March 5, 2023 - Lent 2 - Beyond Our Imagining
Matthew 20:1-16
Deborah Laforet
Beyond our Imagining
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
I see a world where every boy and girl, every child, every person, has what they need to live free. I wonder what that would look like? I wonder what needs to happen for that dream to be reality?
Have you ever been in a really long line, one of the first ones there though, and then had someone walk in and tell everyone to line up from a different point, making you almost the last person? Have you ever been part of a project where the whole team receives accolades, including those who did none of the work? Have you ever pre-ordered something to insure that you would get it, be told that unfortunately it was sold out, and then find out a friend got it on the same day they ordered it?
There is a big debate right now about forgiving student debt. Students are unable to meet their living needs because so much of their current income is being used to pay down their student loans. One of the arguments, from those who have paid off their student loan debt, is that it’s not fair that they had to pay for the whole loan and others will get a ‘free ride.’
Currently, we are talking about houselessness, and the number of people in our communities who do not have shelter or ways of getting it, because of income, mental illness, addictions, domestic violence, new refugees to the country, and for many other reasons. We know that it’s not right for people to be hungry, and cold, unclothed, and unsafe. But, if someone came to you and said you would have to give up half your home, so that someone without a home could live there, what would you do? How would you feel? Is that fair?
What’s fair? Who decides what’s fair? We are all born with an innate sense of fairness. One of the first phrases we hear from young children is, “It’s not fair!” We seem to feel it when we think we are being overlooked, forgotten, or slighted in some way. From the beginnings of society, there have been elders or judges to help determine disputes and determine what is fair and just.
We heard a parable today that shares a story about fairness. A landowner hires some workers early in the morning and agrees to pay them one denarius, a fair wage, then goes back to town four more times for more workers, even bringing more near the end of the day. This landowner just seems to want to make sure everyone has a job and an opportunity. Promises of pay are not made to these other workers, just a job.
At the end of the day, the landowner pays the workers, starting with those hired last. Those first ones are each given one denarius. Now, imagine you are one that was hired earliest in the day, and you have worked hard, in the heat, all day long. You see the landowner give a denarius to those who had come at the end of the day and you beam. Wow! If they’re getting a denarius, that must mean you’re getting a whole lot more! But as you watch, the landowner continues to give out one denarius, no matter how long one has worked, and when the landowner finally gets to you and gives you a denarius, of course you grumble. It’s not fair. Where’s the pay equity? Sure, you were only promised a denarius but you worked so many hours for this landowner and get paid the same amount as those who barely did any work! How is that right? How is that just? Maybe you even decide to report this landowner and fight to get a more fair wage. Or maybe you just grumble and walk away, hoping to find someone else who will pay more fairly, although a denarius was fair for the day’s work, better than many other landowners might pay.
This isn't a story of economics. Jesus isn’t trying to encourage people to act in the way of the landowner, to give generously to all people, or encourage people not to grumble when they don’t get what’s been promised. This is a parable about the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. This is a story about God, God’s love and God’s generosity.
As Kimberly Wagner, a professor from Princeton Theological Seminary wrote, this parable invites us to:
“…push the bounds of our communal imagination and dream about God’s abundance beyond our expectations and predictions. This parable offers assurance that God is not bound by our limited insight or capacities. God doesn’t work with a slightly better version of our logic. Instead, God’s Kingdom is marked by grace beyond our imagining and generosity, beyond our deserving.”
What we think is fair is not God’s fairness. God’s love and generosity are incomprehensible to us humans. We cannot begin to wrap our minds around this kind of love and generosity, this kind of divine abundance and how that abundance is distributed, but there may be a way to catch glimpses of it.
Verse 15 of this passage is translated, “Are you envious because I am generous?” but literally translated, as you can read in the King James version of the bible, it’s “Is your eye evil?” Those two phrases are so different. According to Patrick J Willson, the problem in this parable is not with the owner’s generosity but with our eyesight - our angle of vision - and he suggests there is another way of looking at this. He writes:
“If we wait and watch long enough, we come to see that the only way we come to know the goodness of God, the only way we can see the goodness of God, is as it is given to others. We can see the goodness of God more clearly in the lives of others, quite simply because they are other than us. The back of the line offers perspective.”
Again, imagine yourself, at the end of a long day of working in the heat. You’re in line with others to be paid, in order of when you arrived. You’ve been there the longest so you are at the end of the line. You have been promised one denarius, and you watch as those who arrived last at the end of the day are given one denarius. You continue to watch. The next group are those who arrived almost near the end of the day; they are also giving a denarius. You watch as those who arrived midday are given a denarius, and then those who arrived not long after you, are given a denarius. By this time, you’re pretty sure that you will get the promised denarius. You know that this pay is not based on the number of hours one has worked or how hard one has worked. You realize that this landowner is exceptional and generous beyond your understanding, and what you see is that this landowner is kind and caring and wants everyone to go away with a living wage, a landowner that has a very different sense of fairness and of what is right. You realize that this is what God looks like and this is what God’s kingdom looks like.
The goodness of God can be seen if we watch closely. We may not understand such outlandish generosity, such undeserved compassion, or such unconditional love, but we can observe it, we can experience it, and we can learn from it.
May these kingdom of god parables teach us about the illogical and incomprehensible love of God. May these parables of Jesus, as we heard from Kimberly Wagner, “push the bounds of our communal imagination and dream about God’s abundance beyond our expectations and predictions.” May the Spirit give us the insight to observe this abundance from the back of the line. May it be so. Amen.