Murmuring
David C. Myers
Sept. 21, 2008
Exodus 16:2 - 15
Isaiah 55:6 - 9
Matthew 20:1 - 16
Text: "Friends, I am doing no wrong; . . . Or are you envious because I am generous?" . . . Matthew 20:13b and 15b
I don't exactly who the people are that selected the order for the New Common Lectionary - the ones who decide which Scripture passage should be read on which Sunday. But there are times I would like to sit down with them and ask them a few questions - beginning with "what were you thinking?"
Don't they realize that September, early to mid-September is a time when most churches are beginning there program year? People are coming back to church after a summer of leisure, or people are coming to "check out" a new church after making a summer or early fall move. So why do we have to deal with two Scripture readings about complainers (or murmurers, as recorded in the Exodus passage)?
And yet, we all have our moments with God. I am sure there are times in our lives when we could easily identify with the Israelites who were wandering aimlessly in the dessert struggling to find food and water. And while they had escaped the slavery of Egypt, things now were even worse. At least while in Egypt they always had food and water. So where was this God they were supposed to follow? And was Moses really all that good a leader? Perhaps we have made decisions in our lives with the promise of a life better then we used to have; only to find ourselves wandering aimlessly in a new strange land. And then we wonder; and then perhaps we murmur, "just where is this 'land of milk and honey' that had been promised?"
Or, perhaps we have experienced moments in our lives when we seem to have been treated unfair. Perhaps where we have been passed by in a job promotion; or where we know we have worked harder than someone who gets a larger salary. And then, like the early workers in the vineyard, we complain that life is unfair.
Well, . . . as I have grown older, and presumably more mature, I don't need a great deal of convincing anymore to admit the truth of what the prophet Isaiah said, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' says the Lord."
And I guess that helps us ease into these two stories - the murmuring Israelites in Exodus, who after having escaped the slavery of Egypt find themselves wandering in the dessert with a paucity of water and food. And they are beginning to wonder about this God of Moses, and perhaps even if God is the deliverer out of slavery they thought he was.
The second story is in Matthew's Gospel and is really a tough one. It's often called the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard and it precisely captures the prophet's Isaiah's intention - God's thoughts are not our thoughts: neither in Jesus' time nor in ours.
I suspect that the story of the workers in the Vineyard is not high on your list of favorite Scripture passages. It never has been on mine. It offends our sense of justice and fair play. It puts a finger - and none to gingerly - on that most common human experience, the sense that others have gotten more than they deserve and that we have not received what is rightly ours.
And yet, this is a parable about grace. But the grace may not necessarily seem to be grace for us - or at least with the ones in this story with whom we identify. It's grace for other people. People who, from our sense of fair play and justice, seem to be less worthy than us. And this grace seems so incomprehensible to us that it is almost unacceptable.
Let's look a little more closely at the parable.
Jesus tells of a landowner who went out some day-laborers. This is not unusual in Jesus' day (nor is it in our own). Many land-owners did not have enough workers to handle the seasonal jobs that needed to be done in the fields. The work was especially heavy when a new field was being developed, or the vineyards needed to be pruned, and during the harvest season. It was necessary for owners to find temporary workers to help with these seasonal tasks.
Such workers were largely unskilled and desperate for work. They would hang out in the town square trying to find any work that would prevent them from having to beg for their food. These were the hiring places, much like we find in today's times. The landowner went into town and hired workers early in the morning, then at noon, again in the mid-afternoon, and finally one hour before the end of the work day.
The landowner and the first group of workers had a contractual agreement that they would be paid a day's wage. The rest of the workers assumed they were they were going to be paid fairly - say for a half day or a quarter of the day. The careful observer may wonder why there were workers still available late in the day. Is it because they are the least fit for the work, or because they have just been overlooked? While we can only speculate, we have to admire their diligence in hoping there will still be work so late in the day.
When the day ended, the landowner lined up the workers, and began with the last to be hired, who received for their measly one hour of work a full day's pay. The first ones hired - who worked all day long including the scorching heat of the day, also received the same full day's pay, just as they had agreed to in the contractual agreement they made with the owner at the beginning of the day. If it wasn't for the fact that it was the same amount received as the one hour workers, they probably would have been very satisfied. But why should they work 12 hours and receive the same amount of pay as the ones that came and only worked 6 hours, or 3 hours, or especially the ones that only worked one hour?!?
I always identify with the full day workers, and I tend to identify with the elder son in the story of the prodigal son. Like them, I think of my life as I would my work. And I have worked hard for my wage. I do a lot of measuring and comparing. Like in Joseph Heller's Catch 22, I line up separate columns, on one side there is "feathers in my cap" and on the other side of the ledger there are "black eyes". I exult that "I am far advanced in my field." And at the next moment I moan that "there are others even younger than I who are even further advanced." (again, quoting from Catch 22).
