Sunday Sep 13th - Let Them Eat Grapes

And today's sermon is called Let Them Eat Grapes.

Let them eat grapes.

It's on envy, gratefulness, and friendship.

And it comes to us from Matthew's gospel, chapter 20, verses 1 to 16.

Reads as follows.

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

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

And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, You go into the vineyard too.

And whatever is right, I'll give you.

So they went.

Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and he found others standing, and he said to them, Why do you stand here all day?

And they said to him, Because no one's hired us.

And he said to them, Well, you go into the vineyard too.

And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last up to the first.

And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.

Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more.

But each of them also received a denarius.

And on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house, 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 them, Friend, I'm doing you no wrong.

Did you not agree with me for a denarius?

Take what belongs to you and go.

I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

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

Or do you begrudge my generosity?

So the last will be first.

And the first.

I mean, it's such a difficult parable.

It goes against every fiber of the American work ethic and our way of being as a people.

But it has something to teach us if we have ears to hear.

One of the things I think it teaches us is comparison is the thief of joy.

Now, if you're in the market for a new tattoo, I highly recommend.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Compare your marriage to someone else's and you'll lose satisfaction.

Your children to someone else's, you'll lose hope.

Your lifestyle to someone else's, you'll lose contentment.

And your relationship with God to someone else's, and you will lose joy.

Why does this parable run against the grain of my being?

And why do I love comparing so much?

It frustrates me because once again, as we've seen every single week, the teachings of Jesus are upside down compared to our logic.

The kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom.

So the master of a vineyard, we can see God in this role, or Jesus.

He goes into the labor yard at sunup, finds some day laborers at sunup, and he hires them, and then he agrees to pay them for a day's wage, which makes sense.

If you're going to work all day, you ought to get a denarius, a day's wage.

And they work all day long, probably well past 12 hours.

And he waits a few more hours and he hires some more people and then more people and then more people, and then at the 11th hour, probably about 5 o'clock, just when it's quitting time, just when it's finally 5 o'clock somewhere, he hires even more people.

And then it's time to pay them.

And so the foreman calls them in, and then the master pays the last workers he hired a denarius.

Catch that.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, they've probably only been working an hour.

And he pays them for a full day's work.

And right in front of the people who've been busting their hump all day long and out in the sun.

If I am one of the first workers, my first thought is what a generous master we have.

If he's that generous to them, imagine how generous he's gonna be to us until the master pays you, the first laborer, all day laborer, the exact same thing that the master paid the guy who showed up at the last hour of the day.

Probably didn't even have time to break a sweat, surely didn't accomplish much of anything.

And now, if I am one of the first laborers, I object.

We've worked all day, and we get paid the same thing that you paid them.

How is that fair?

And the master replies, Friend, I'm doing you no wrong.

Didn't you agree with me for a denarius, a day's wage?

Take what belongs to you and go.

I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

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

Or do you begrudge my generosity?

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

This parable wrinkles me because it goes against the grain of fairness and justice.

It ticks me off whenever I see people that get more than me and they didn't do as much as me.

Any of you in school right now?

It always angered me whenever the teacher set a deadline for something, and I stayed up all night getting it done.

And then because many of the people weren't ready to turn it in, the teacher extended the deadline.

I'm like, no, off with their head.

Not fair.

I worked at a golf course as a college student.

One of my three jobs.

One of my jobs, I've told you before, was working in the cafeteria, wearing a hairnet, how difficult it is with this face.

It's even more obstructive to get a date when you have to wear a hairnet.

It's not a sexy thing.

Hairnets are not sexy things.

I also worked as a telemarketer.

I called you on the weekends.

You're welcome.

You hung up on me.

But one of my jobs was working in a golf course, and one of my jobs at the golf course was to drive golf carts to rich people and to clean their golf clubs, and whenever they're done, to take their golf clubs off and to schmooze them a little bit and talk about wherever they're from.

I don't care.

I'm just trying to get a tip.

And I would take those tips and you had to turn those tips into a bucket in the manager's office.

And at the end of the week, they would divide up the tips based on the hours that you worked.

The problem is there were other people who were also getting cut into the tips that primarily I earn.

There's these old dudes, no offense to old dudes, but it was a smart play on their part.

