"Workers in the Vineyard" - Matthew 20:1-16

Notes from a sermon on September 18, 2011

Of all of Jesus' parables, my favorite is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), the story of a boy who took his inheritance before his father died, ran off to waste it in a distant country, then returned to grovel at his father's feet and beg to be received back (meanwhile, the dutiful older brother was there to remind the father that he had been faithful to his duties all along).  What was the father to do?  Shockingly, he welcomed home the son who had been so prodigal with his inheritance with a display of love and gratitude and generosity that went beyond the bounds even of prodigality into (dare we join Elder Brother in saying it?) unfairness!

The parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is not the Parable of the Prodigal Son, however.  It is a parable about a bunch of people who showed up to work in somebody's vineyard at different times during the day without the benefit of a union to look out for them.  At the end of the day, the vineyard owner, totally ignoring the concept of seniority, did not pay anyone fairly according to the work they had done, but paid everyone the same amount just for showing up, it seems!  Where's the shop steward when you need him?

So these are two different parables - but with the same theme.  It's as if Jesus told the Luke parable for those who would be tuned into the Hallmark Channel, and Matthew's for those who would be turned into the Wall Street Journal Report.  But the theme is the same:

God is not fair, as we count fairness.  Our definition of fairness is this:  an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Whether that applies to retaliation or to payment for work done, that only seems fair.  Work an hour, get paid for an hour.  Work for ten, get paid for ten.  Go off and waste all your family's money, don't expect us to welcome you back home with open arms.  "Fairness" is a business word, a transaction word, a word that means "both parties got something in this deal."

But God is not fair, as we count fairness, and that's what these stories show.  He doesn't give us what is fair - He gives us beyond what is fair!  The latecomers to the vineyard receive well above the agreement reached with the firstcomers - that's not fair, that's prodigally generous!  The prodigal son isn't given the opportunity to grovel in front of the Father - he's lifted up immediately and celebrated as the Returned One - that's not fair, that's generously prodigal! 

And that's how God deals with every one of us, for Jesus' sake.  For the sake of the One who gave everything for us - His glory, His divinity, His life - He delights now to deal with us generously, prodigally, giving us way more than we can ever ask or imagine, beyond what we can think we deserve, not because we earned it, but because He loves us.

He's just not fair - and thank You for that, Father!

Brat Patrol?

Apparently one of the big to-dos these days is the issue of restaurants that ban all children because some children have misbehaved in those restaurants in the past, irritating the adults who are dining there.  Let us be clear that the children who are at issue here are infants and young children, not school-aged children or teenagers, who are usually "better behaved."  For some, the premise still seems to be "children should be seen but not heard."

Now let me also confess that I've had a few times as a father and grandfather where the kids were "rambunctious" in restaurants, and may have been annoying to other diners if not for the presence of happy meals, playlands, and plastic furniture.  But as I think back on those times, I realize that this was not the fault of any of the children, but rather the adults at our table (including myself).

This morning at a restaurant there was a table where a mom and toddler were sitting with Grandma and Grandpa.  The toddler was toddling merrily through the aisles while the adults were having an adult conversation.  The toddler wasn't really being disruptive to anyone else, but the adults were largely oblivious to his presence.  At another table sat two adults, one of whom was in a wheelchair that stuck out a bit into the aisle.  The wheelchair wasn't really bothering anyone else, but the two adults were largely oblivious to its presence as they carried on their adult conversation as well.

And that's really the issue:  adults who expect children to act like that wheelchair so that the adults can have an "adult" conversation, without including the child who

• may have just discovered the joy of running, and like an incipient Eric Liddell is also discovering the pleasure of the Father in that running; or who
• may have just discovered the application of Boyle's law of air pressure as it applies to her own lungs, and is also discovering the meaning of Scriptures like "the voice of the Lord strips the trees bare"; or who
• may have just discovered that the Dadaists may have been on to something; or who
• may have just discovered that he has a highly discerning palate after all, and that it was actually a french fry tree that tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; or who
• would probably not have been too surprised to see Jesus leave the "adults' table" at the party to come to sit at the "kids' table," where He might have put olives on their finger tips and made gravy lakes in their mashed potatoes and blew straw wrappers at the backs of the adults' heads and generally told them how much He loved them.

All this is to say, of course, that a child is not a wheelchair or a doorknob or a thing - a nuisance or a bother or an annoyance.  Any child is a precious human being whom the Father knit together in the mother's womb, whom Jesus gave His life for, whom the Spirit is working sanctification on as they grow. 

(If I were the restaurant owner, I think I'd ban parents who bring their children to the restaurant and then ignore them as if they were nothing more than pieces of the furniture.)