My suspicion is that if we find ourselves identifying with the ones hired at the beginning of the day and who "have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat" we will find ourselves disturbed by this parable. We think of all the times we have come early and stayed late, all the committees we have served on, all the work we have undertaken, and say, "it's not fair!"
Well, . . . knowing the Bible as we do, what makes it worse is that is probably just what Jesus intended.
What is God up to anyway? I work so hard and so long and they seem to work so little. Why should they get as much, or even more, than me? Ah, envy. Socrates called envy "the ulcer of the soul." And more than I care to admit, I have experienced envy gnawing within me.
Sometime I ago I was discussing this parable at a Bible Study Retreat that I led and one person observed, "What is so powerful about this text is its challenge to the incredibly thick soup of meritocratic assumptions we all live in." And despite his propensity for big words, he was hitting the nail on the head. He went on to observe how pervasive economic criteria and its ways of evaluating almost everything we are. There is value in hard work. There is value in fair play. The focus is single mindedly on a "you get what you deserve" calculus. After all, the best we can do in our human societies is simply fair play, so trying to understand God's grace is almost incomprehensible to us.
But I think what Jesus is trying to point out is that when we do that some truth about ourselves and some element of our humanity seems to be at risk.
"My thoughts are not your thoughts," and "My ways are not your ways" says the Lord. The vineyard owner said, "I choose to give to this last one hired the same as I gave to you." You see, the Lord enters into relationship with each person. There is no "general contract", only covenants entered into with each person. I do not need to know the conditions or motivations affecting anyone's deal but mine.
But the lesson here is even more devastating to capitalistic notions of fair play and justice than just that. For if we are completely honest: from the point of view of this parable, I need not have been hired at all.
As a wise philosopher named anonymous once said, "Be thankful you don't get what you deserve!"
Perhaps the most difficult thing about this parable is that it says to us that the bad news is that there is only Good News! Everyone gets God's grace! The only judgment here is the judgment people impose upon themselves because they have trouble with others receiving God's grace!
Let's face it we still live in a bookkeeping world. And in this parable God is showing us that those ledger books are ignored forever. There is no debit on your "black eyes" side of the ledger that can keep you out of the embrace of God's love. There is no minimum balance below which will make you ineligible for God's grace. Robert Farrar Capon wrote, "For if the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus."
When our only measure is fairness, when our preoccupation is to be sure that we get our just desserts, we lose touch with a sense of grace and graciousness. We forget about the people who love us more than we deserve, and the God who has extended generosity and forgiveness to us.
"A SOUL SURVIVOR" was one of the story headlines on NBC news three years ago - and no doubt there are plenty of the same stories that could be told now from the Houston area. The reporter interviewed Brian Molaire in Waveland, Mississippi, where 5,000 out of 8,000 residents had been left homeless by Katrina. Mr. Molaire noted that his family had lived there for eight generations - through many storms - but now everything had been washed away. His mother died in the hurricane. Standing under a makeshift tarp with a lantern, he said, "I've lost everything - except my faith and hope - and I'm feeling blessed!"
I don't know what church he was a part of, but he had received the greatest gifts any of our churches have to pass on: faith, hope, love; the assurance that in Christ we are "soul survivors" even when everything else in life seems lost. Even NBC took note.
It is this same sense of gratitude that I experience when I go to Nicaragua that overwhelms me. In a country that is second only to Haiti on this continent in terms of poverty, the sense of gratitude for the most meager of blessings, like having one meal a day, or someone from the United States visit them - someone like me who doesn't even care enough to learn their language - to see their gratitude reminds me of just how amazing God's grace really is.
God's thoughts are not our thoughts. And God's actions are not our actions. And sometimes what we read about God's nature is almost incomprehensible to us. The vineyard owner sums it up for us, "Do you begrudge Me My generosity?" And if you're at all like me, often the answer is usually, "Yes, I do." I begrudge anyone getting more than I do when by my measure they have done less. No, I do not think in terms of God's generosity. I only think in what I perceive to be my understanding of fair play. Not only am I human, but I'm so human - as I suspect you are - that I'm not sure I even know what it means to think in terms of God's generosity. And some days - at least under my breath, in the privateness of my own thoughts - I murmur about it. "God, it's just not fair."
But I suspect that someday, if it already hasn't happened to us, or even if it isn't true for us now, someday we will appreciate being the recipient of the same amount of God's love that even a Mother Teresa receives. And then we will know that know only is God's love and grace nearly incomprehensible, but also pretty amazing.