The old dudes loved to play golf, and so because they love to play golf, they got free golf for working at the golf course.

And they would sit on their rumps on a golf cart most of the time, smoking their Marlboro's like the Marlboro man, watching me run out and get tips, and then at the end of the week, they get the same amount that I did.

Bless the Lord.

Hated it, hate it still.

You could say, well, Tommy, that's just you.

It's not just me.

I think it's baked into all of y'all.

I think it's baked into humans, and I also think that it's baked into the animal kingdom.

There's a strong sense of fairness that runs through the universe.

There was a primatologist named Fran Dival.

And Fran Dival encountered some research with some monkeys, and he found out that even monkeys don't like unfairness.

So I want you to watch this clip real quick.

Final experiment that I want to mention to you is our fairness study.

And so this became a very famous study, and there's now many more because after we did this about 10 years ago, uh it became very well known.

And we did that originally with capuchin monkeys, and I'm gonna show you the first experiment that we did.

It has now been done with dogs and with birds and with chimpanzees.

Um but with Sarah Brosson, we started out with capuchin monkeys.

So what we did is we put two capuchin monkeys side by side.

Again, these animals they live in a group, they know each other, we take them out of the group, put them in a test chamber, and there's a very simple task that they need to do.

And if you give both of them cucumber for the task, the two monkeys side by side, they're perfectly willing to do this 25 times in a row.

So cucumber, even though it's really only water, in my opinion, but cucumber is perfectly fine for them.

Now, if you give the partner grapes, the the food preferences of my capuchin monkeys correspond exactly with the prices in the supermarket.

And so if you give them grapes as a far better food, uh then you create inequity between them.

So that's the experiment we did.

Recently we videotaped it with new monkeys who had never done the task, thinking that maybe they would have a stronger reaction, and that turned out to be right.

The one on the left is the monkey who gets cucumber, the one on the right is the one who gets grapes.

The one who gets cucumber, note that the first piece of cucumber is perfectly fine.

The first piece she eats.

Then she sees the other one getting grape, and you will see what happens.

So she gives a rock to us, that's the task.

And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it.

The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does.

And she gets a grape.

And she eats it.

The other one sees that.

She gives a rock to us now, gets again a cucumber.

Against the wall.

She needs to give it to us.

And then she gets killed from it again.

I'm the monkey on the left.

I'm with the monkey on the left.

I like the monkey on the left.

I think the monkey on the left was not treated fairly, and I think the monkey on the left had every right to be ticked off.

How many of you would agree that if you were there, you would be the one on the left?

Yeah?

Yeah.

And it's the monkey on the left.

I'm perfectly fine with cucumbers until the guy beside me gets grapes.

And at which point in time, cucumber bad, grape good.

I like them until somebody else gets something better.

But why should I care?

Why should I not be satisfied with my cucumber?

Why do I care that the other monkey got the grape?

It doesn't hurt me.

I still get cucumbers.

And that's precisely the question that the master in the parable asks to the first group of laborers.

Why are you upset?

Didn't I agree with you that if you worked a full day for me, then you would get a denarius?

Work a day for me, get a cucumber, and you were fine with that until you saw somebody else get a grape that you thought didn't deserve a grape.

The laborer is like, Yeah, the other guys came out better for essentially doing the same thing.

And the master says, And they're my cucumbers, they're my grapes.

Why are you so envious that I am so generous?

Or in the Greek it says, Is your eye bad because I'm so good?

Now, the evil eye in Jesus' mind was like a whole thing.

In his world, it was a whole thing.

The evil eye was a mindset that viewed somebody else's resources with envy and your own resources with greed.

And so the master presses the laborer, why do you look at life with an evil eye?

Why does it matter to you what happens with them?

Can I be more generous to them than I am with you?

You agree to a cucumber, you got a cucumber.

Who cares if they eat grapes?

But they're furious.

Why are they so upset?

Why are they upset when someone else is treated better than them?

Because they, like me, maybe like you, does not understand how grace works at all.

Someone said mercy is not getting what you deserve, and grace is getting what you don't deserve.

We love it when grace is shown to us, but we resent it when we think that others didn't work hard enough to receive the grace given to them.

Which shows us that we don't understand grace at all.

