Going Yard
Matthew 20:1-16

September 21, 2008


A few years back, David Ogilvie, then minister at First Baptist Church, drove with me down to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, to attend a seminar on preaching the parables by David Buttrick, one of the great professors of preaching. Dave and I came to know him well, and we remembered the opening line he gave for the parable of the labourers in the vineyard.

This was the week of the 100th anniversary of the Ford Model T. Henry Ford was one of those people who changed the landscape of North American life, not only economically but socially as well. He also knew that he had such an effect, being free with advice and comments on just about everything. “What’s good in business, is good in religion” he was reputed to say. How many parables of Jesus did Henry ever get around to reading?

The answer is probably not many. Jesus’ parables were these wonderful, memorable little stories that were intended to drive you and me so crazy that we might actually get the point. Last week was the matter of forgiveness that haunts every one of us; this week the unfairness of the wages paid to the labourers in the vineyard has upset several centuries worth of Christians and if you listen carefully the way you are supposed to, you too will wonder what has gotten into Jesus and into God? It’s obvious that Jesus intended to get you riled up and mad, just by the way he constructed the story.

Most of the time we don’t hear the opener to this parable and several others, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like....” In Gospel language this means, this is the way it’s supposed to be. Our problem is that we listen tuned into a different frequency and throw up our hands and declare, this is not the way it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t make sense. Again, this parable is not about economics, it is about something we do not talk much about anymore. It is about God and the way it’s supposed to be.

It’s easy to understand the vineyard owner’s predicament. The grapes are abursting, bad weather is noticeably on the horizon, and he has one day to do it, to harvest it all. I bet those little coffee shops in a lot of small Saskatchewan farming villages have seen a similar urgency. Everything in the Near East begins at sunrise, 6 a.m. as you head nearer the equator, and concludes at sunset, 6 p.m. At harvest time, we’ve all seen or been seen ourselves driving the combines way past dark with lights blazing desperately attempting to finish up.

The owner is out in the town square really early and recruits a slew of workers, promising to pay them a denarius, the equivalent of minimum wage. This was not a booming economy in the first century, and Roman occupation did not help. Most people did not own land and were reduced to seeking work daily in order to maintain a subsistence existence for their families. Give us today our daily bread had a poignancy we have not usually considered, for you and I expect and demand bread every day no matter whether we work or not. The owner has underestimated the harvest at hand and keeps returning to the square to find more and more workers. Some people don’t get up as early as others do. They are standing idle, not a casual choice of words. I will pay you what is right, the owner commits himself. Jesus never uses the word “fair” in the Gospels.

As the afternoon presses on and the owner becomes a combination of desperate and hopeful, he goes back to the square at the eleventh hour, or about 5 p.m. Yes, this is where the term “an eleventh hour conversion” or rescue comes from, though no one was being converted here. A lot of readers of this scenario make out the situation to be rather genteel. They couldn’t find work, had lost hope, a tragic economic collapse in that day, but no, listen to Jesus’ description - they were the bums, the lazy good for nothings who didn’t want to work hard for anything, who were hanging out here with their comrades in contemptible sloth. Most of their mental energy consisted of thinking up good reasons why they had not been successful in earning anything to put a meal on the table that night. There was nothing commendable about them, and Jesus didn’t want us to be empathetic to them in the slightest. When the owner pulled their arms to work at this late hour, they figured, hey, we can put up with working for an hour. Sure enough, they went down deep inside and worked for an entire hour. Just in time to be paid.

What’s good in business is good in religion. As far as we can tell, the labourers finished the job and the owner was satisfied. No one has ever claimed that what followed was even close to good business. It’s never really noticed, but notice that the owner pays the one hour workers first and everybody has an opportunity to watch them receive the denarius wage. Why didn’t the owner begin with the all day workers, give them their promised denarius, and by the time he reached the last workers, no one else would have been around to notice? There is a reason - Jesus didn’t want anybody to miss the point that these bums received exactly the same as good hard working citizens. Everybody got the point: the righteous workers, the first listeners to the parable, and everybody here today. Something is wrong; is this any way to run a kingdom of heaven?

No one wants to buy this parable, which follows Jesus’ insistence on forgiveness with which everybody agrees, but no one wants to buy either. We know we’re stuck with forgiving seventy times seven, but we are also stuck with one denarius a day because we know this is reality. Is there a single person here who does not have a story about how someone far less deserving than you stole what you deserved? This parable does not describe the way it should be, but all too often the way it is.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I have heard many a worshipper complain about that word “wretch” in that beloved hymn. “I am not a wretch!” Several revisionist versions have changed the word to “sinner,” a lot more gentle. Grace is sweet, but it is not always sweet for you when you are counting your wages compared to that wretch. Grace to someone else has different standards.

God is grace, but when we keep trying to tell God what proper grace is we are graceless. Grace is always free and unearned, and therefore in the human manner of calculation, undeserved. Instead, we believe that grace is meted out to those who have worked the hardest and are the most virtuous and have been just plain nice people. Authentic, unbelievably amazing grace is given to someone who authentically does not deserve it and we usually complain bitterly like those Israelites in the wilderness who blamed Moses and God for their freedom.

A writer in the fourth century A.D. saw his church people having nothing to do with the sinners and supposed low-lifes of their town. “Where did you get the idea that no one should speak with a worthless or deceptive person, because it may be the case that he will become a saint?” He reminds them about Paul, who was frankly an evil man out to murder the young Christians. Ananais was sent to help Paul, but he objected, and Jesus spoke to him, “Paul is my chosen instrument, for you do not understand.”

No, we do not, for whenever it happens that you and I reject the validity of the grace shown to one of those worthless or deceptive persons, we lose the ability to recognize the grace that is being given to us. What we really think is that the only grace that counts is the one we have earned with our sweat and labour, our goodness and virtue. We think we make it pious by saying, “God helps those who help themselves,” but that really means is that there is no God and there is no grace. Of course, that means there is no grace for you and me.

The moment you acknowledge undeserved grace for another person, even at your expense, is the moment you will recognize and feel the grace that has been bestowed upon you continually. The grace of one’s health, of one’s mind by which one may think of things that are not yet, of family who are still OK with or without your help, of the amazing things you have experienced and learned without an education, the grace of being alive. Most of all, you have been given grace abounding when you only receive one denarius for working the long day in the sun in the yard, and you can laugh.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan