they could bring home to their families.
And the vineyard owner goes and he finds this group of day laborers, and
he arbitrarily picks out six of them and says, "Here's the address
of my vineyard. I will pay you a denarius," which was the traditional
pay for a day's work, about what it took for a peasant family back then
to survive. And these six who had been picked out of the entire group,
with great joy set out to embrace the opportunity that they had dreamed
of when they had gotten up that morning. Let me pause
and point out that in a technical sense, an injustice has been done here.
Remember there were 30 potential candidates and only 6 have been chosen.
There is no indication that these 6 were better qualified. They simply
were -- by grace or by good luck, you might say -- they were the recipients
of this good fortune. And so they go toward their place of work with an
extraordinary sense of joy. Let me pause and say that injustice and justice
are such subjective realities. When an injustice is done and it falls
against us, then we howl in protest. When an injustice falls our way,
most of the time, we never do even murmur. I want to ask you poker players,
have you ever heard of a man who picked up his hand and found four aces
there, calling for a re-deal? Have you ever heard this person say, "Look
this isn't fair, the rest of you let's put the cards back and reshuffle"?
When injustice falls against us, we are incensed. When it comes in our
favor, most often times we simply take it for granted. And I want you
to note that, because these six persons who were so overjoyed at 6 a.m.
in the morning are going to shift their attitudes tremendously just 12
hours later. When it's
9 o'clock, the vineyard owner comes back, and now he finds 24 day laborers
standing in the marketplace, and he picks 6 more and says, "You go
to this vineyard and I'll pay you what is appropriately honest, what is
appropriately just." And so they go. At 12 o'clock and at 3 o'clock,
he comes back and hires 12 more. And at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, just
one hour before it is time to quit, he comes back to the center of town,
and to his amazement there are 6 day laborers, ll hours after the beginning
of the day, still standing there. His first reaction was typical of what
we today would think of the unemployed. Namely, they're just lazy, shiftless,
they don't want to work. And so he says, "Why are you standing here
idle?" And they said to him, "Because no one has hired us. We
don't have the power to create employment. Somebody else has to do that."
And it was amazing that for 11 hours, they had stood there hoping against
hope that somehow they could find work. So the vineyard owner says, "Well
you go to my vineyard and work the rest of the day, and I will pay you
what is appropriate." At this point
in Jesus' story, all 30 of the day laborers had, at least in part, fulfilled
what they got up in the dawn's early light hoping for. Nobody was going
to have to go home completely empty-handed and face wife and children
and say, "We have nothing to eat this day." Up to this point,
the story is the kind of thing that could have happened in any Palestinian
village. But then comes the shock factor. Then comes an awesome surprise
that turns the story into something utterly different than was expected.
When it came time to pay the men at the end of the day, those who only
worked one hour came up to the desk and to their amazement they were given
a whole denarius. (Remember that was what it takes for a peasant family
to survive for a single day.) They were given the whole day's pay, and
they were astonished and they were overjoyed. And the 3 o'clock people
came in, they too got more than they expected, and the 12 o'clock, and
the 9 a.m. But when the 6 a.m. group that had first been chosen and was
so pleased that they were the ones who were going to get to have a day's
labor, when they came to the desk, they too were just given a denarius,
and literally all hell broke loose. They were incensed. They demanded
an audience with the vineyard owner. They said, "This is not fair.
