September 18, 2011 – “The Scandal of Generosity”
Phil Blackwell
“The Scandal of Generosity”
Matthew 20:1-16
Of course, it is not fair, but it is right. The landowner pays all workers the same basic wage, whether the worker started in the vineyard at 6:00 in the morning, or 9:00, or noon, or 3:00, or 5:00 p.m., just an hour before closing time. All get one denarius, a day’s wage. It is a scandal to all the workers except the last crew at 5:00 p.m.; to them it is pure grace.
And, that is why Jesus tells the parable. He is not laying out an economic plan to get people working again; this is not a blueprint for jobs creation. How does he start the parable? With, “For the kingdom of heaven is like . . .” This is a story not about us but about God.
And if it is true, how wonderful for us! God is not fair; God is generous. The word rendered here as “generous” actually in Greek is the primary word for “good.” We sometimes have the response in church, “God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” Here is Jesus’ story that dramatizes that point. God is so good that sometimes it makes people angry. “Are you envious because I am generous?” the landowner asks the miffed workers. Or simply in the Greek text, ‘Are you evil because I am good?”
How we hear this parable of Jesus depends entirely on where we place ourselves in the progression of laborers. If we put ourselves anywhere before starting at 5:00 pm then we can feel the offense of those who protest the equal pay. If we feel that we have labored all day in the hot sun then we imagine that we have earned special recognition from the landowner, an award of some kind for our good work.
There are people who feel that way about God. They have worked so hard to be good, decent, Bible-believing Christians that they surely must get God’s special treatment. Surely, they have earned God’s reward, the “prosperity gospel” of some of today’s most popular preachers. The old term for that is “works’ righteousness;” we work our way into heaven by building up an admirable record of “laboring in the vineyard.” Another term for it is “arrogance” . . . arrogance is a sin. “Pride goeth before the fall” my grandmother used to say, steeped in the archaic language of the King James Bible.
There are others less arrogant who do not claim to be 6:00 a.m. workers, but at least 3:00 p.m. workers, maybe even noon or 9:00 a.m. Certainly, they do not see themselves as the Johnny-come-latelies who sneak in under the deadline and get the full stipend for a twelve-hour day. It’s not fair!
“You are right that it is not fair,” Jesus says via his parable. “But you are not right in giving yourself so much credit about your ‘work ethic’ when it comes to faithfulness. The truth is, all of you are 11th hour workers.” The kingdom of heaven is like a labor pool where everyone is included equally, even those who made it just under the deadline.
This is a tale about God’s goodness, not ours.
What is it that occurs in Matthew’s gospel just before Jesus tells this parable that might account for his telling it? It is the appearance of the rich young man who asks Jesus, “What can I do to earn eternal life?” Let us be clear on this distinction: the story about the laborers in the vineyard is a parable, a fictional tale to make a single point; the episode of the rich young man asking Jesus a question is purported to be an actual event. The rich young man is a real person, not a character in a story.
So, he asks Jesus, “What can I do to earn eternal life?” “Well, there are all of the laws to follow,” Jesus begins, listing some of the Ten Commandments and loving your neighbor as yourself. “But really, the key is to be generous. Sell all that you have, give away all the proceeds to the poor, and follow me. In that way you will find eternal life, true happiness.” And the rich young man slumps away, shaking his head in grief.
Jesus watches him go and says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a person with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” And the disciples, having overheard this exchange, say to Jesus, “We have done what you asked of him, Lord. We have given away everything to follow you. What will we get out of it?” And Jesus responds, “This may not look like eternal life yet, but hang in there. It will all be worth it.” And then he says to them, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning . . .”
So, this is not a parable about an economic strategy, but by dramatizing God’s goodness, scandalously generous as it is, it does suggest how we ought to act. If in God’s goodness God is generous, then ought we not to be?
We live in strenuous times these days. That is the headline every day. Wednesday it said, “More Americans fall into poverty.” Inside we read that more people in Illinois are living in poverty than any other time during the past two decades. That means a family of four is living on less than $22,314 a year. 1.82 million in Illinois, up from 1.69 million, a rate of 14.1%, up from 13.2% in 2009. A good God will not overlook such inequity; a generous God will expect generosity on the part of the faithful.
