Our work is not our worth - Redeemer Episcopal Church

 The Laborers in the Vineyard

Matthew 20:1-16 (NRSV)

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

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This sermon was originally written and preached by me for the people of Redeemer Episcopal Church on September 20, 2020 but I believe in a God who transcends time and space, so I hope this word might also speak to you. You can read the sermon below or listen to it within the worship service at this link. 

Let us pray. God of ridiculous grace and mercy, help us to understand your justice. Help us to be grateful for the Kingdom of Heaven, help us to remember that our productivity does not determine our worth, even when it feels unfair in our limited, worldly view. Amen. 

I struggle with this parable. I don’t like it, if I’m being completely honest. I was raised by firmly lower-middle class parents who instilled a very Protestant work ethic into me. You work hard, you put in the long hours, then you get rewarded for it. I saw it work for my dad as I grew up and he made his way through the ranks of the Army, finally retiring after 22 long years as a Chief Warrant Officer IV. 

I knew it to be true in my own life… If you work hard, long hours, you will get rewarded. I worked hard in high school to make good grades and earn the honors that seemed to come so easily to my older brother.

The year I graduated from seminary, the seminary decided that all of their students would receive free tuition, drastically reducing the amount of debt for first time pastors upon graduation. I remember thinking then, and sometimes on my more grumpy days I still think, THAT’S NOT FAIR. 

So I don’t like this parable. Mostly because I have a lot of preconceived notions about how I EARNED everything that I have in this life. 

That is the world view that these workers are starting from too. Jesus’ disciples would have heard this parable and thought the same thing, “that’s not fair.” 

A landowner needs some day workers because his crop is so great. So he goes out early in the morning, hires them for a full day’s wage, goes out again at 9am and hires some more, and again at noon and 3 o’clock. Then he goes out AGAIN at 5 o’clock and finds more workers and hires them. So it seems that the landowner had a LOT of work to do in the harvest time. Or perhaps the first workers hired were not working as quickly as he had hoped. Whatever the case was, he continued to hire more and more workers even up until the evening. 

Then the landowner does something really unexpected and what we consider to be the unfair part of the story. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.

This is, decidedly not fair by the standards of our world. I mean, this would disrupt our capitalist economy on which all of this work ethic is founded, wouldn’t it? The people who worked the fewest number of hours are still paid the same as the people who worked all day long. They EARNED those wages, whereas the ones who only worked an hour shouldn’t DESERVE anywhere close to same amount of wage. 

I resonate with this. I totally understand why the laborers who were there all day long are upset. It’s not fair. 

We live in a society that tells us that we must earn what we receive and that we only deserve what we have worked for. That is why the prosperity gospel is so popular today— it fits with this narrative about the economy: if we work hard, if we pray hard, if we devote ourselves more fully to God, then God will bless us. But God won’t just bless us, God will bless us more— more than our neighbors, more than our friends, more than the rest of our extended family. 

Because that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? Comparison. If the landowner hadn’t paid everyone in front of everyone else then no one would have known that everyone got the exact same wages. Instead, the workers compared their own wages to the people who didn’t work as long and were angry with the landowner. 

“That’s not fair” only works when we have something to compare our own circumstances to. Instead of being grateful for the grades that I received in high school, I constantly complained “that’s not fair” because my brother never worked as hard as I did and always got grades that were just as good. After graduating seminary, it was not enough that I had graduated and had even received a full scholarship to go to school, my immediate thought when I heard that tuition would be free for all students was “that’s not fair!” 

We live in a society that reinforces this, don’t we? We have these devices that house social media that makes this comparison so much easier, so much more immediate. I hear all the time that people “deserve” something more than another person. And we get upset by the idea of participation trophies and government aid programs because we have ideas about what people deserve or what they don’t deserve. 

But Jesus wasn’t promoting a new economic system in this parable. He wasn’t prompting the disciples to advocate for social welfare systems under the Roman Empire. 

He’s describing the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is talking about where God stands on this issue of “deserving” and “undeserving” people.

And God’s justice, God’s economy doesn’t look anything like ours. In fact, God says, your productivity has nothing to do with your worth at all. 

I’m going to say that again because I think it is really important in this story: your productivity has nothing to do with your worth. That has taken me 28 years to learn about God. And I still need to be reminded of it over and over again so that I don’t fall into the trap of what society tries to tell me: that I am only worth in so far as I produce something. 

It is one of the most encouraging things that I have learned about my college students. Unlike my generation and my parents’ generation, my students are trying to figure out who they are outside of what they do. And this seems so basic, but it is actually a revolutionary change in thought. And one that I think is more faithful than how I have been functioning my whole life. Your productivity has nothing to do with your worth. What you do is no consequence to who and whose you are. 

And if we need a reminder of that any time, I think it is now. I have some friends and colleagues who have been thriving through the pandemic, writing books and publishing articles… but most of my friends have been feeling as un-productive as they ever have in their lives. For myself, it now takes me twice as long to write my sermons. It takes me twice as long to prepare a Bible study because I feel like I have cotton stuffed in my brain. There is something about this global crisis that has turned my brain to mush. All the while, our society still tells us that we need to find another job, to hustle more, and produce more. 

