Daily Bread
Exodus 16:2-15; Matthew 20:1-16

September 18, 2005

What counts as a day in Oslo, Norway, when there are only 4-5 hours of dim light? It is dark most of the time in the winter, so society has had to reconstruct how a day is conceived. In Oslo, everything stops around 2:30 p.m. when all head home in one big rush hour. Dinner and other family things happen until about 7 or 8 p.m. when people return to school and work for other events. A scholar I know was once invited to give a special lecture at the University of Oslo in January at 5:00 p.m., which seemed a normal time to him. He soon realized that this was no-man’s time - the university was virtually deserted or asleep - the person who had set the lecture time must have been one of those asleep.

There are no arguments either in the Exodus wilderness or in another of Jesus’ parables about what constitutes a day. It’s what you are allowed to put into a day that is the issue. In the vineyard the work day is traditionally around 12 hours, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the hours of day light. In the wilderness, the day is that relentless cycle of human subsistence.

The day begins hungry in the wilderness. By definition, there is not much attractive or nutritious out there in the uninhabited stretches, an inhospitable environment for any human being. Why is this freedom, the free Israelites start asking one another? Six weeks they have been free, but that has given them plenty of time to accumulate and polish their complaints. The complaints, by the way, are targeted pointedly and personally against Moses and Aaron, the leaders of the congregation, as there is always more satisfaction yelling at a person than a god.

Now what is really intriguing from this episode is that God answers complaints. God responds to the Israelites’ complaining and arranges for quails to land near their camp at twilight. God made the Pharaoh’s heart hard; God makes the quails dumb and consistently night after night they land in the wrong place. And God listens to complaints and responds with the early morning dew and that mysterious “whatchamacallit” stuff, a good colloquial translation for the Hebrew “manna.” The puzzled Exodus wanderers asked, “what is it?” We really have not figured it out yet. Raining bread from heaven was the tactic of God, but it had a limit.

You could gather as much of this thin flaky sweet bread-like stuff as you wanted, but it always seemed to work out that whatever amount you took, it was just the right amount for the needs of your family for the day. God The manna came with a strict one-day warranty, and sure enough, those who tried to hoard some for later on in the week found the manna full of worms the next morning.

Have you ever tried to “catch up on your sleep”? You’ve been working hard, under a lot of stress, stayed up too late for a few nights and had to get up too early. Then finally you can go to bed at a proper time, even sleep in a little, and you feel great. You’ve caught up with your sleep. Know how long that lasts? One day, and then you are back to square one. You can’t save or bank your sleep.

The same thing applies to food and water, especially if you are in a subsistence environment. Every day starts anew with a blank slate and you have to have a certain kind of faith that you will receive what you need, or else you’ll start getting anxious and fretting about the future. You can never control and manufacture the future, so it won’t be long before you are complaining, and most people who complain end up complaining about someone else. Moses is the reason we are dying of hunger out here in freedom. Slavery was good because we didn’t have to think, we didn’t have to make choices, we knew where our bread was coming from.

The world was divided for those wandering Arameans into the fleshpots of Egypt and the hostile wilderness. Let’s face it, we are still in the wilderness - free and unfettered, but nothing is really secure, nothing is really free. Once we start believing we can control today and tomorrow, by saving up and managing what we will be able to do, then we start to believe we are the source of life and creation. God never really fits into our day. This is odd, because the only thing we do have for sure is this day that God has given us, and with it we receive our daily bread, as Jesus led us in prayer.

Another day began with a ripe vineyard ready to be picked. The owner needed workers now and he lured them out of the town square with the promise of what’s fair for a day’s work. These guys no doubt worked hard for most of 12 hours. But apparently this was the crucial day for the fruit of the vine - if he waits until tomorrow, a lot will be lost. So the owner kept going back, recruiting one more group of idle men to work for what is fair. By the way, the economy in first century Palestine was not like ours, so there were very few regular “jobs.” This is what these men had to hope for each day, to be asked to work for the day. Things out in the field are getting desperate, so a final push is needed. At the 11th hour, or 5:00 p.m., an hour before dark, there are still a few men who didn’t get picked up and the owner picks them up.

Now the harvest is in, and it’s time to be fair. I’m not sure the owner had really kept a ledger of who had worked when, so he gives the 11th hour last minute workers a denarius, the standard wage for a day’s work. They could now go home and provide properly for their families. Every other worker also received one denarius, the wage for a good day’s work. Just like with the manna, everyone received what he needed and no more.

People don’t usually complain when they get what they need, they complain about not getting what they want and think they deserve. They begin from the owner’s generosity and assume that they have the right to control his generosity for other people and then appropriate the mathematics for themselves. “I should be getting 12 denarii, not just a single measly one! This owner is unfair and unjust as far as I am concerned.”

The owner does not back down, perhaps he is even a little puzzled. I gave you what is fair, what you need for the day, isn’t that true? You won’t go home starving tonight, will you? I was generous to everyone and you want to begrudge me my generosity? As the day lengthened and I realized that the crop was withering on the vine, those 11th hour workers were worth more to me, in a way. They were the difference in saving my harvest. Late or not, they too deserve and need a living wage, their daily bread. Is that not justice?

This has always been the most troubling parable. No unions have ever accepted its terms, and we see all around us companies that prefer part-time workers so that they don’t have to pay them benefits. Those who believe in hard work and commitment still find it hard to rationalize the owner’s wage scale and don’t see how they can really put it into practice. It just doesn’t work in human society, not even in Tommy Douglas’ Saskatchewan socialism.

The parable begins with a brief preface that sometimes we even omit from our reading. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner...” Now, the Jewish people do not like to go around and blithely talk about God. God is too sacred a name, so they use an assortment of euphemisms. One of them is the kingdom of heaven, heaven being an allusion to God. The kingdom of heaven is the way God operates. The kingdom of heaven is like this landowner.

I know there are inner groans and mental notes of protest against such poor economic procedures, but I don’t know about you, I am here in this sanctuary assuming that God is real. Anybody here not assuming the reality of God as the basis for the gathering of our company in worship? Reality lies in the way this landowner acts in his generosity to his workers in the vineyards. What is not real is all of our economic machinations that take advantage of the powerless and impoverished, that seduce us into complaining and foster our greed. Do you really need proof today? These things are not real because they are not truthful, they are not redeeming, they are not generous. Whether it is in our wilderness or at the end of a working day, God has generously given us a day.

This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need.

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