Ich Habe Genug / Eight Ounces of Grace Matthew 20:1-16

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Dayna Park
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1 Ich Habe Genug / Eight Ounces of Grace Matthew 20:1-16 Saint Marks United Methodist Church, Charleston, WV -- Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (September \24) 2017 Matthew 20:1-16 (Thomas Moore Translation) The kingdom is like the master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. They agreed on a denarius per day and the workers went into the vineyard. At the third hour, nine o clock, he went out and saw others standing around in the market square doing nothing. He said to them, Why don t you, too, go and work in my vineyard? I ll pay you whatever is appropriate. So they went out. He went again at the sixth hour and the ninth hour and found yet more standing around. He said, Why have you been standing around doing nothing all day long? No one has hired us, they answered. He said, Then why don t you go into the vineyard, too? When evening came, the owner said to his manager, Call the workers in and give them their pay. Begin with the ones who were hired last and then go on to the ones hired earlier. The workers who came on in the eleventh hour came and each got a denarius. When the ones who had been hired early came, they thought they d be paid more. But each of them also got a denarius. They took it but then grumbled about the owner. These men who came on last only worked an hour, they said, and yet you have treated them just like us. We ve done most of the work and had to withstand the heat of the day, too. He said to this one, My friend, I m not being unfair to you. Didn t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and leave. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as you got. Can t I do what I want with what is mine? Do you have a bad attitude? I mean, are you lacking in generosity? The last will be first, and the first last. Once upon a time I told the Worship Committee about a time when I put into practice one of Jane Brown s favorite spiritual disciplines paying for the people behind her. She will pull up to the pay station at McDonald s and pay for her order and for the order of the car behind her. She never looks back at them. She never tries to figure out how big their order is beforehand. She never looks behind her before she pays, to try to judge from the person s car if they are worthy of her gift. And she doesn t look behind her afterwards, to see if there is a satisfactory reaction. So, I pulled up to a booth at a toll bridge and paid for my toll and the toll for the car behind me. Then as I drove away, I did look into my rear view mirror as the car whose toll I had paid drove up. What I saw really angered me. The toll booth operator took money from that car as well. The driver behind me did not know of my largesse, so what prevented the tool booth operator from simply pocketing my $2.00 and charging the guy. It wasn t a lot of money, but it was the principle. I have remembered that incident for well over a decade now. When I told the story to the people in Worship Committee, one person said: Maybe, in response to your act of kindness, the person in the car behind you decided to do the same, and pay for the car behind him.

2 What? [S-I-L-E-N-C-E] That scenario simply didn t fit into my righteous indignation that I had been nursing for years. So, I really did not want to believe it. I had long ago made up my mind to be righteously indignant, and I didn t want to change it. Surely what she suggested did not happen. Surely not!! That s kind of how preachers face the topic of today s Gospel lesson. It is uniformly disliked. One Bible scholar called it the most hated of all Jesus teachings. I m facing an uphill battle here, because of your years of hating this parable. How can I possibly instill any different emotion in you? Well, let us pray. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me repeat the first four words of this Gospel lesson: The kingdom is like. If we Christians really want to experience the Kingdom of Heaven which is both at hand and for all eternity, then we have to figure out some way to approach this important teaching with a different mindset: THE ONLY CURE FOR THOSE WHO COMPLAIN THAT THE PARABLE IS UNFAIR IS TO GET A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE VINEYARD OWNER. When we come to understand the vineyard owner better as Jesus attempts to teach in this parable then we are able to see just how much we have strayed from the image in which we were created. When we come to understand the vineyard owner better then we might just have to confront how wrong our thinking is even when we believe we are so good. In order to understand what Jesus was teaching, we first need to know what He actually said. We are told that the Master agreed to pay the first people hired a DENARIUS. Rather than the usual Greek in which the new Testament is written, denarius is a Latin word the language of the Roman rulers. It is a term of currency, like if we used dollar or quarter. And the denarius was the usual pay in that day and culture for one day s work. It was an amount that would pay for the average needs of a person and family for one day. 2