Cowboys & Aliens & Preachers

I finally went to see the movie Cowboys & Aliens, and wondered afterward "what was Ron Howard thinking, adding his name to this mishegaas?"  This film seemed so much less than so many of Howard's other wonderful works (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13  . . .  ), and I just wondered where his mind was when he signed the contract.  Or just maybe there was some other Ron Howard who helped produce this flick?  Yeah, that must be it.  One Ron Howard produced (directed, what have you) the masterpieces; a completely different Ron Howard was responsible for the bombs - or perhaps that's what film scholars will decide a thousand years from now.

That seems to be the way some Bible scholarship works sometimes.  Take Isaiah, for instance.  Because some parts of his absolutely wondrous work are somewhat different in style and language than other parts, some have concluded that there must have been several writers posing as Isaiah.  The same with some of Paul's letters.  The styles of all the letters are not the same, therefore they cannot be from the same author, seems to be the argument.

I've always wondered about that.  The Jonathan Winters recording I have of the 23rd Psalm, for instance, is very different in style than the Jonathan Winters character from Mork and Mindy, but it's the same guy.  Anne Curry shows one side of her personality on The Today Show and a different side on Dateline, but there's no doubt she's the same person. 

And I think back over my 30+ years of preaching, in three different congregations (regularly) and in multiple other congregations as the occasion arose.  I didn't have the same style of scholarship, writing, outlining, delivery, every time I got into the pulpit.  In fact, as I think of some of those early sermons (which I do as seldom as possible!) I cringe to think that the Holy Spirit allowed those to be inflicted upon the people of God.  I hope I've come a long way in my preaching in 30 years. 

And I hope that if Isaiah preached among God's people long enough to write 66 chapters of such wondrous gospel to them, he would have changed his style here and there to fit the occasion or the audience or his own growth in the Spirit.  I would hope that after decades of preaching he would have grown some in the Spirit, and that would have been reflected in his writing.  Paul, too.  Me, too. 

As for Ron Howard and Cowboys & Aliens, well, sometimes even we preachers have to confess the eggs we lay from the pulpit.

Monkey Theology at Home and at Work

These Lutheran monkeys at the missionary compound near Vaniyambadi in India (see this blog's page on Sightings from India 2011 for more on this place) kept coming back to my mind for more exploration this week.

First:  I referred to them as Lutheran monkeys because at some point in time they had discovered the Lutheran missionary compound and taken up residence there, and now they act like they own the place; yet as far as we know there was no evidence of any kind of change or growth in their spiritual lives as a result of living in this Lutheran environment all these years. 

Not that this is true for all Lutherans by any means.  I'm just reflecting that historically this seems to be kind of the way we've defined what it is to be "Lutheran" - somehow to find your way to a Lutheran place; somehow to take up residence there; somehow to act like you own the place.  And some "Lutherans" can be that way for decades with no evidence of any kind of change or growth in their spiritual lives as a result of living in this Lutheran environment. 

I say these things as a Lutheran, but I've been told that one could substitute the words "Baptist" or "Methodist" or "Pentecostal" or "Evangelical" or whatever other adjective you like for "Lutheran" and these comments would make as much sense in other churches.

Monkey theology at home.

Second:  Another pastor recounted an incident the other day in which he was in a grocery story wearing his clerical collar when a woman asked him what date he was "born again."  When he responded that he was "born again" at his baptism as an infant, she shook her head and told him that this didn't count because he had not made a conscious decision to receive baptism. 

Leaving all the infant / adult baptism discussion aside for today, this kind of exchange makes me wonder this - is the only really important thing that we know the date on which the Lutheran monkeys took up residence in the missionary compound?  What have they been doing there since then, or isn't that important at all? 

That seems to be the attitude when people focus exclusively on "what date were you born again?"  There seems to be no interest whatever on "what have you been doing since then?  Have you been growing spiritually?  Have you been rejoicing in the love of the Father?  Have you been recognizing the forgiveness of Jesus in your life?  Have you been afire with the flame of the Spirit?"  That's hardly mentioned.  Just:  "when did you get in?"

Of course, now that I think about it that's the way folks are around town here, too.  "How long have you lived here?"  Almost twenty-two years.  End of conversation - never mind that we came with three kids who have since graduated from the local high school and from college; two have advanced degrees; all three are married; there are three grandchildren; we've worked continuously these 22 years; there's a new roof and new windows on the house, and so forth and so on.  "We've lived here almost twenty-two years" - and that's all anyone wants to here.  "I was born again on such and such a date" - thanks for telling me that - I don't need to hear anymore.

Like living in the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matt 20), isn't it?  All I have to figure out in my relationship to you is this:  did you come into to the vineyard before me or after me, and legitimately or illegitimately?  Then I'll know how we'll each get paid fairly. 

Monkey theology at work.