I have noticed it, and so have you. It is a curious truth that people of lesser wealth tend to be more generous than people of greater wealth. The 11th hour workers tend to be more liberal in their sharing than the 6:00 a.m. workers. Maybe it has something to do with a sense of possession. The crack-of-dawn workers, proud of their industriousness, declare, “I worked hard for this, harder than anyone else, and I am going to keep it all except for a little around the edges that I can afford to give away,” the “chump change” of the “champions of industry.” Generosity just does not seem to “compute” the more we possess.
There is that wonderful Monty Python sketch about the volunteer asking a banker for a small donation to help the orphans. I will not try to recreate the whole thing here, but quote this dialogue between the volunteer, Terry Jones, standing with a tin box for donations in his hand before the banker, John Cleese, seated behind a huge desk.
The man says, “I wondered whether you’d like to contribute to the orphan’s home,” and he rattles the change in the tin box.
“Well,” replies the banker, “I don’t want to show my hand too early, but actually here at (the bank) we are quite keen to get into orphans, you know, developing market and all of that. What sort of sum did you have in mind?”
“Well, . . . er . . . you’re a rich man.”
“Yes, I am. Yes. Yes, very rich. Quite phenomenally wealthy. Yes, I do own the most startling quantities of cash, yes, quite right . . . . very, very, very, very, very, very rich.”
“So, how about a pound?”
“A pound,” says the banker. “Yes, I see. Now this loan would be secured by the . . .”
“It’s not a loan, sir.”
“What?”
“It’s not a loan. You get one of these,” and the volunteer holds up a tiny lapel flag.
“It’s a bit small for a share certificate, isn’t it? Look, I think I’d better run this over to our legal department. If you could possibly pop back on Friday . . .”
“Well, do you have to do that? Couldn’t you just give me a pound?”
“Yes, but you see, I don’t know what it’s for.”
It’s for the orphans.”
“Yes?”
“It’s a gift.”
“A what?”
“A gift.”
“Oh, a gift!”
“Yes.”
“A tax dodge.”
“No, no, no, no,” protests the volunteer.
“No?” questions the banker. “Well, I’m awfully sorry I don’t understand. Can you explain exactly what you want?”
“Well, I want you to give me a pound, and then I go away and give it to the orphans.”
“Yes?”
“Well, that’s it.”
“No, no, no, I don’t follow this at all,” the banker responds. “I mean, I don’t want to seem stupid but it looks to me as though I’m a pound down on the whole deal.”
“Well, yes, you are.”
“I am! Well, what is my incentive to give you a pound?”
“Well, the incentive is to make the orphans happy.”
“Happy? You quite sure you’ve got it right?” And so it goes, finally ending with the banker holding the tin of money and the volunteer being unceremoniously dispatched through a trap door in the floor.
Generosity does not seem to come naturally, but for Christians, if we see that God is generously including us not because we are good but because God is, then we hear the call to include others in our lives. We are all in this together, and those knowing that they are 11th hour workers see that most clearly. If, however, we forget that we all are 11th hour workers, then we must go to the end of the line. “So the last will be first, and the first will be last,” is the tag line Matthew adds as the moral of the story.
The psalmist sings, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof;” there is plenty to go around, enough for everyone to share. That is a statement of faith; it is a trusting vision that God, the good God, the generous God, has given us a world of abundance, not scarcity. A sense of scarcity leads to panic, again the headlines of the day that start with the markets in Asia and Europe and move west to Wall Street and LaSalle Street.
But this panic is nothing new. People always have panicked when they have judged there is not enough to go around. The Israelites finally find their freedom as they follow Moses through the Red Sea, and six weeks after liberation they panic. They are in the wilderness and are afraid that there is not enough food to sustain them. They grumble against Moses, “We should have stayed in Egypt! We would have remained slaves but at least we would have our fill of bread.”
And so, what does the generous God of Exodus do? Rains down on the anxious people manna, a form of dew fresh each day for the people to harvest and eat, a kind of bread from heaven. And the people rise each morning to a new supply sufficient for the day.
But what happens when they begin to hoard it, scoop up enough not only for today but tomorrow? It goes bad, turns rotten. We must trust in God’s abundance, the story teaches, receive what is sufficient for today, see that everyone gets an equal share, and not be so anxious about tomorrow. Anxiety leads to hoarding, hoarding to monopolizing, monopolizing to power, power to death.
The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who treats all workers equally and sees that they all are included in the riches of the day. It is not fair, but it is right. And you and I, 11th hour workers all, are the beneficiaries. It is a scandal! Now, let us be generous enough to scandalize the world! Amen.