We have worked 12 hours. Some of these people have only worked one hour,
and here you're paying us all the same. This is not fair, this is not
right." They were absolutely in anger, and it's interesting that
the vineyard owner only makes two responses. He says, "I have not
done anything unjust. I lived up to the agreement that you and I both
made at the beginning of the day. I did exactly what I said I was going
to do." And then he asked the telling question, "Or do you begrudge
me my generosity?" Now remember that, because it is going to be the
key to understanding this astonishing and surprising parable. I think in
the first reading you have to side with the people who were hired at 6
in the morning and who don't seem here to be treated fairly. It doesn't
look like in this story that Jesus is giving us anything that approximates
what we call justice. But I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus
through his surprise was getting at something deeper than justice. Something
that every one of us desperately needs to get in touch with. And that
is the incredibly gracious structure of reality in which all of us are
held. I was helped in understanding what I think is Jesus' main point in this parable when I heard a later parable. It came from an 18th Century Jewish Rabbi. And when I lay it alongside this story, perhaps it will help you see what I think was the real issue that Jesus was getting at. In this parable, a poor Jewish farmer was awakened one night and was startled to find an angel standing at the foot of his bed. And the angel said, "You have found favor in the eyes of God. He wants to bless you as he did your ancestor Abraham. Therefore, he has sent me to say you can make any three requests that you will of the Almighty, and he will grant them. There is only one condition. Your neighbor will be given a double portion of whatever is bequeathed to you." Well the
farmer didn't know what to do. He was startled because the angel disappeared.
He woke up his wife -- she was far more practical than he -- and when
he told her what had happened, she said, "Well let's put it to the
test. It wouldn't be hard to find out if this is just a dream, illusion
or reality." And so because they were poor, it's not surprising when
they dug deep that their first desire was for something material. And
so he kneels down and says, "Lord God of the universe, give me a
thousand cattle. If I just had that, I could break the cycle of poverty.
It would make all the difference in the world." And no sooner had
he said the words, than he heard noises outside. He went and the sun was
just beginning to come up, and there in the dawn, he saw a thousand magnificent
animals, exactly what he'd asked for. Well he spent
the next 24 hours praising God for his surprising grace and beginning
to make provisions for this newfound affluence. And the next afternoon,
he was up on a hill trying to decide where to build a barn to help shelter
these animals, when for the first time he looked across, and on his neighbor's
field were two thousand magnificent cattle. And for the first time since
this wonderful grace had happened to him, his joy evaporated and a sense
of resentment filled his heart. He came home that night in a terrible
mood, refused to eat or talk to his wife, went to bed early. Every time
he shut his eyes, all he could see was his neighbor's good fortune, and
it galled him to the core. But late in the night, he remembered that the
angel had said he had three requests. And so he took his focus off the
neighbor and [put it] back on his own situation and began to ask, what
do I really want? And it soon came clear that some link to the future
had always been a great desire of his. Some child that could be his way
into the next generation. So he bows and asks God, if possible, to give
him an heir. Because of his experience with the cattle, he was not all
that surprised a few weeks later when his wife came in and said, "I
am bearing in my own body a life not my own." Well the
next eight months were passed in great delight. He was enjoying the new
affluence that the thousand cattle had brought him. He was anticipating
parenthood. On Friday, right before Sabbath began, a child was born into
that circle of love. He was overjoyed. He went to Synagogue the next morning.
When it came time for the prayers of the people, he stood up and said,
"God is indeed gracious. Let me tell you that last night a long dream
of ours was fulfilled. We now have a child to live on into the future."
And a whole murmur of delight went over the whole little congregation,
and he sat down. On the other side of the Synagogue, his neighbor gets
up and says, "God is indeed good, because last night twins were born
to our house." And the minute he hears this, the same thing that
happened on the hill behind the house once again happened. His joy evaporated;
resentment filled his heart. He went home from the Synagogue in a very
different mood than he had gone, and these dark feelings did not abate.
Late that
night when Sabbath was over, he knelt beside his bed and made his third
and final request. He said, "Lord God of the universe, I beg you
gouge out my right eye." There was this long silence, and then the
angel who had started the whole process materialized and said, "Why,
oh son of Abraham, have you turned to such dark desiring." With fire
in his eyes, he said, "I will gladly sacrifice half of my vision
for the satisfaction of knowing that my neighbor will not be able to look
at all on his. I cannot stand the good fortune that has come to him."
