Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The scripture reading this morning is from the 20th chapter of Matthew, verses 1 through 16.

For the kingdom is heaven, is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard.

When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.

So they went.

And he said to them, You also go into the vineyard.

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 denarius.

Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more.

But each of them also received a denarius.

And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 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.

But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong.

Did you not agree with me for Daenerys?

Take what belongs to you and go.

I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?

Or are you envious because I am generous?

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

As you all know, it's Labor Day weekend, which marks the unofficial end of summer, though the temperatures outside are telling us the truth of when summer actually ends, and it's going to be here for a couple more weeks.

It's a three-day weekend for many of us, with people getting tomorrow Labor Day off, unless you work in retail or in a hospital or another industry that simply cannot actually close for a day despite the federal holiday status, which reminds me we forgot to include in the bulletin that the Brentwood offices will be closed tomorrow.

So if you volunteer in the office, we won't be here.

And if you stop by the office, we won't be here.

But you can always call if you need something if there's an emergency.

So now many of us do benefit from the big push from workers during the Industrial Revolution that got us eight-hour workdays, the five-day, 40-hour work week, safer working conditions, protection for children in the workplace, the federal minimum wage, which no one can actually support themselves on these days.

It hasn't been adjusted since 2009, so it sits at$7.25.

Can you imagine trying to buy groceries and pay for rent and utilities at that wage?

Many states have instituted higher minimum wages, like here in Missouri, the minimum wage is now$15 an hour.

Fun fact there are still 19 states that do not have a minimum wage, so the default is the federal minimum wage of$7.25, like Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Texas, which maybe that's not such a fun fact for those who are living in those states and are working minimum wage jobs.

But back to Labor Day.

So Labor Day started as a labor festival on September 5th, 1882, put on by the Central Labor Union in New York.

Around 10,000 men and women marched in the parade and a quarter million people gathered to watch.

There was a big picnic afterwards, because you know we love our Labor Day picnics.

It became a federal holiday when Grover Cleveland signed a bill making it so in 1894.

It was sort of an olive branch after he had used federal troops to crush a national railroad workers' strike.

So, you know, a few steps backward, one step forward.

Now, over the course of my lifetime, our nation has seen a steady stripping of workers' rights to organize, the diminishing power of unions.

We've seen legislative moves in our own state that have overturned the will of the people when it came to the majority vote for earned sick pay, back in 2024, I think that was.

I don't know what comes to mind when you think of the time period when people talk about making America great again.

When you think of what time period are people thinking of when they think of that, I've always kind of thought folks are maybe thinking of the 1950s.

You know, I just think leave it to Beaver, you know, it looks so idyllic.

So I think people are kind of hearkening back to those days.

A time when unions were stronger, so workers had more power in the workplace.

Although I'm pretty sure that our current leaders aren't actually talking about that when they talk about making America great again.

But then I also think about how not everyone had the ability to get hired for all jobs.

There was more segregation, there was less diversity in the workforce, and I think maybe that hits the nail on the head a little more.

But I sometimes wonder if that anti-union settlement sentiment has helped overshadow the beginnings of Labor Day in the 1880s and has made it more about picnics and sales rather than honoring workers.

The over-commercialization of so many things in our society effectively strips a great number of things from their original meanings, you know?

That happens in the Bible too sometimes.

Interpretations of the text change and morphs over the years, sometimes losing their original intent.

Which is why it's good for us to go back and really dig into what the Bible is saying about different things.

Now, when I think about what the Bible has to say about workers' rights and labor, there is one passage that always springs to mind for me.

And it's a difficult one, if we're honest.

Difficult texts are really interesting to me when you consider which text a person finds difficult, which texts we are really wrestling with, and which ones we feel we can dismiss more easily.

Now, there are a lot of difficult texts in the Bible.

I remember a friend and I talking way back in high school about who gets to go to heaven and who goes to the other place.

And I think if I wasn't a universalist back then, I was at least an I don't think I get to dictate that because people of different faiths believe different things, and who am I to tell them what happens to them after they die, kind of believer.

But my friend believed there were very strict criteria for who got into heaven, and it left our friends who weren't Christian out.

I didn't like that.

And she told me, My dad says it may be hard to believe, but that's what the Bible says, so it doesn't matter if we like it or not, or if it makes it uh makes us uncomfortable.

That's just how it is, and we have to abide by it.

