We are the Latecomers: A Sermon for the 17th Sunday After Pentecost

Give us ears to hear and hearts to listen. Amen. 

The Gospel story today is often called the Labourers in the Vineyard. It begins and revolves around two kinds of people. The first is a landowner or, more specifically, the owner of a vineyard. As is true today, if you own a vineyard, you’re probably doing pretty well in life. The other characters are the day laborers, and they live at pretty much the other end of the economic ladder. Day laborers are people who don’t have a regular job. People who go into the town each morning hoping they’ll find work so they can feed their family. They’re not beggars, they’re not destitute, but they pretty much live right on the edge of poverty.

 

When the parable starts, the owner of a vineyard needs some help. It’s likely harvest time and the work is plentiful, so he goes into town at dawn to hire some additional workers, agreeing with them on a wage of one denarius for a 12-hour day, about the amount it takes to feed a family for a day. As the day goes on, it turns out that the landowner needs more help, so he goes out again at 9 in the morning and tells some more laborers that if they work, he’ll pay them what is right. No amount is named, just a promise that he will do right by them. He goes out again at noon, and once more at 3 in the afternoon, and finally one last time at 5 p.m., which is kind of a head-scratcher, because there’s only one hour left in the twelve-hour workday. But he hires them too and sends them into the vineyard.

 

At 6 in the evening, he tells his manager to settle accounts, and the folks who came last and worked only one hour are paid first. When they show up, they are likely astounded that they received a full day’s wage. You heard that right. They’ve worked just one hour – about 8 ½ % of the workday, but they’re getting a 100% of a full day’s wage. Which means they’re likely not just surprised but probably overjoyed. Maybe the only people happier than those hired at the last hour are those hired at the first. Think about it. They worked twelve hours and just saw the guys who only worked one hour get a full day’s wage. So, it’s not hard to imagine that they’re expecting to get more, maybe a lot more. But when they show up to be paid, they also get a single denarius. That doesn’t seem fair. I mean, they worked for twelve hours, enduring, as they understandably grumble, the scorch of the sun all day long. They feel they deserve more.

 

It’s all too easy for us to dismiss these laborers as ungrateful or selfish or, to borrow a biblical phrase, hard of heart. But their reaction is pretty much what most of us would have felt had we been in their shoes. What happens to them simply does not add up and so doesn’t seem fair. Never mind it’s what was contracted – if those who worked an hour received a day’s wage, then those who worked so much longer deserve more. Right?

 

In an act of generosity, the owner of the vineyard throws aside normal practices for payment. Rather, he gives the laborers what is “right.” While it seems terribly wrong to the diligent folks who have worked all day, it is right in the owner’s eyes that everyone goes home with enough pay to buy food for their families. But these workers want fairness; who can blame them. They feel cheated because they calculated their wages in accord with what the manger paid the latecomers. The manager responds that he has acted not with fairness in mind but rather with love expressed through generosity.

 

If you’re someone who works in the financial industry, this parable goes against pretty much every business practice. But we can’t get bogged down in the economics of this story. If we do, we will miss the whole point. The parable was not told to teach about money; it was told to teach about grace. Let’s take a look back at the verses that come right before today’s gospel reading:

 

“Then Peter said in reply, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

 

Peter is saying, “look Jesus, we were your first choice, we’ve been around since the beginning, following you around, what do we get out of it?” and Jesus goes, “Pete, stop worrying so much about who’s first and who’s last. In the end, everyone gets into the Kingdom of God.”

 

There is this belief that the longer you’ve been doing God’s work, the longer that you’ve been following Christ, the bigger your reward should be in the afterlife. And that the stronger your faith, the more you’ve earned your spot in heaven. But the thing is, God is a terrible bookkeeper. God doesn’t keep a tally of all the things you’ve done in your life, as if ticking your way to the front of the line at Heaven’s Gates.

 

The landowner in our story pays every laborer the same because that’s the way God operates. God does not show partiality. God does not require payment for love. In this parable, Matthew is reminding us of the wonder of God’s grace and that God’s love for us, for everyone, is unconditional. Imagine a world in which preferences are not shown to some, where all people are welcomed and treated the same. Such a world could really become a priesthood of all believers. The God we discover in Jesus is the God who looks at us in love and overlooks all those places we fall short and chooses to treat us with unmerited grace, mercy, and generosity.

