Indiscriminate Generosity - It's Hard To Take
Sermon
Recently I noticed in the media that the government are planning to give each teenager in England a gift of up to 10,000 pounds on reaching the age of eighteen. My first reaction was one of horror, imagining what most teenagers of my acquaintance would do with that kind of money!
But of course, on closer study it became apparent that none of the youngsters would actually see any cash, that the money could only be used as a deposit on a house or for further education, and that only the poorest of the poor would ever see anything approaching 10,000 pounds. If this scheme should ever become law!
Even so, I couldn't help feeling it was really unfair to those who over the past few years have struggled to send their children to university with ever increasing fees and virtually no help at all from the government. It was particularly poignant for me as our youngest child is about to start university, and in three years' time is likely to leave with a debt of around 10,000 pounds, rather than a gift.
I therefore have great sympathy with those labourers in St. Matthew's gospel who worked all day long in the vineyard in the blazing sun, but who at the end of the day, received only the same pay as those who worked for a mere hour in the cool of the evening.
It doesn't seem fair. Since the first workers worked for something like eleven hours longer than the last workers, you'd have expected the first workers to be paid something like eleven times as much as the last workers.
But not only were they paid the same amount, but the last workers were paid first, and the early workers who had been at it all day, had to get to the end of the queue and wait before they received their pay cheque. By all standards of rightness and fairness in the world, that's unfair.
So what is this parable all about? Is it saying that Jesus supports injustice?
This is yet another parable where Jesus turns the accepted notions of the day on their head, and indeed, turns the accepted notions of our own day on their head.
Our own thinking is perhaps still based on the old protestant work ethic of an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, more or less. That doesn't prevent almost everybody in the country longing to win the lottery or to suddenly receive a windfall payment from their building society. But it does mean our sense of justice tends to be outraged when we hear about chairmen of big companies earning hundreds of thousands of pounds for about a day and a half's work, while their full-time workers are paid at the national minimum rate.
And in a way, that's almost what the parable seems to be about. Some people worked all day in the blazing sun for a day's wage, other people worked for only an hour, but still received a day's pay. It's injust.
In his excellent book, "The Parables of Judgement", Robert Farrar Capon discusses this parable (page 51), although he says it's every bit as much a parable of grace as it is a parable of judgement. A grace, God's grace, that gives because it wants to give, not which rewards that which is done well.
But grace is difficult for human beings to accept. It's much easier and more satisfying to the human spirit to accept the idea of a proper reward, properly earned. We can admire a medal for valour, or for long-service, or for winning at the Olympics. If I've done something well and am justly rewarded for it, then I receive my due and I can swell with pride as well as with enjoyment. But there's a certain humility required to accept a reward freely given, when I haven't earned it.
Earning God's goodness by being a good person and following his rules to the letter, would almost make a human being equal to God. After all, we'd only be getting our just deserts, that to which we were entitled, that which was due to us because we were good people.
But it doesn't work like that. No matter what I do, no matter how "good" I am, God will not reward me for my efforts. St. Paul made it quite clear in his letter to the Romans (3:20) that good works won't get me anywhere. If I do good works, they can only be a response to God's overwhelming love, not something I do because I'm looking for Brownie points with God.
St. Paul went on to say, "we are justified by faith" (Romans 3:26), which is another way of saying God's grace is free to any who want it.
So if God's goodness to me is in no way dependent on my goodness or my ability to please him, I might as well learn to be myself rather than a God-clone with a self-righteous facade. If I learn to be myself I can begin to acknowledge those dark places within myself which I normally push out of sight, because I don't like to look at them. And once I can begin to see that human beings are poles apart from God in the goodness stakes, then I can open my arms and wallow in his goodness, knowing that it comes my way whether I stand or fall, succeed or fail. And once I begin to experience that, then I can't help but respond by growing closer to him in every possible way.
But in a culture which practically worships success, it's difficult to take a God who rewards failure, who offers the drop-outs and the drug addicts and the indolent and the bad exactly the same love and grace he offers good, faithful church-goers. But this is where the parable of the labourers in the vineyard becomes not just a parable of grace, but a parable of judgement, for the judgement only falls on those who can't take God's indiscriminate generosity.
C.S. Lewis, in "The Great Divorce", his wonderful tale about heaven and hell, has day trips on a bus going from hell to heaven. Anyone in hell can take a trip to heaven, and if they wish, can remain in heaven at the end of the day. An elderly judge, pillar of the local community and an upright man all his days, finds himself sitting next to his no-good, lay-about nephew on the trip. The judge quite likes heaven, but when he discovers people like his nephew are allowed in, he can't take it, so he returns on the bus to hell, which is painted not as a place of fire and brimstone, but as somewhere grey and drab. The judge couldn't take God's indiscriminate generosity.
The first labourers in that vineyard, who grumbled and whinged about the rewards given to those who came last (even though a day's pay was barely subsistence level) were the ones who came under fire from Jesus. And similarly, judgement falls not on those who freely and happily enjoy God's goodness throughout their lives and let that goodness overflow to others around them just through their ordinary life. Judgement falls on those who resent such happy-go-lucky people, and who try to keep God in a narrow box sometimes labelled "church".
Church should be a means of meeting our overwhelmingly generous God, and of displaying that huge love to other people. So churches should have soft walls and ever-open doors, and should be welcoming to all at whatever stage in life they wish to come, and whenever they wish to come.
As Robert Capon says in his "Parables of Judgement", Jesus went deaf, dumb and blind on the cross, for there are no debit entries in the Book of Life. Like the labourers in the vineyard, everybody is in the payout queue, and everybody receives full pay. For if the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses the great lawgiver, not by Jesus the great love-giver.