33 years later, Emily would quibble with her friend's father that thinks the Bible says, what the Bible thinks that I can't, I need to say that line again.

My mouth just got all mixed up.

33 years later, Emily would quibble with what her friend's father thinks the Bible says about that.

But high school Emily wasn't prepared for such a debate.

But you know, I would love to ask her dad what he thinks of this passage that opens the 20th chapter of Matthew, because it seems to have some pink okami overtones to it.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

But it is a passage that, if taken seriously, is a pretty difficult one to swallow.

But it's Jesus telling us what the kingdom of God looks like.

So I think we need to take it seriously.

Jesus sets the stage for us.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early to hire laborers to work in his vineyard.

There was a place where those who needed work gathered, hoping to be offered a chance to earn some money to feed their families, to keep a roof over their heads, to pay bills.

Some of these folks were fortunate, for the landowner summoned them to the work in his vineyard.

They agreed on a fair wage, a denarius for a day's work.

Three hours later, there was clearly more work that needed to be done, and more people needed to do it, so there were more laborers waiting to be hired, and the landowner went and hired them, assuring them he would pay them what is right.

He went out again three hours after that, at midday, and hired some more workers, and then did the same again three hours after that.

A couple of hours later, he went out again and saw more workers standing idle in the marketplace and said to them, Why are you all just standing around here all day?

No one hired us.

What else is there to do?

So the landowner said, Come on, you can also come and work in my vineyard.

Then at the end of the workday, the laborers gathered to receive their pay.

The landowner told his manager to give them their pay, starting with the laborers who were hired last, and then continuing on through to the laborers who were hired first.

When those who were hired last were paid a denarius, the workers who were hired earlier started to get excited, thinking about how much more they would get since they had worked all day long.

And yet, every single laborer that was hired was given one denarius.

So when the workers who were hired first received their wage, they grumbled, these last workers worked only an hour.

You've paid us the same as them, even though we labored all day in this scorching heat.

And you know, we all can understand what they're talking about when they talk about scorching heat.

The landowner said, and what of it?

Didn't I pay you the wage we agreed upon?

You were okay with being paid a denarius for a day's work when I hired you at the start of day.

Take what is yours and go.

I chose to pay the ones who came later the same as you, which is my right.

Are you angry because I am generous?

What do you think when you hear the story?

How do you feel?

Do you feel the sting of injustice?

I'm curious, how many of you hear this story from the perspective of the first laborers hired?

Does that kind of seem to be a place where a lot of us maybe identify?

I think that may be the default for many of us, so no shame if that's where you fall.

Now I wonder if any of us hear this story from the perspective of the last hired.

The story lands differently based on the perspective you're hearing it from.

I know there is a temptation with parables especially to look at them all as allegory, where the meaning is not actually the meaning, but is pointing instead to something else.

And there are some of Jesus' parables that are pretty explicitly allegorical.

I think of the parable of the sower, when the sower throws the seeds and they land on different kinds of ground and grow accordingly.

So the ones that land on the rocky or the thorny ground have a hard time.

They get choked and aren't able to grow, but the ones that land on good soil are able to grow and thrive.

But the parable of the landowner who hired laborers to work in his vineyard, that's not, it's not one of those allegorical parables in that same way.

It's saying something pretty radical, hence the discomfort we feel when we read it and take it seriously.

As New Testament scholar and my parables professor in seminary, Brandon Scott, often reminded us, parables are examples of concrete thought.

They are not substitutes for or illustrations of abstract thought.

We need to remember that Jesus was speaking to oral peoples, not literate peoples.

Now I'm going to get a bit in the weeds here, but I find the study of parables so fascinating, and Brandon Scott shares some important insights to consider when studying them.

So I hope you'll be able to go along with me on this ride.

He writes: The kingdom of heaven is like, is not a simple way of talking to simple people, but it is the way an oral culture thinks.

Our attempts to translate parables into abstractions, into parables of grace, advent, and so forth are just that.

Translations into our way of thinking.

The illustrative character, is it illustrative or illustrative, by the way?

I tried to find someone to ask while I was reading through this, and I don't know.

So I'm just gonna say illustrative so everyone knows what I'm talking about.

The illustrative character of parables should not deceive us.

Parables are not illustrations of abstract concepts.

Even rabbinic parables that appear as illustrations of scripture verses are a way of doing exegesis or looking deeper into the text.

It is not simply that an oral culture has a fondness for formulas and concrete language for stories and tales.

