There
is the one thing that every person does that seems like a normal, healthy way
of living, but at its core is the root of sin. Everybody does this rather
often—some are even doing it now—but it isn’t the kind of insidious thing you
might be imagining. In fact, it seems benign and therein lies its power. I’m
talking about comparing—ourselves to
others, things to other things, ideas against ideas. It’s how we function as
human beings in a complex world.
But comparison is also at the heart of sin. It’s
in relation to others that we feel entitled, that we feel little, that the
blessings we have seem not enough. It’s when we stack ourselves up against
others—What kind of car do they drive?
What kind of house do they live in? How much money do they make? How do their
kids behave?—it’s when we make these comparisons that we determine what is
fair, what is just, and what we deserve (which tends to be at least a little
bit more than what we have).
The parable of the laborers in the
vineyard is a parable of comparison, so it is both a parable of judgment and a
parable of grace, and you might see it as either depending on where you’re
standing. It’s also clearly meant to upset. If the landowner in the parable
wanted things to go smoothly he would have paid the first workers first and the
last at the end. Then, even if he used this strange method of payment where
each got a full day’s wages regardless of their workload no one would be the
wiser. But clearly this is meant to strike at the roots of where our
understanding of self-righteousness lies. The first workers feel entitled, but
only because they are comparing themselves with the last. But wouldn’t you?
The first workers were, in all
likelihood, the most skilled in the bunch. They were the “A” team who got
picked first, later groups were the “B” team, then the migrants, those who
spoke a different language, and finally those who cheated, stole, and were
generally unsavory characters. The idea that they would receive a full day’s pay
for an hour’s work was laughable; it was insane.
The kingdom of heaven tends to look
crazy most of the time. From a young age we are taught all the ways that people
will take advantage of us, and the wisest in the ways of the world avoid those
sticky situations. But Jesus seems to revel in stickiness, using the thorniest
of brambles to illustrate the kingdom of heaven. He seems to delight in
pointing out all of God’s impracticalities. All the things that we tell our
children are untold by Jesus. You think
doing a children’s sermon on divorce is hard? Try doing a children’s sermon on
this parable! The moral of the story—if this is a story with a moral at all—is
that God is going to give you the same big, honking gift whether you put in all
the work or hardly any of it. That’s not something to tell a teenager, let
alone a six year old. It sounds lazy; it’s begging that somebody takes
advantage.
Imagine if word got out that the
landowner always did payment in this
manner. Would he ever find anybody to work from the first light of day? Perhaps
only those sorry folks who believe in the virtue of hard work for hard work’s
sake—not many, I would guess. The landowner could say all he wants that it’s
fair—that the first workers, too, are getting paid a full day’s work—but when
it comes down to it, if they have the choice of working one hour or twelve for
the same paycheck you know what they’ll choose more often than not.
The root of sin lies in comparison.
So, I have a question for you: Is
the landowner’s payment scheme fair? I want you to think about that for a
moment. You have to answer. You can’t play the middle-ground game. Yay or nay?
Fair or not?
Our perspective on life is shaped by
how we answer that question. It’s not a simple question, and it’s not even clear
that it’s the right question. Should we be asking if this is fair, or should we
be asking if this is just, or should we be asking if this is right? Each
question may require a different answer, but all of those answers are colored
by our comparisons. Jesus seemed to understand our ethics quite well because
this parable puts all of our conceptions of right and wrong, fairness and
inequality, to shame. Unlike what some have suggested, Jesus is not being a
socialist; in fact, he’s not talking economics at all, and he’s definitely not
suggesting that hard work doesn’t matter. Rather, he’s saying that grace cannot
be deterred, it is not determined by the strength of our will, and we will
always find it offensive. It doesn’t matter how holy you are: your wages are
the same. And that ticks some people off.
A person can go off the deep-end
here, speculating about whether this applies to everybody, or just Christians,
or just those whom the landowner chooses
to work the fields. That is a question that is as off-topic as it is proving
the point that we are always playing the comparison game. We live our lives by
making comparisons. Who is the best
centerfielder in baseball? Who is the richest person in the world? What country
has better test scores? How many points did you score in last week’s basketball
game? What grades are you getting in school? What are your ACT scores? What
percentage of your income are you giving away? How many local events are your
sponsoring?
Other comparisons are more
insidious: How come I have a tendency
toward addiction? Why does cancer run in my family? How come I have urges to
hurt others? Why is my marriage so much worse than others?
In the back of our minds we believe
we are the only truly fair arbiters of life experience. So when our kid doesn’t
play enough on her sports team, or our church isn’t like it used to be, it must
be because of the faults of others. It is because we have worked hard and feel
more deserving of a share of the pie, but for many various reasons (none of
which being our fault) we have accepted a smaller slice. In today’s parable
Jesus is not telling you how to get a bigger pie; he’s just giving it to you.
You all get a pie. Every one of you. And the very fact that you’re going to
complain about other people getting a pie, too, shows how little you are
deserving of that pie, but a pie you will get nonetheless.
The kingdom of heaven is like Jesus
multiplying fish, like mustard seeds erupting into trees, it’s like pie for
everybody, and it’s like workers in the field who forget how long they have
been working, who stop making comparisons and love on the one who arrives last
into the fold. In short, the kingdom of heaven is a good time because nobody is
trying to one-up one another, nobody is insisting that they’ve hard it harder
or that they are a better worker. None of that matters at all.
We cannot preach grace and then
judge based on attendance. We cannot talk about God’s infinite capacity to love
and then hold petty grudges. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is a
parable of judgment on most of us, most of the time, because those of you who
are here—and have been here for quite awhile, perhaps even your entire
lives—feel as if you get the short end of the stick when you get only the same promise as everybody else.
That’s comparison and it’s sinful. There’s really no two ways about it, because
every moment we spend comparing ourselves, favorably against those who we see
as less Christian or unfavorably against those who we believe to have such a
strong faith, is a moment we could be spending living out of the freedom of the
grace God has given us. Imagine a world where people just did the work because
it needed to be done, not for payment, and not for anybody to think better of
them.
That’s the kingdom of heaven, and
it’s a good time. In fact, as Robert Farrar Capon says, “If you don’t like it,
Buster, you can just go to… well, you’ll have to use your imagination. You’ll
need it: this is the only bar in town.”
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