Matthew 18:1-20

Notes from a sermon on September 4, 2011

Since this chapter has several seemingly discrete sections, suitable for tearing apart in Bible class and expanding into marketable workshops on shepherding, reconciliation, and other good Christian endeavors, it seemed to me this weekend that taken all together these sections might be bound into a little booklet called Martha Stewart's Living in the Church.  It might go something like this:

I imagined Martha behind her butcher-block counter, with her denim shirt on, her smile, her hair gently falling in a wave over part of her face, saying, "Now today I'm going to show you the best way to cut off your hand when it offends you.  First, you'll want to get one of my super-absorbent bath towels from my Martha Stewart Collection, because it's likely to get quite messy.  Then, I like to use a serrated knife rather than a cleaver because there will be quite a lot of bone and sinew to go through . . . "

And so on, through chapters on How Not to Offend Little Ones, Best Clothes to Wear While Out Looking for the Lost One, Four Simple Steps Toward Reconciliation, and so on.

Because isn't that how this chapter from Matthew's Gospel is usually dismembered - uhhh, discussed?

But start with the question the disciples asked - "Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?" - and Jesus' immediate answer - to bring a child into their midst as a focal point for his entire response - and where does that take us?

On the way home from my recent India trip I had a 15-hour airplane flight from Abu Dhabi to New York, on an aisle seat of a 4-seat row in which the other three seats were occupied by a mom with her two daughters - ages 3 and 5 years old.  Everyone I've told this to has agreed that I was probably the right guy to have in the 4th seat, because I was amused, distracted and entertained greatly the entire time, and helped once in a while, too.  And I had the opportunity to think about these children in relation to this text.

As adults we have spent a lifetime building up all kinds of walls, barriers, defenses, protective perimeters, and keep-out mechanisms that children just don't have.  That's why it's so hard for adults to go after a lost sheep, for instance - an adult would have to gear up in some way, to make sure that everything is safe for himself before he sets out.  A child would just say "Oh look, a sheep!  Let me go pet it!"  And off they would go, heedless of the risks.  That's why adults need processes and procedures for reconciliation, because those procedures and processes help to break down our own defenses and perimeters as we're making our way gingerly toward the person who has something against us.  Children don't have those defenses yet, so it's much easier for them.

Now did you ever think of Jesus in this way, too?  As an adult who never claimed for himself all the adult defenses that the rest of us have? 

As the One who said, "I could ask my Father to send legions of angels rushing to my defense right now" - but He didn't. 

As the One who looked at not one, but many lost sheep and didn't hesitate to count the cost or to gear up, but just came to get them, to get us. 

As the One who said to us all, "I would rather have nails driven through my hands than that you should be hurt by sin any more.  I would rather have spikes driven through my feet than that you should bear the burden of damnation any more.  I would rather have a crown of thorns thrust into my own head, and the blood run down into my own eyes, than see any of you in hell, ever."

As the One who came to reconcile us all to Himself,  whether one on one, or on the cross displayed to the whole world, dealing with all of us just as He would deal with the tax collectors and sinners, eating with them, visiting their tax tables, letting the prostitutes cry tears of joy and thanksgiving over His feet and wiping them with their hair, and allowing all the "righteous" people to ridicule him - just so He and the Father and the Spirit and the angels in heaven could rejoice over one who repents?

No defenses, walls, or barriers on His part, just love for those who need His love so badly.  That's what makes Him the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.  And so I wonder if "being transformed into the likeness of Christ" includes putting aside our barriers and our defenses that we have worked a lifetime to erect, becoming more and more like children in this way so that we simply love one another as Jesus has loved us.

I know, "easier said than done."  But please don't blow it off with that trite comment and walk away.  Pray that the Holy Spirit will move you to surrender to Him and that through the mighty working of His power He will be transforming you more and more into one of those children who is like Jesus.

Secure your own mask first

While waiting in the doctor's office today I happened to pick up a magazine that had an article with 7 suggestions for teaching spirituality to children.  Number 1 was the most interesting:  "Secure your own mask first."

If you've ever flown on an airplane, you've heard this message as you're getting ready to take off.  The idea is, if the oxygen masks fall from the ceiling and you're next to someone who may need help puttting on the mask (like a child), put your own mask on first and then help them put theirs on. 

The suggestion is that the same is true with spirituality.  If you're going to teach spirituality to your children, make sure your own mask is secure first.  Take a good inventory of your own spiritual life, your disciplines and practices.  Take a good look at your relationship with Jesus.  Do this constantly, daily, with joy and love.   Don't let the teaching of spirituality to your children be a "Do as I say, not as I do" kind of thing, but lead them to the love of Jesus by your own love for Him.  Keep your own love for Him firmly in place, and you will be more effective in helping them with their love for Him.