3 Note that this term denarius (amount to cover one day s needs) is used rather than several other terms used in the New Testament that mean wages or what a person earns, words like: misthos [mis-thos'] in Romans 1.4: NOW TO ONE WHO WORKS, WAGES [MITHROS] ARE NOT RECKONED AS A GIFT, BUT AS SOMETHING DUE. or opsonion in Romans 6.23: FOR THE WAGES (OPSONION) OF SIN IS DEATH, BUT THE FREE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD. This is Jesus distinction: Instead of using a word that means WHAT IS EARNED He used instead a term that referred to WHAT IS NEEDED to provide for their family for one day. Today s parable seems HARD or UNFAIR to us because we re NOT used to the idea that IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, GOD GIVES ACCORDING TO WHAT PEOPLE NEED INSTEAD OF ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY HAVE EARNED. We are very used to a world in which people receive what they have earned, not what they need. That s an amazingly difficult economic translation for us to wrap our heads around as difficult as it was for me to think that the toll booth operator did not steal my gift. AMAZINGLY DIFFICULT There s another word an AMAZING WORD with which we are familiar and which we CLAIM to really like. That word summarizes this difference between God giving WHAT WE HAVE EARNED and God giving WHAT WE NEED. The word is GRACE. It s no big secret, when we are honest with ourselves that GRACE is what we want for ourselves and our loved ones, and JUSTICE is what we want for others. ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GRACE: IT comes in one size SUFFICIENT. GRACE: we can t store it up; we can t accumulate it; we can t COMPARE OUR PORTION WITH WHAT SOMEONE ELSE HAS. because Grace is not based on what we have earned Grace is based on what we need. 3

4 That s the only way Grace is dispensed. GRACE may be better understood when we see how much it is like the TIME IN A DAY: we each receive the same amount we can t accumulate it; we use it or lose it we can only receive it as a gift. YOU MIGHT BE MORE COMFORTABLE in dealing with this notion OF the daily nature of Grace, if we think about the manna in the wilderness for the children of Israel. They got just enough for one day, regardless of how much they gathered. And if they tried to gather up some extra to store for the next day on the chance that God might not be faithful to provide what they needed, that extra manna turned foul and it stunk, and worms crawled in it. 1 And for some of you, who are not keen on learning the lessons from the First Testament, I would refer you to that same New Testament thing we looked at last week: THE LORD S PRAYER. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. For the sake of illustration, let s say this is how much grace we can each get in each given day. [demonstration: I pour water into, and fill up, an 8 ounce measuring cup.] This is the amount sufficient for you to face what is in store for you each day. This is how much you need. [Repeat the demonstration.] If you were to receive more than 8 ounces what would happen? [Demonstrate by pouring more water into the cup it overflows onto the floor. (In deference to the trustees, a large container is placed beneath the illustration, protecting the carpet.)] If we look at someone else s life someone else who also IS WILLING TO RECEIVE WHAT THEY NEED how much are they going to receive? [A volunteer is asked to come forward and have their 8 ounce measuring cup filled.] Yes, they get the same amount the amount that they need. GRACE is NOT like money. 1 Exodus 16:16 This is what the LORD has commanded: Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent. 17 And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. 19 And Moses said to them, Let no one leave any of it over till the morning. 20 But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. 4

