Lectionary 25 Pr 20A
Grace Lutheran Church
Lakeland, FL
September 20, 2020
Jonah 3:10 – 4:11
Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16
Grace to you and peace from God and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Every once in a while one of Jesus’ parables hits us right between the eyes and today is one of those times. If you had to choose, which would you prefer: justice or love? I know that the question isn’t fair. After all isn’t God supposed to be both? Of course. But as humans, we are sometimes forced to make a choice. So, which would you choose: justice or love?
In today's Gospel, Jesus tells us a parable about a landowner who needs some workers for his vineyard. We all know how this story goes. Every few hours Landowner goes out to hire more laborers. Some work all day, some work half a day, some only an hour or so. But at the end of the day, the Landowner pays them all the same wage.
Now before I go any further, I'd like for us to think about what it's like to be a day-laborer. These were people who didn't have any particular skill to support their families. They would gather at the town square, hoping to be selected to do whatever job the rich people needed doing. If you were healthy and strong, and if you were lucky, you could get work pretty quickly and you'd be able to work a full day and make enough to feed your family the next day. But if you weren't so lucky, if you were sick or old, you probably didn't get hired very often and that meant that your family didn't eat that day.
So, if we put ourselves in the shoes of the workers who were hired late in the day, this was a pretty sweet deal. Imagine their relief! After spending the entire day worrying if they would even get hired, if they would have enough for their families to eat, the generous landowner comes to their rescue. Suddenly they find that they can afford food for their whole family for one more day. In other words, God, in the person of the Landowner, has “given them this day, their daily bread.”
But what if we put ourselves in the shoes of the workers who were hired early in the morning and worked a full day? Things would look a lot different to us. Naturally, we would expect that if the late workers got a full day’s pay, we should get even more. That’s only fair, isn’t it? After all, we were the ones who got here first; we were the ones who toiled in the hot sun all day. So, when it’s time to settle up and we learn that we’re getting the same pay as those other guys, how should we feel? We feel cheated, that’s how. What? We worked maybe eight, ten times longer than those guys, and we get paid the same amount? How is that fair? How is that justice?
But the landowner gave the workers exactly what they asked at the start of the day. They contracted to a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. So, what’s their beef? What’s our beef?
So, let me ask you again – if you had to choose, which would you prefer: justice or love?
Remember the old saying that goes, “be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it?” You could say that the early workers prayed for justice, and who can blame them? It’s only human to want to be recognized and compensated for our good works and our sacrifice. We work hard for our families, we earned our way to the front of the line. And, naturally, the later workers prayed for love, and they are right, too. They deserve the basics of life, food, clothing, shelter; an opportunity to provide a life for their families. And they both got what they prayed for.
Of course, it doesn’t matter so much what we would choose. What matters is what God chooses. And sometimes, when it looks like God shows love to the other guy, that kind of ticks us off, to be honest. Consider the First Reading for today, the story of Jonah. God tells Jonah that he wants him to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria hundreds of miles to the east. Jonah was to tell the people that God was going to destroy their city. Now not only did Jonah not want to do it; he ran away in the opposite direction. So, God tracks him down in the belly of a fish, Jonah reluctantly agrees to go, and he preaches his eight word sermon, “Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.” And the evil people of Nineveh repented! And God forgave them! And Jonah was ticked off. He went off into the desert to sulk. And when God tried to take care of him by providing a little shade, he got madder still. “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” And then with the drama of a toddler, he proclaims that he just wants to die.
In other words, when forced to choose between justice and love, Jonah wanted justice. Yet, time and time again, God chooses love.
There’s a saying that goes, “to the privileged, equality feels like oppression.” I think that pretty much sums up how the workers who worked all day felt when they got the same pay as the workers who arrived at the end of the day. They were the first in line; they were the strong ones. And they were the ones who complained, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us.”
But at the intersection of God’s justice and love we find grace. Grace has no measure. If I jump in the pool at the beginning of the day, I am no wetter than someone who jumped in just before it was time to get out. God’s lavish grace is not meted out based upon time served, or the amount of goodness we do, or the severity of our sins. It is a gift that God chooses to give to saint and sinner alike. It is a gift which comes out of God’s abundant love for the world, which none of us have earned and none of us deserve.
And that’s a good thing for us. Because if God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, then we, too, have been forgiven our sins and promised our daily bread.
So again – if you had to choose, which would you prefer: love or justice?
Which do you think God would have us choose?
May it be so. Amen.