Rather, such are their vehicles for thinking.

Scott also writes of what of parables as they pertain to mythmaking.

Myth is created from whatever is at hand because it has nothing else at its disposal.

The debris of human life is woven together to create stories.

Like a junk man who tinkers with things, putting things together that did not originally belong together.

The mythmaker uses myth themes, bundles or sets.

The myth teller operates with a repertoire of myth themes.

Myth themes are part of what we have identified as the thesaurus or repertoire of parables.

Both myth-making culture and the myths of any given culture, order a person, defining who that person is.

Consequently, myths are anonymous, existing only as elements embodied in a tradition.

There is no individual.

The hearer is made aware of a group instinct, of being rooted in society.

This explains why myth, unlike poetry, can be preserved in the worst translations, and why even without the great knowledge of a particular culture or society, we recognize myth so easily because it classifies, it orders, it gives a framework.

So, with that context in mind, as we look at the parables of Jesus, Scott then clarifies that the Jesus parables are not myth, they are anti-myth because they disorder the mythical world.

They are world-shattering.

I would argue that the parable we heard read today is one of those anti-myth parables.

The notion of the laborers who only worked one hour being paid the same exact amount as the one who worked 12 hours is disorienting and world-shattering.

As we'll sing in our communion song later this morning, but with God the world is turned upside down.

It's one of my favorite communion hymns.

It sounds so great in the abstract, but bring it into the concrete, and we may find we have a problem with this upside-down world.

It just doesn't feel fair.

If you're a kid, I've got some kids sitting here, imagine standing in a long line after playing really hard on the playground.

It's been a hot day, and you all are gonna get some ice cream treats.

So the teachers say, Come on, come and get in line, we're gonna hand out treats.

And some of you rush so you could be first in the line to get those treats.

And then the teacher goes to the end of the line and starts handing out the treats to the kids that played on the playground and not were on the monkey gronke bars so much longer than you and got so much more time to play, they got the ice cream bars first, and you had to stand there waiting in that line that you got to first until you were given your ice cream treat.

Would that feel fair?

That wouldn't feel fair.

And you know what?

The adults wouldn't think it felt fair either.

There is an order to things in this world.

You work hard, long hours, you get paid more than those who just work an hour.

You show up early to be first in line to see the newest Marvel movie, you get the best seat in the house.

The thought that the person who just waltz up to the theater at the last minute to buy a ticket gets the pick first pick of seats is ludicrous.

The thought that the person who just worked an hour gets paid the same as the person who worked all day long in the scorching heat is madness.

And yet that is exactly how Jesus paints the kingdom of God.

It's a place where the order of arrival doesn't matter.

It's a place where the hours worked isn't important.

It's a place where all get a chance, all are invited, all are included in the extravagant generosity of God.

Are you angry?

Because I am generous.

The fact of the matter is the landowner was just in how he paid the workers.

The workers who were hired at the beginning of the day agreed to that wage of a denarius for a day's work.

That wage felt right to them.

He was just toward the workers who were hired earlier in the day.

And he was generous to the workers who were hired at the end of the day.

And that seems to be the rub.

Now, when you look at what a denarius is worth, because that word doesn't necessarily mean very much to us, right?

It was generally an average peasant's daily wage.

So when you look at it in that light, it isn't really a generous wage, right?

It's average.

And it does appear to be just since the laborers agreed to it.

And there is nothing in the parable that points to this landowner being stingy.

But this isn't a wage that's going to propel a person to wealth, right?

But that denarius suddenly becomes very generous when paid to a person who has only worked an hour.

And that is where the feeling of injustice comes in.

Again, hearkening back to Brandon Scott, the landowner recognizes no distinctions in the laborers he hired.

Every laborer is needed at every hour in his vineyard.

He offers to treat all alike.

This is where the expectation of worth is subverted.

It is not the hours worked that attribute value, it is the invitation to work in the vineyard that attributes value.

This parable shines a light on how relative notions of justice are.

As Scott writes, the householder promises to pay those hired from the third hour on what is right.

And he responds to the first hired when they complain that he has paid them what is right.

In identifying with the complaint of the first hired, a hearer opts for a world in which justice is defined by a hierarchical relation between individuals.

To treat all the same is not just, because all are not alike.

All have not earned the same.

As the first hired reply, the householder makes all equal.

