September 21, 2008:Exodus 16:2-15Matthew 20:1-16
My father gave the CNR 34 years. So many men were hired in 1943, 20 years passed before he could count on steady work. We never wanted for anything. But we were by no means rich. I remember the day my father told me, with pride, what he had earned in the last full year he worked before retirement.
A few years later I graduated to an income package worth twice as much as my father made in his 34th year of employment. Did I deserve it? I sure thought so. I look back now; just a little older than my father was when I was born. I wonder why I've been so lucky.
Or, in Christian vocabulary, it's a wonder I'm so graced.
My parents sacrificed so my sisters and I could have the lives we wanted. They continued to give, long after we really needed their help. That was who they were. I know I'm no more graced than they were. But I'm not nearly as gracious.
We are who we are by grace. If we can't accept that, Jesus says we're far from the kingdom of heaven.
We ask this parable of the kingdom, from Matthew, tough questions. We complain of injustice. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit the way we know the world works. Or maybe it does, but it shouldn't.
If this farmer stands for God, as the one with power on the story sometimes does, God is neither just nor fair. Robert Capon (The Parables of Judgment) has studied the parables of Jesus backward and forward. He says God is like the farmer in the parable in one respect: Crazy, but not stupid.
God is a willing fool for love. When we accept that, we're close to the kingdom. It's also a sign of our maturity as Christians.
Sometimes preachers tell us we're the complainers in the parable. God is as good as God alone can be. We complain about God's goodness, as human beings always do.
Remember the Exodus reading as well. After all God has done for the Israelites, what do they do?
They complain. They nearly drive poor Moses mad! God gives them food, just as much as they need. They don't like it! But isn't getting more – and more than our neighbours – what life is all about?
So the parable speaks judgment on our constant drive for more, our obsession with measurement.
We're always counting our blessings, and when we finish the count we find room for one more.
Yes, there's judgment in the parable. But, where's the grace?
How about this? Sure, we can be as bothersome to God as the manna-eaters in the desert, or the day-labourers with their thin pay envelopes. But we're most like the people who worked just one hour.
We're latecomers to the circle of disciples. Yet we're embraced by the same love, gifted by the same Spirit, entrusted with the same mission as every Christian who has gone before us. We live by the same grace they lived by. All they did in response to that grace is foundation for us. We draw water from deep wells we didn't lift a finger or break a sweat to dig.
Today, we're the last who are first in God's realm. Those who lived before us are well-satisfied with that scheme of things. It doesn't work in our world. But it's at the foundation of God's reign.
The last to enter the banquet are first at the table. The newcomer comes, the diners move to clear the seat of honour.
Do we realize how lucky we are? How abundantly, amazingly graced we are? We are the last to come who are first at the feast.
Tomorrow, in the next generation, others will be first, though they follow us. Today, now, we are the blessed, the happy, the favoured children of our crazy-gracious God.