5 I can t save it for another day. I can t put it in the bank. It comes only in one denomination: just the right amount I need. And GRACE is ALWAYS based on NEED -- not what is EARNED If (volunteer s name) happens to not have prayed as much as I have today, would I want them to not get enough grace? No, I m a Christian. I want them to have what they need. But, since I prayed more, I m thinking -- like the first workers in the field did -- I should get some more, right? But [demonstrating again that any extra is just spilled out, by overflowing my cup again] what good does it do me? You see, I can t earn any more because (1) GRACE IS A GIFT I only have to be willing to put out my cup to accept the gift. And (2) it doesn t do me any good to get more. So to summarize:: G R A C E is the currency of the Kingdom of Heaven the currency only comes in one size: equal to just what we need we receive it as a gift not as an earned wage and we can t accumulate it. And there s ONE FINAL LESSON ABOUT GRACE that Jesus is trying to teach in this parable: There are times in life when we each do the right thing simply because it s the right thing to do. In other words, we do it without any expectation of reward. For example, if you see someone who is hurting, you offer them comfort. When we hear about people whom we don t know in a faraway place like children who have been harmed by a hurricane, whether in the US or elsewhere we pray for them. These are just natural reflexes to do good without any thought of reward. That s the way it is in the Kingdom of Heaven. But for many of us, we have such a ME- Orientation, that it is hard for us to accept that God would operate in any way different than ours. We want to make God in our own image. 5

6 No one would have had trouble with Jesus story, if the vineyard owner had only hired either the very first group or even the very last group. Both groups received what they needed to feed their family for the day. The problems come when people begin to make COMPARISONS. (If the Master had paid the first group first, they would have gone home and not seen what the last hired got paid. They might have been happier, but they would have missed the lesson.) We each receive from God what we need, when we accept God s Grace. It s only when we get into the COMPARISON business that we have problems. For example if you go to the store and find something that you really like and you think it s a fair price that you can afford you buy it and you are satisfied, or even happy. And yet, if you go home and find that your neighbor also bought the same item for 50% of what you did, you suddenly feel cheated. That which was satisfactory or even happiness-producing has turned into something distasteful. The product didn t change. You still got it for what you had believed was a fair and affordable price. But even though the FACTS DID NOT CHANGE, when we make comparisons it changes our feelings,. Feelings are such fickle things, aren t they? Whenever we make COMPARISONS of our blessings, we get into trouble. When we make comparisons we turn blessings into curses. If you do a good deed for someone not for reward but simply because it s the right thing, you re going to feel good. You feel good because you acted in the way that God created you to act so feeling very good just comes naturally. So, if somebody else does something similar and gets praise for it why get upset because you did not receive the same recognition? You just turned your happiness into frustration! When you play the comparison game you allow Satan to transform your blessing / satisfaction into a curse / dissatisfaction. 6

7 It is very much like one of my favorite of Bach s cantatas quoting from Simeon who had awaited his whole life to see the consolation of Israel. And, after years in the Temple waiting, the baby Jesus was bought in for the usual Jewish purification rites. And beholding the child Simeon realized It is enough or in the German that Bach used in his cantata Ich Habe Genug. This is found in the traditional prayer entitled Nunc Dimittis. 2 What a tremendous state of mind that is when we are content regardless of others when we have enough and we praise God for that Grace. Ok, I admit. This is not an easy thing to do. We ve been playing the sinful game of comparisons for most of our lives. Indeed, I read one commentator remark that you ve got to be a Christian in order to not be offended by this Gospel story. I suspect all of us need some help in learning how to accept this NON- COMPARATIVE ECONOMICS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN -- where God gives according to Need instead of Earning. But HERE S THE GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL: If you re not yet practicing what Jesus preaches, but you d like to, JUST: HOLD OUT YOUR CUP BE WILLING TO LET GOD CHANGE YOU, AND ACCEPT THE GRACE GIVEN EACH DAY FOR THE GROWTH YOU NEED. If we are willing to let God be God then God s Grace will be sufficient to nourish the growth that we each need. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. 2 Luke 2:22 And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord ) 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, 29 Lord, now you are letting your servant [e] depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel. 7

Tell Me About. the Kingdom

Tell Me About. the Kingdom Tell Me About Image from: www.lightstock.com the Kingdom Kingdom Parables in Matthew Luke 4:43 43 But He said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this