But of course, on closer study it became apparent that none of the youngsters would actually see any cash, that the money could only be used as a deposit on a house or for further education, and that only the poorest of the poor would ever see anything approaching 10,000 pounds. If this scheme should ever become law!
Even so, I couldn't help feeling it was really unfair to those who over the past few years have struggled to send their children to university with ever increasing fees and virtually no help at all from the government. It was particularly poignant for me as our youngest child is about to start university, and in three years' time is likely to leave with a debt of around 10,000 pounds, rather than a gift.
I therefore have great sympathy with those labourers in St. Matthew's gospel who worked all day long in the vineyard in the blazing sun, but who at the end of the day, received only the same pay as those who worked for a mere hour in the cool of the evening.
It doesn't seem fair. Since the first workers worked for something like eleven hours longer than the last workers, you'd have expected the first workers to be paid something like eleven times as much as the last workers.
But not only were they paid the same amount, but the last workers were paid first, and the early workers who had been at it all day, had to get to the end of the queue and wait before they received their pay cheque. By all standards of rightness and fairness in the world, that's unfair.
So what is this parable all about? Is it saying that Jesus supports injustice?
This is yet another parable where Jesus turns the accepted notions of the day on their head, and indeed, turns the accepted notions of our own day on their head.
Our own thinking is perhaps still based on the old protestant work ethic of an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, more or less. That doesn't prevent almost everybody in the country longing to win the lottery or to suddenly receive a windfall payment from their building society. But it does mean our sense of justice tends to be outraged when we hear about chairmen of big companies earning hundreds of thousands of pounds for about a day and a half's work, while their full-time workers are paid at the national minimum rate.
And in a way, that's almost what the parable seems to be about. Some people worked all day in the blazing sun for a day's wage, other people worked for only an hour, but still received a day's pay. It's injust.
In his excellent book, "The Parables of Judgement", Robert Farrar Capon discusses this parable (page 51), although he says it's every bit as much a parable of grace as it is a parable of judgement. A grace, God's grace, that gives because it wants to give, not which rewards that which is done well.
But grace is difficult for human beings to accept. It's much easier and more satisfying to the human spirit to accept the idea of a proper reward, properly earned. We can admire a medal for valour, or for long-service, or for winning at the Olympics. If I've done something well and am justly rewarded for it, then I receive my due and I can swell with pride as well as with enjoyment. But there's a certain humility required to accept a reward freely given, when I haven't earned it.
Earning God's goodness by being a good person and following his rules to the letter, would almost make a human being equal to God. After all, we'd only be getting our just deserts, that to which we were entitled, that which was due to us because we were good people.
But it doesn't work like that. No matter what I do, no matter how "good" I am, God will not reward me for my efforts. St. Paul made it quite clear in his letter to the Romans (3:20) that good works won't get me anywhere. If I do good works, they can only be a response to God's overwhelming love, not something I do because I'm looking for Brownie points with God.
St. Paul went on to say, "we are justified by faith" (Romans 3:26), which is another way of saying God's grace is free to any who want it.
So if God's goodness to me is in no way dependent on my goodness or my ability to please him, I might as well learn to be myself rather than a God-clone with a self-righteous facade. If I learn to be myself I can begin to acknowledge those dark places within myself which I normally push out of sight, because I don't like to look at them. And once I can begin to see that human beings are poles apart from God in the goodness stakes, then I can open my arms and wallow in his goodness, knowing that it comes my way whether I stand or fall, succeed or fail. And once I begin to experience that, then I can't help but respond by growing closer to him in every possible way.
But in a culture which practically worships success, it's difficult to take a God who rewards failure, who offers the drop-outs and the drug addicts and the indolent and the bad exactly the same love and grace he offers good, faithful church-goers. But this is where the parable of the labourers in the vineyard becomes not just a parable of grace, but a parable of judgement, for the judgement only falls on those who can't take God's indiscriminate generosity.
C.S. Lewis, in "The Great Divorce", his wonderful tale about heaven and hell, has day trips on a bus going from hell to heaven. Anyone in hell can take a trip to heaven, and if they wish, can remain in heaven at the end of the day. An elderly judge, pillar of the local community and an upright man all his days, finds himself sitting next to his no-good, lay-about nephew on the trip. The judge quite likes heaven, but when he discovers people like his nephew are allowed in, he can't take it, so he returns on the bus to hell, which is painted not as a place of fire and brimstone, but as somewhere grey and drab. The judge couldn't take God's indiscriminate generosity.
The first labourers in that vineyard, who grumbled and whinged about the rewards given to those who came last (even though a day's pay was barely subsistence level) were the ones who came under fire from Jesus. And similarly, judgement falls not on those who freely and happily enjoy God's goodness throughout their lives and let that goodness overflow to others around them just through their ordinary life. Judgement falls on those who resent such happy-go-lucky people, and who try to keep God in a narrow box sometimes labelled "church".
Church should be a means of meeting our overwhelmingly generous God, and of displaying that huge love to other people. So churches should have soft walls and ever-open doors, and should be welcoming to all at whatever stage in life they wish to come, and whenever they wish to come.
As Robert Capon says in his "Parables of Judgement", Jesus went deaf, dumb and blind on the cross, for there are no debit entries in the Book of Life. Like the labourers in the vineyard, everybody is in the payout queue, and everybody receives full pay. For if the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses the great lawgiver, not by Jesus the great love-giver.