But our productivity has nothing to do with our worth. That’s what this parable can teach us today. God adores us. And God doesn’t care if we worked all day long in the scorching heat of the day or if we came to the fields much later and only worked for an hour. God adores us. And that’s not fair. There is no other way to put it. We don’t deserve it. But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair. Amen. 

Worship for Sept 13, 2020

 A worship service for Riverside United Church of Christ on September 13, 2020. 

Let us love - Redeemer Episcopal Church

Romans 13:8-14

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

An Urgent Appeal

11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

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This sermon was preached originally for Redeemer Episcopal Church the September 6th worship service. You can read the sermon below or you can watch the whole worship service at this link. I hope that the Spirit can speak through these words to you. 

Let us pray: God who first showed us how to love, continue to remind us of your love and the ultimate demonstration of that love in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, so that we might learn to love one another and all of creation. Amen.

I have read a lot of really tragic news lately. It seems unavoidable. Whether it is about the world at large or within our own community, we have seen a lot of death in particular lately. Too many lives have ended too quickly, too unexpectedly. 

Just a few days ago, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that four friends were mourning the loss of their family members. At the end of each story about their loved one, the post read something like this: “tell people you love them when you have the opportunity because you never know when it will be too late.” 

This is often the sentiment when people die unexpectedly or too young: tell people you love them. 

Saint Paul, I think, would share that sentiment. But I’d imagine he would emphasize something a bit different: show people you love them, especially before it is too late. 

I love this passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. It is quoted so often. Many people have it memorized. And of course, it kind of sums up the golden rule that most major religions have and that we have heard from a very young age: love your neighbor as yourself. 

Paul seems to be making things easier on us in this passage. He does what all of my students hope their professors will do by the end of the semester. He takes all of these complicated teachings about the commandments and he reduces them down to this one commandment, that he says sums up all of the law: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It seems simpler. He seems to have uncomplicated a lot of things and even made things easier to memorize. 

But Paul is actually upping the ante. Instead of following the commandments that said things like “do not murder, do not steal, do not covet,” which, all things considered, seem like pretty easy commandments to keep. Paul says that simply not murdering is not good enough. We must love one another. There is a huge gap between not murdering your neighbor and loving them.

Following the ten commandments does not seem quite as difficult as loving your neighbor. I mean think of how difficult it is to love your own family members sometimes. But that is supposed to extend to our neighbors? And Jesus tells us that our neighbors are actually all the people, everyone. Every single one of them. We are supposed to love all the people like we love ourselves. 

That’s already quite a high order. And I think it is only going to get harder as the next few months approach. As tensions rise even higher, as rhetoric gets even more divisive on the national and international stage… loving our neighbors might even feel impossible. 

It will be easier to be angry, to be upset, to blame, to name-call our neighbors. In some cases it already is easier to do that, isn’t it? I don’t know what it is about our human condition, but it seems like being hateful is just easier than loving one another. And as much as I hate to say it, I think in these next couple of months it will be much more difficult to like people, especially people who have different opinions from ours, people who watch different news programs than we do, people who are on the other side of the political spectrum than we are… it is going to be so hard to like people, let alone love them. 

So how do we do it? How do we love one another in a time like this when it doesn’t seem like most of us can agree on anything? Paul gives us a hint in this new commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. We must see ourselves in the other person. We must see that they too are just as sinful and just as beloved by God as we are. We must remember that God loves us IN SPITE OF our flaws and sin and in spite of the number of times we have turned away from God. We must remember that we do not have all the answers, and neither do our neighbors. We must see ourselves in our neighbors. 

More important that that, we must see God in them. We must recognize that they too are a child of God, someone that God has named and called beloved, someone that God longs to be close to and someone who God loves dearly. If we are able to remember that, it might be, perhaps, a bit easier for us to love one another. 

But Jesus, in the gospel reading for this morning, also reminds us that we have been given a process for working though conflict with our siblings when we have not been loving toward one another. Loving one another does not mean being stepped on or taken advantage of. Jesus reminds us that healthy relationships have boundaries.  This too, is often difficult to remember. But it helps us love one another better. 

And God knows that we will not always be loving to one another or toward creation. We have the whole history the human race that tells us that we are actually pretty bad at loving one another when it all comes down to it. 

That is why God has given us the gift of grace, mercy, and forgiveness in Christ Jesus so that we might learn from his example and grow in love. We have all of these stories, so many chapters of Jesus’ life to reference in order to see what true love looks like. 

But we have to listen to his story, we have to hear his words, and see his actions. I promise the church’s attempts at Bible studies and faith formation opportunities are not just for fun. Our hope for our community is that we might know Jesus more fully. We must intimately know who Jesus is to understand God’s love for us and for all of creation. And ultimately, we must continue to tell this story, the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, as a witness to God’s love for the whole world. It is one of the ways, God tells us, that we are to love our neighbor. 

These next few months might be easier in some ways, as we begin to join one another for worship again and life feels like it’s getting closer to normal again. But as we come physically closer to one another, we must also remember to see God in one another, to be patient and kind, to love one another. And Paul says we must love one another now and not wait around until it is easier— because we never know how long we have and the Kingdom of God is closer than we could ever imagine. 

So despite the fact that it sometimes feels impossible, we can and should remember that God has called us to this work— to love, truly love, one another, just as God loves us. And we must remember that it is a simple, difficult commandment that can truly change the world. Amen.