The most miserable people I know are the people who cannot celebrate when other people get ahead.

Listen, I can call and complain to anybody.

But there are very few people that I can call and celebrate with.

That's a short list.

Why?

Because small time thinkers make big time thinkers.

Not everybody can handle it whenever I succeed.

And so I only have a couple people I can call when I succeed.

I was sharing this parable with my small group the other day, the knotheads.

That's what we call ourselves.

And one of the guys who's 39, he's more of a Christian than I am in his defense.

He said I could share this story.

And and I read this parable to him, and we were talking about it.

We were chopping it up together, you're just getting in the word for a few minutes and drinking some coffee.

And he said, This parable basically is my life.

And I basically am the first laborer.

I was like, What do you mean you are the first laborer?

And he says to me, Well, I've worked my entire life to get to the place that I am, and I'm 39 years old, and I see people who pop up 15 minutes ago, start a business, and they're living on the bay.

I've been serving Jesus my whole life.

In fact, I've done ministry for the Lord in the church.

And then there are other people pop up, they've been saved for 19 minutes, and all of a sudden everybody loves them and they're the greatest thing since sliced bread.

He said, It's hard for me.

It's hard because I feel like I should be farther along than what I am by now.

Have you ever felt like that?

You ever looked over at the Joneses and been like, well, they're younger than I am, and look at them.

It probably just means that they're deeper in debt and have a bigger like truck payment.

But nevertheless, we look over and we compare ourselves to other people.

And then one of the guys said, Yeah, I feel that too, man.

But to me, the whole issue is that the monkey thinks that the master actually owes him anything in exchange for a rock.

The master doesn't even need the rock.

Everything the monk's monkey gets is an unfair exchange from the master's perspective.

And then he said this we come to God offering works, our little rocks, like we actually deserve something good in return.

Here's my rock, God, give me a grape.

Comparison makes us think that God owes us something that someone else has.

Now I just want to show you one more thing this morning.

I think that the whole parable hinges on one word, and it's the word friend.

Here it is.

Friend, the master says to one of the laborers, the first ones, I'm doing you no wrong.

Didn't you agree with me for a denarius?

Take what belongs to you.

I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

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

Or do you begrudge my generosity?

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

Friend, he says to his worker, to his laborer, friend.

Whenever I read that part in the parable, that part just leapt off the page at me.

It cut me right in the heart.

The master called the servant friend.

The master called the one who had been laboring long and hard and faithfully friend.

And then the question came to my mind: when did simply being a friend of the master lose its value?

When did just being a friend of the master become not enough of a reward in and of itself?

When did I get to the place to where I thought that the master owed me any special treatment?

When did I start comparing my relationship to the Lord with how the Lord treats other people?

When did I start determining my worth based on how other people prosper?

I mean, why do like good things happen to bad people is a really big question until you understand you are bad people.

There was only one good person.

Bad things happen to him, the rest of us deserve what we get.

Why not rejoice that I get to labor for the Lord all day long?

Why not embrace a long obedience in the same direction?

Why not be grateful every single day that the Lord invited me into his service?

Why compare my gifts and my talents and my health and my wealth with another person?

Why would I keep score?

Why?

When I deserve death, and the deepest hell is payment for all I've done.

But I didn't have the full picture.

And so I was visiting with a friend of mine that doesn't get to come out as often as what I would like him to or is what he would like to.

His health isn't in a place that allows him to do it.

And so I was visiting with him the other day.

I said, Man, I would just love to share with you the passage from this week's sermon and see what you think about it.

He's a brilliant mind and loves the word more than I do for sure.

And I love the word a whole lot.

And so I sat down with Billy and then Billy and I chopped up the word together a little bit and chewed on a little bit.

And then later that afternoon, the brother texted me.

He said, Oh my gosh, it was right there the whole time.

I just found it.

Check this out.

He said, elsewhere in the New Testament, the Greek word, the New Testament was written in predominantly in Greek.

The Greek word for friend is phylos, P-H-I-L-O-S.

But here, whenever the master uses the word friend, the Greek word is actually heteros.

Sorry, it Greek doesn't need the that's Hebrew.

At any rate, heteros.

Hebrew, you spit on more people whenever you're talking.