According to one vision of the kingdom, the function of justice is not to make all equal, to put, but to ensure all their appropriate places.

The parable relativizes justice to show that it is incapable of organizing the world of the kingdom.

The householder has paid what is just, yet the parable's clever strategy still maneuvers him into the appearance of injustice.

Y'all, maybe I'm such a big nerd, but this stuff makes the Bible come alive for me when I'm digging down into the weeds and looking at what's going on inside of these texts.

You know, I look at the world, and while there is such a beauty in it, and moments of care extended between human beings that take my breath away, I often feel so discouraged because the overarching MO seems to be more for me and mine, no matter what it takes from others.

Most of those with power and wealth seem bent on only accumulating more for themselves, leaving the masses who have fewer resources fighting amongst themselves for what is left.

That feels grim.

But then I read parables like this one, and I'm reminded that the way of life is, that that way of life is not in alignment with the kingdom of God.

No, the kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom.

It is not constrained by our hierarchical understandings of kingdoms, which I have to say is one of the unfortunate aspects of the translation relying on the word kingdom.

Perhaps if we use the word realm of God, that might help get our minds around the difference between our way and God's way more easily.

Now, reading the parable this way, with it serving as an illumination of the reality of the realm of God, has me Considering perspectives I hadn't considered before.

Think back to when I asked which person you identified with as you read the parable.

I confess I have often heard this parable casting myself in as one of the workers who spent all day laboring in the vineyard.

But considering the truth behind this parable, what it is Jesus is trying to convey with this connection between the landowner who went out to hire laborers and the realm of God, I can't help but wonder, what's the story behind those who were last hired?

Were they really waiting there all day?

Or had they been working another job and gotten cheated out of their fair pay?

Or had they worked another job earlier in the day and really needed this second job because the first job didn't pay enough to cover their expenses and their student loan debt?

Or had they been caught up in caring for a loved one who was sick and they realized they lacked the resources for medication and so they went out to the hiring spot in the hopes that they could get hired so they could make a little bit of income so maybe they could afford to buy the medication for their loved one.

Suddenly the worker who arrived late isn't as easy to cast as a lazy, no-good leech.

They are a person with a story, a lived experience, with clear, concrete reasons that explain their tardiness.

This parable helps us see our fellow human beings as God sees them.

It takes away our preconceived notions and reminds us that all are worthy of a place in God's realm.

Back to Brandon Scott, he writes: the lack in the parable of any absolute standard of justice undermines any stand any human standard for the kingdom.

For the parable, value or worth is determined not by what is right, but by acceptance.

The householder's urgent, though unexplained, need for laborers is the parable's metaphor for grace.

It is not wages or hierarchy that counts, but the call to go into the vineyard.

The householder's generosity lies not in the wage, but in the need.

Those commentators who have seen in the parable a justification for Jesus' association with the outcast are correct, insofar as the parable provokes a response in which all are invited to the kingdom, not on just deserts, but by invitation, to insist, as the parable does, that invitation, not justice, is the way of the kingdom, radically subverts the kingdom of God as a reward for a faithful and just life.

Our parable's conclusion insists on this.

The householder tells the first hired, take what is yours and go.

The problem with justice as a standard is that it misses the invitation.

The landowner's generosity lies not in the wage, but in the need.

The landowner needed them all.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out and hired people throughout the day and paid them each the same, regardless of the hours worked, because the landowner needed them all to achieve the work of the kingdom.

The generosity is in the invitation.

Man, I love Jesus' parables so much.

They reveal so much, and they don't always reveal what we expect them to.

We like our world ordered.

We know, we like to know what to expect, where we get what is right.

We don't like seeing people get what they didn't earn.

We don't like seeing people who barely do any work get the same or as as or more than someone who worked themselves to the bone.

But this parable attempts to shake us free from that locked-in mindset.

It reminds us to consider the perspective of all of the laborers.

It offers that generosity rather than justice is the way of God's realm, because the kingdom of God is just that: the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of human beings.

We have to remember that God's ways are not our ways.

God is not humanity writ large, and thank goodness for that.

We as human beings don't do a great job at making sure all are considered, that all are included, that all are cared for, that all are given a chance.

God is much better at that, and Jesus found illuminating ways to tell us so.

Thanks be to God for the parables of Jesus that flip our expectations on our heads and remind us that with God the world is turned upside down, and that is good news.

Let us join our hearts, minds, and voices together in our time of prayer.