The scene in Matthew is becoming more and more familiar. People are waiting for work, waiting to be hired, waiting to earn a day\u2019s wage \u2013 which in those days was just enough to feed one\u2019s family. The issue then is one of daily bread. Just like manna in the Exodus narrative. Just as in the prayer Jesus gives us when we ask him how we should pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be hired late in the day and get less than a day\u2019s wages means belt-tightening for the entire family. Not to mention what it does to one\u2019s sense of self-worth to be overlooked or passed by when the hiring is being done. To not be chosen to work creates anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lesson here is one of extraordinary generosity. Everyone got a day\u2019s wage. Everyone could go home and feed his or her family. Just as it was with manna, everyone got enough, no one got too much, nothing was left over. \u201cGive us this day our daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We say this every time we say the Lord\u2019s Prayer. Does it ever occur to us just what it is we are praying and saying? How many of us have experienced living one day to the next? People who do, come to our church doors every day hoping we have listened to Jesus tell this story \u2013 and that we believe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus is somehow trying to engineer a return to the wilderness sojourn \u2013 a return to manna season \u2013 a return to utter and radical dependence on God and God\u2019s daily provisions. God makes it clear to Moses that you cannot gather the stuff up and save it for a rainy day. It goes sour on you. It spoils. It starts crawling with worms and moths. Take it one day at a time and all will be well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So with Jesus, everyone is given a day\u2019s provision, those who worked all day and those who worked just a few hours. Like any household with children, the cries of those hired early in the day are oh-so-familiar. \u201cIt isn\u2019t fair!\u201d they whine. \u201cWe were there first. We deserve more because we did more.\u201d And we glibly reply, \u201cLife isn\u2019t fair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or is it? What Jesus seems to be getting at is that what is fair and what is just is established by God, not by our standards of merit, qualifications, and grounds for staking a claim. What is being discussed, as usual, is God\u2019s kingdom \u2013 life lived under the reign of God, a God who is generous to a fault, a God whose generosity offends us and baffles us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Marguerite Shuster observes in The Lectionary Commentary<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGrace is not grace if it is qualified by superior virtue in the recipient. Sinners are not sinners if some are less dependent on grace than others. Besides, if one has enough oneself \u2026 why would one even want more than someone else, unless out of some sense of pride and self-righteousness? That it seems odd to put the question that way \u2013 so normal, so natural, is our desire to want more \u2013 shows the depth of our sin. The more we insist on our tit-for-tat way of thinking, the more baffled and angry we will be at God\u2019s whole way of dealing with us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, consider what it feels like to be hired late in the day with the anxiety of going home empty handed intensifying as each hour passes by. Is even laboring through the heat of the day any worse than having one\u2019s hope of a meal for the family fade away as the sun begins to set in the western sky?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even apart from the need for daily bread, work is an integral part of creation, and those denied the opportunity, whether for disability, age, or any other cause, must feel a deeper sense of despair and a keen lack of purpose and meaning in life. Work can be stressful, monotonous, and difficult, but to be out of work can be even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think of all the people who leave home each day, briefcase or tool box in hand, pretending to go to work long after they have been laid off. They cannot face telling their families that they no longer have a job. We are tempted to say, \u201cThere but for the grace of God go I.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The temptation is always to assume God serves our sense of what is fair, our sense of \u201cjustice.\u201d The temptation is always to believe that somehow those who come to the vineyard first and early are more deserving and have stake to a higher claim on God\u2019s generosity, love, and forgiveness. The temptation is to believe that we can really earn the right to more than bread that is given daily. An even worse temptation is to think that it is always too late to accept the Master\u2019s invitation to work in God\u2019s vineyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news is that God\u2019s grace is so great and so surprising that it can provide enough no matter how late in the day it is \u2013 on the deathbed, in the jail cell, after repeated failures \u2013 because the recipient need not add anything to the grace, but simply receive it in order for it to do its life-sustaining work. Even as the sun sets on this life, it is not too late to accept God\u2019s Amazing Grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it is never too soon for the rest of us to begin to consider that heaven\u2019s \u201cenough,\u201d heaven\u2019s daily bread, and heaven\u2019s daily wages make all earthly comparisons look meaningless and silly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus\u2019 assurance that the last shall be first and the first shall be last is tied to manna season, and settling for bread and wages that are given daily. We are called to be those people who pray, \u201cGive us this day our daily bread,\u201d and really make an effort to live that out. To live life in God\u2019s kingdom is a journey to return to manna season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus seems to be announcing a great reversal of places in the kingdom. The New Testament calls this \u201cturning the world upside down.\u201d People outside the church in the first centuries called Christians \u201cthose people who are turning the world upside down.\u201d Go figure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if 10 is Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei, and 1 is the poorest of the poor, it has been suggested that those who are really clever will live around number 5. That way, when it all turns upside down, they will feel the least amount of disruption in their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manna season: when everyone has enough, no one has too much. If you store it up, it sours on you. The world lived at number 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sounds easy! But on a global and even national scale, most of us are living conservatively at number 9, except on April 15 when we pay our taxes and attempt to argue ourselves down to an 8.5. Looked at from this perspective, the journey to number 5 looks like a long, long journey. But, says Jesus, it is the journey to life lived in its fullest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n One suspects this journey begins with being as generous to others as God is with us. After all, there must be some reason that God has created us in God\u2019s own image. And as John 3:16 states, \u201cGod so loved the world that God gave \u2026 .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n God loves and God gives. We are created in God\u2019s image. We are created to love and to give. And to be as surprisingly generous with others as God is with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sermon was written by the Rev. Ken Kesselus<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The scene in Matthew is becoming more and more familiar. People are waiting for work, waiting to be hired, waiting to earn a day\u2019s wage \u2013 which in those days was just enough to feed one\u2019s family. The issue then is one of daily bread. Just like manna in the Exodus narrative. 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