 

We are the latecomers to the vineyard, those who had no good reason to expect such lavish generosity. Instead of worrying about getting what we deserve, we need to see the world through the lens of the Kingdom of God. What would happen if everyone got their “daily bread”? Who are we neglecting or pushing to the margins, instead of making sure they are being see as equal and worthy?

 

The labourers in this story thought they weren’t getting what they deserved even though it was exactly what they agreed to. This is a good time to remind ourselves of the overwhelming gospel message: Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.

 

We don’t deserve God’s mercy. We didn’t earn God’s love. And yet, here we are. Receiving our “daily bread” from God – peace, love, mercy, and grace. Perhaps only those who think they don’t measure up are ready to receive God’s grace. To have faith is to embrace this possibility and to discover grace as hope and vindication for our lives. Even those coming to this faith late in life will have a spot in heaven. They too will receive their “daily bread”.

 

And that is good news indeed.

 

Amen

25 Years Later

Photo from abc7.com

25 years ago, almost 3,000 lives were lost when planes crashed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and a farmer’s field killing thousands of people. Nothing has been the same since. It was a moment that changed the world.

I remember visiting my grandparents in Boissevain, MB and we would drive down to Lake Metigoshe in North Dakota for dinner. It was a real treat! Crossing the boarder was easy, with no more than a conversation. No IDs were checked. No mini-interrogation about why you're crossing the boarder. Nail clippers never used to be considered a dangerous weapon on an airplane, either.

Everything changed on September 11, 2001 and, 25 years later, it's all still the same.

10 years ago, as I was starting out in my theology degree, I wrote a paper about the September 11 attacks. It was probably one of my best papers and every once and a while I read through it, wondering if I could or should something more with it.

As we approached the 25th anniversary of these horrible events, I broke the paper out again. Reading through it, I shake my head because the world hasn't changed much over the last 2 decades. Everybody's at war with somebody. Fear is at an all-time high. And nail clippers are still consider a dangerous weapon on airplanes. Here is an excerpt from the paper:

"The attack on the World Trade Centre was a culmination of years of terrorism and war, disgustingly poor human rights policies, and some extremely faulty foreign policy within the US government with regards to counterinsurgency training and inconsistencies on who qualifies for US aid. On the surface it would appear that the attack was unprovoked and came out of nowhere. But as you begin to unravel the past, you can see a pattern in how the US deals with foreign nations and that it is quite likely that a group of people finally had enough and took justice into their own hands. Through mass and social media we have been essentially forced to accept the US as innocent bystanders who were seemingly attacked for no reason. But if you start delving into some history you will find that the US government was a far cry from an innocent or a bystander. From ignoring blatant human rights issues to taking both sides of a civil war it appears that the US has brought it on to themselves the fact that they are the target of multiple terrorist groups."

What I tried to do in my paper is attempt to show that it was the US government’s own inconsistent foreign policy that resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Centre and the death of 3,000 people. More than 3,000 as we are now aware of the deaths that were caused by health issues from the dust and chemicals that were in the air that day, and the days following.

Discussing such things as the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Nixon doctrine, the Somalia Syndrome, the Rwanda Genocide, the Persian Gulf War, and Bin Ladin and al Qaeda, I feel like I was able to explain how the US became a targeted superpower. It was a fascinating bit of research and certainly made me realize how the events of September 11 were not isolated, nor did they come out of nowhere.

On September 11, the world was changed forever. With the aftermath leading to a two-decade-long war is Afghanistan, and Islamophobia rates skyrocketing to numbers that really haven't come down much since then, we are still feeling the effects of those horrible events, even 25 years later.

Will I break out this paper again in 5 years? 10 years? Only time will tell. But I sure hope things start turning around soon. How long can one country remain at war with the rest of the world?

We Are Not the Judge: A Sermon for the 16th Sunday After Pentecost

Give us ears to hear and hearts to listen. Amen.

 

Of all the letters believed to be truly written by Paul, the letter to the community in Rome is the only one not written to a church he had founded and knew well. Paul wrote to the Romans as an introduction and to prepare them for his arrival in their city. A bit like an agenda with reports and material sent around before a parish council meeting. Paul is most concerned about telling the Romans about the issues of justification and salvation and that one of the consequences of our justification and salvation in and through Christ is that we will be transformed. Not only physically on the day of resurrection, but in our hearts, minds, and spirits as well.