Don't stand too close whenever.

Philos is a term of endearment, affection, and closeness.

But heteros is a more formal greeting used for coworkers and associates.

It can even mean something like mister.

And it only is used three times in the New Testament, and every time by Matthew, and each time it's used, it's used in a challenging sense, almost in a rebuke sense.

And most pointedly, it's used at the end of Jesus' ministry, whenever Jesus turns to Judas Iscariot, whenever Judas has betrayed him, whenever he sold him out, and he says to Judas, friend, what you must do, do quickly.

And this only makes the point stronger.

That Philos is about affection and intimacy and deep friendship.

But heteros is more of a transactional, it's more of a functional, it's more like a co-laborer.

It can even be like Mr.

And then it hit me.

When the master calls a servant heteros, it's not a term of deep connection, it's a term of formality.

And it tells me that it can be easy the longer that I serve the Lord to allow the intimate affection of Philos to devolve into the transactional, functional, grinded out heteros.

To let the wonder and gratefulness of being accepted by Jesus to become the formality of just doing something for God, just showing up to church, just walking old ladies across the street, just giving in the offering, all becomes just a transactional relationship.

Judas started out as a philosop and ended up as a heteros.

Judas started out as an intimate disciple and he ended up thinking Jesus owed him something, and so he used to steal from the money bag.

He started out by selling out for Jesus and ended up selling Jesus out.

And that can happen for me and that can happen for you.

Whenever we think that church is about us, whenever we think that God exists to give us what we want when we want it, and why would God bless them?

And I'm going through such a hard time.

And so Jesus closes the parable.

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

And this is upside down.

I know.

But there is a way around it.

I found a workaround.

Here you go.

The way around the last being first and the first being last is this.

The way the first becomes first is by preferring the last as the first.

Because the first should come in first, and the last should come in last.

And we all know that if you ain't first, you're last or second or third, it turns out, but nevertheless.

The way the first become first is by preferring the last as the first.

The first hired workers could have had the most joy because their joy didn't have to be in what they got.

It could have been in the master who is generous to everyone.

They've been hanging around the whole day, they've been working hard the whole day, and they could have been overjoyed that their master was so generous by giving other people what they didn't deserve, but they couldn't because they thought the master owed them something.

What they failed to realize is the master owes none of us anything.

Those of us who have been around the longest, we are the ones who have the privilege of seeing what God does here in these last hours.

We don't make it about us.

We make it about them.

We make it about the latecomers, the down and outers, the marginalized, the ostracized, the people who've been chewed up and spit out by the world.

We make it about the just one more who comes in at just the last hour.

And we know, even with the thief on the cross, that Jesus turns to him and says, This day you'll be with me in paradise, and he hadn't done anything to deserve it.

And you go, that's not fair until you realize you are the thief on the cross.

I am the thief on the cross.

God, I'm just grateful for you.

Who am I that you keep me on your mind?

God, I'm just grateful for you.

I don't deserve it.

I couldn't earn it.

And still you give yourself away.

We're a people that is all about the last person.

We're all people who are about the greatest among us being the servant of all.

That's how the first can really be the first if you become the last to make the last the first.

You go, this isn't fair.

And this isn't a political sermon either.

Understand that by the way.

Because if the people who came last and got paid the same as the people who came first showed up the next time expecting that they would also get paid the same as the day labor, the master is so unpredictable that he can look at them and go, Okay, well, you didn't work that long, you're not going to get that much.

Jesus is unpredictable.

In another place, he says, Whoever has to him more will be given, and to him who has not, even what he does not have will be taken away.

So we get all upside down whenever we try to make the teachings and the beautiful ministry of Jesus into a political law.

What we need to do is say, Jesus, I'm just grateful that I get to be in the vineyard.

Jesus, I'm so happy that I get to serve you.

And if somebody else gets blessed more than me, bless God, I'm okay with that.

Mine is an attitude of gratitude.

We don't have to lose our first love the longer we serve Jesus.

We can show up every day and look at the master and go, hey, what are we doing today?

You don't have to compare.

Just be grateful that you get a cucumber and let them eat grapes.

Stand up onto your feet all over the room this morning.

We hope you enjoyed today's sermon.

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