A deep silence enveloped the room, and the farmer looked, and there were
tears forming in the eyes of the angel, and he said, "Let me say
to you that your last request will not be granted, not because God lacks
integrity, but because God is full of mercy. But know this, son of Abraham,
what you have chosen to do with God's desire to bless has not only brought
sadness to your heart, but it's brought sadness to the heart of God." Now the reason that I like that later parable is that it points up what I think was the basic problem that changed [the feelings of] those first 6 who had been hired from joy to resentment in just 12 hours, and the problem was the side-long glance of envy and jealousy. You see, if in both cases, if the 6 who had been chosen first, if the poor farmer, if they had compared their present fortune with what it was like before anything had happened, they would have had every occasion to be grateful. It was when they begin to compare their fortune to that of other people that their whole joy turned into resentment. If you know anything about the making of moral decisions or interpretation, you know that the criterion that you choose by which to make judgment is absolutely important. I have an
uncle who went to work after he had been on vacation for a month. At the
coffee hour on that first day, he said rather ritualistically to his boss,
"How is your wife?" And he was shocked when the boss shot back,
"Compared to what?" Well now my uncle was not philosophically
trained, he was not used to being pushed like that, but it dawned on him,
he said, as he thought, that that really was the crucial question. You
see, compared to Madonna, you'd answer it one way. Compared to Mother
Theresa, you would answer the question in a very different way. "Compared
to what" is absolutely crucial when it comes to evaluation. And the
truth is that the real problem in these people who were so graciously
joyful at 6 a.m. and so angrily resentful at 6 p.m., the problem was they
had compared their good fortune to something that made them feel like
an injustice had been done. If they had compared their good fortune to
what had happened before anything started, they would have had every occasion
for joy. I think Jesus
is trying to say to us here: The goodness of God is never seen through
the eyes of envy. It is only seen through the eyes of wonder and of gratitude. This morning I want to give you a sure-fire formula for how to be utterly miserable at the place at which you find yourself today. And that is to compare yourself to other people. Compare the amount of money you have to the amount of money Bill Gates has at this moment. Compare your athletic ability to that of the man that hit 70 home runs. Compare your mental capacity to Einstein. You can always find people out there who have more of everything than you have. And if you're beginning point is some sense of entitlement that you earned your way in here and deserve it all, then like those six you can raise your fist in the hand of God and say, "It is not fair, it is not right."
There's a theologian named Geddes MacGregor who, when he was six years old, went with his mother one summer to visit her mother, his grandmother. And the two women were sitting out on the porch as folk do in the leisure of vacation time. And the grandmother said to the mother, "I'm so glad you decided to have little Geddes. He's been such a joy to all of us." Well she didn't know he was anywhere around, but as you parents know, they always are, they always hear a whole lot more than we expect them to. He comes bounding up on the porch and wants to know from the grandmother, "What do you mean, I am so glad you decided to have little Geddes." At that point he learned something about his beginnings that he had never known before. And that was that his mother was 48 when he'd been conceived. She had read all the literature about the dangers that attend to pregnancy when a woman of that age tries to give birth. There had been all kinds of discussion with the doctors and the family. Should she have a therapeutic abortion or should she go ahead and risk the pregnancy? And at the last moment, she decided on the latter course, which of course was what the grandmother was referring to. This was
a brand-new piece of news to this little 6- year-old boy. He had no idea
that all this discussion had taken place prior to his being born. And
so, he said, he went off by himself to assimilate this new information.
He had a very vivid imagination. And he said as he sat there, there came
into his mind this vision, this image. He said, "I was in a line
moving step by step up to this great portal, over which was simply written
the word, 'birth.' And as I made my way, suddenly a hand reached, pulled
me from the line, and said, 'You have been disqualified; you can't be
born.'" And for the first time in his life it dawned on him that
he might never have gotten to be, that there was nothing necessary or
self-caused about his existence. It was a horrible, horrible revelation.
