You Can't Always Get What You Want

The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew the 20^th Chapter

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,

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 one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I want to leave a lot of the sermon time to talk, but I think we should look at this parable first... just for a couple of minutes... because I suspect it’s not a coincidence it came up for today.  You know the story.  The vineyard owner has work to be done and first hires workers at the daily rate, which is one denarius.  It’s a daily, living wage... what a person needed to pay rent and all their bills and eat well for one day.  The second bunch is hired for whatever is “right” and the others he just sends out into the field without any talk about pay including those that came at “the eleventh hour” which sounds way more ominous than 5 o’clock in the afternoon which is what “the eleventh hour” really means.  This vineyard owner hires EVERYONE he can find to get the grapes to the crusher.

At pay time, the landowner pays the last to start working first and everyone gets a denarius.  The trouble is, of course, it doesn’t seem fair.  The people who started work at 6 a.m. and worked right through the hottest part of the day get the same as the people that worked for just one hour starting at 5 in the afternoon.  The crazy thing this parable is telling us is that THIS vineyard owner doesn’t care about doing what's “fair!”    

He didn’t give the people who worked for twelve hours any extra.  He gave them just what they needed for that day, one denarius.  He also didn’t give the others what they deserved, which by the world’s standards would have been a fraction of a denarius.  He gave them what they needed, one denarius, the means to live one more day.  In the same way God gave manna in the wilderness, the vineyard owner gave just what was needed to live.  God, it turns out, doesn’t give us what we deserve.  God doesn’t give us what’s fair.  God gives us exactly what we need.   

That idea that God isn’t “fair” and that folks won’t get what they deserve at the “end of the day” up in heaven is hard enough for most folks to swallow but it gets harder.  You and I are called, remember, to work with God to make “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”... we pray for that all the time!  That means that you and I are called to give our neighbors in this world not what they “deserve” and not what is “fair” but to make sure they get exactly what they need... regardless of what they’ve done or not done to earn it or deserve it.  

You might not think that would ever work, but God is so sure it does work that he sent His Son to bring the world, not what it “deserved” or what was “fair” but just what it needed... and what the world needs is LIFE and that is exactly what Jesus brought to the world... even though none of us have, or ever will, be able do enough to earn it or deserve it the gift is ours.  God’s call for each of us, then, is to treat our neighbors in the same way God treats us.  Giving our neighbors not what they “deserve” or what is “fair” but just what they need.  I’ll be the first to admit that’s not the way the world works.  The question for us is what are we going to do about it?  Amen.