 

Up to this point, some of the things Paul has talked about are what it means to believe in God, what it means to have faith, the practicalities of living in community, and the redemption through Jesus Christ that can be accessed through faith and action. And today it’s all about pitting meat eaters against vegetarians! No, wait. That doesn’t sound right. That’s what it reads like though, doesn’t it? “The weak eat only vegetables”. That’s what it says. After all of Paul’s talk about family, community, being welcoming to the stranger, loving the neighbour, forgiving the enemy…he’s got something against those who choose not to eat meat? Not really. Paul is talking about the culture of eating meat, or more accurately, eating food that is unclean, not kosher.

 

Jewish religious laws around food were pretty sticky and as Paul tries to bring more people towards conversion to Christianity, one of his points is that having faith in Jesus is more than just following a bunch of rules. It means caring about people more than caring about the food you put in your mouth. That said, I don’t think the people who created the lectionary wanted us to start a debate between being a carnivore and being a vegetarian. There has to be more meat in this reading!

 

This passage is more than just about eating meat or vegetables. It’s about division and differences. This is about a Roman community that was both Jewish and Christian and they were struggling to figure out who was right, who was more faithful. For example, should they honour the last day, Saturday, as the sabbath, or the Lord’s Day, Sunday? What Paul was trying to say here is that these divisions that were both frustrating and meaningful shouldn't divide us fully. The community is what matters, and we should hold together in love. It’s love that binds us together.

 

We can dispute and we can argue but that's not the point. Paul said to not just tolerate those who are weak in faith, but to show hospitality, to go the extra mile and make the weak feel welcomed. And he isn’t trying to say that some people have better faith or more faith than others. But he is saying that we should be welcoming to all people, even those with whom you disagree. Jesus didn't come to die and live so that we could argue over how to baptize or whether to eat meat or on what day we should celebrate. Jesus came so that we might have life, so that he might be the Lord of the living and the dead. And yet we judge one another, and we divide one another, sometimes even saying these divisions are done in God’s name. It is tough to praise God if you are busy passing judgment on other people. And yet, that’s often what we do.

 

While we might not be arguing about all the same things as Paul’s audience anymore, there are still plenty of divisions within our churches. Will we sing praise music, or traditional hymns? Should we read from the NRSV, or the NIV (or the KJV or the CEB)? Will we have an open communion table, or will we deny certain people receiving the feast? We also remain divided over things like the inclusion, acceptance, ordination, and blessing of women, people of colour, and 2SLGBTQIA+ persons. For every place that is truly affirming, there is a place that is not.

 

And just when you think progress is being made, society slides backwards in the conversation. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Right? That statement assumes that being a woman, a person of colour, a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community is a choice, and a sinful choice at that. None of these unique characteristics are a choice, but they are the way in which we are beautifully and wonderfully made by God. None of them are a sin. White supremacy, hate speech, hate actions, racism - these are choices and sins. These are actions that need to be called out and exposed for the destructive lies they are, and those who continue to espouse them must be held accountable.

 

I understand Paul's call that we are to love, that love is ultimate, that love is everything. Easy enough for some, but what about those being rejected by society, by family, by community? That’s the hard part. It’s not about “anything goes”. Loving everyone doesn’t mean “everything goes”. This could too easily be interpreted as a sit back and, for the sake of the community, love everybody and don't rock the boat. I doubt Paul would be telling us not to rock the boat. Jesus was a great boat rocker and Paul was repeatedly thrown into prison. Rocking the boat is exactly what we need to do in order to bring justice to those on the margins. When a group of people want to cause harm to another group of people, we need to stand up and rock the boat.

 

Very few challenges in the Christian life can compare with the challenge of really loving one another despite how different we all are. However, at our core we are all children of God, created in God's image. God is the God of all people and God calls us to love and pray for our enemies and those who hate and persecute us. To us, the enemies, the persecutors, and the haters are the people who are weak of faith. And we are called to welcome them to our table, just as Christ welcomed all sinners to his table.

 

Paul acknowledges that devout people can have radically different convictions and still be good and faithful people. It is too easy to judge each other, especially when society constantly barrages us with the idea that people are “less than” simply because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious background. But we need to resist demonizing each other and remember that we mere mortals have no right to judge. Verse 12 in todays reading, “so then, each of us will be accountable to God.” There is only one judge, and it isn’t me, and it isn’t us. If, in the end, I am wrong about who God intended for me to include, then I will answer to the Almighty on my final day. Until then, all are truly welcome to my table because I believe that God calls us to live as a community that embraces all and sees all as equal, so that together our knees will bow before God.

 

We are all people called by grace and by God not to judge but to worship and to serve.

 

Amen.