But then that image dissolved. The same fantasy image returned. Again,
he's in a line moving step by step up to the door. Only this time, he
was allowed to go through. Geddes MacGregor said he has never from that
moment forward ever taken his life for granted. Because realizing how
close he came to not getting to be has added an incredible luster to the
wonder of his aliveness. This morning
I want to suggest that if you and I have had one single day in this world,
we have won the Irish Sweepstakes. We have gotten something of more immeasurable
value than all of these things we tend to prize so much. There is a wonder
to simply getting to be that is absolutely astonishing. And I think the
reason Jesus told this parable was to remind us of that great grace that
attends the very first thing that ever happened to us and invites us to
find joy in that above all things. As I said
yesterday, the particular hand you have been dealt is secondary to the
fact that you are in the game at all. That 18th Century parable reminds
us that comparison is always, always going to get us in trouble, unless
we compare our lot to what it was like a year before we were born. If
you would compare to that, you have every reason to be grateful. If you
compare yourself to other people, you will have every occasion to be miserable.
There's another,
even later parable, this one in the 20th Century, that helps me understand
the vineyard owner, who is, I think, here the image of God. I said that
the question he asks -- "Do you begrudge me my generosity?"
-- is the key. You see, when he came to the end of the day, and he looked
at those 30 day laborers, having no means of support save what they can
get day by day, he stopped thinking about justice --how much have they
done and therefore how can I be equivalent. There was something about
their situation that laid hold of the deep generosity of his spirit. And
he said, "Look, I've got more than I need. They have families to
feed." He gave each person a day's wage because he wanted to give
them something out of the goodness of his heart. And that is God's motivation.
We don't understand why God gives. What God gives. But I believe that
he is light and in him is no darkness at all, and deep generosity and
also great wisdom is behind the particular generosity of which each of
us is beneficent. The parable
I talked about is about a farmer, another Jewish farmer, who had two boys.
As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields. He
gently taught them everything he knew about growing crops and raising
animals. He taught them how to work together beautifully. When he got
too old to work, the two brothers took over the farm. And when the father
died, they found such joy in their joint partnership that, instead of
dividing the inheritance, they simply stayed in partnership, each contributing
what he was best at. And at the end of every harvest, each would take
half of what they had produced. The older brother never married and stayed
an old bachelor. The younger brother married and had eight wonderful children
born to him. Years went
by, and during a particularly bountiful harvest season, the bachelor brother
was thinking one night: You know I only have one mouth to feed, and my
brother over there has 10 mouths he's responsible for. He really needs
more of this harvest than I do. But I know, he's far too fair to renegotiate.
I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night while he and his family
are asleep, I'll take some of what I've already put in my barn and I'll
go over and I'll slip it into his barn, so he'll have more to feed his
family. And at the very time the old bachelor was thinking those thoughts,
the younger brother was saying to himself: "You know God has granted
me these wonderful children. They'll care for me when I'm old. My older
brother hasn't had that good fortune. He really needs more of this harvest
to prepare for the future, but I know he's too fair to renegotiate. I
know what I'll do, in the depths of the night, I'll take some of what
I've harvested and put it in his barn, so he'll have more for his old
age." So as you may have already anticipated, one night when the moon was full, those two brothers came face to face, each on missions of generosity. And the old Rabbi said, "Although there wasn't a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall." Do you know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point. That there is enough, always has been and always will be. And living in self-absorption is the way to misery. Living in compassion and awareness and generosity to others, that is the secret of joy, because it is the very essence of God likeness. That's why the vineyard owner did what he did at the end of the day. He had other concerns than justice. He was concerned with the generosity that is the first cousin of incredible grace. Now interestingly
enough, both of these parables that I have laid alongside this surprising
story of Jesus, both of these parables end with God having tears in God's
eyes. And my sense is that right this minute, in relation to your attitude
toward your life and what you're doing, at this very moment, God is weeping
over you. Now the question is: Is he weeping in sadness because you have
let resentment crowd out all kinds of joy or is He weeping for joy because
you have gotten the point? You heard it this morning. The way to joy is
gratitude for our birth and generosity for all the rest of creation. Joy
can be yours this day. I bid you see. I bid you do. Please stand
for the benediction.
Copyright 1999 The Rev. Dr. John R. Claypool |
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