St. Andrew’s Pictou, September 18^th 2005

 

Propelled into Another Realm

Exodus 16:2-15

Matthew 20:1-16

 

There is no doubt that in our human existence there are bad days, really bad days; days we felt we would like to skip; days much worse than “bad hair days:” days so bad we might even wish we were dead. We might have made bad choices, we might have made the best choices that we think that we can but, when we arrive at one of those days, whatever choices we made, we wish we had taken a different fork in the road and maybe we would have arrived in a different place.

 

This is exactly where we find the people of God in our Exodus reading:

-they hadn’t liked it in Egypt at all,

-being well fed was OK, but they were still slaves and well fed or not, they didn’t like it.

-they believed in God and God sent them this great man called Moses who seemed to be called by God to take them to freedom in the Promised Land; a broad land, a land of milk and honey. He even had an able assistant, Aaron as back up leader.

-it seemed that this was an opportunity of a life-time; too good to miss, and it should be taken.

-it seemed that they should go; there were even dramatic signs that showed them that this was the time to move. God even sent plagues when the Pharaoh wouldn’t let them go. God was obviously in control here and his commands should be followed.

-they escaped the Egyptians by God’s hand; the awesome miracle of the parting of the Reed Sea: The Egyptians lost their men horses and chariots, and the people of God were brought to safety to the other side on dry land.

 

Now the fun begins. They start out on this pilgrimage through the wilderness to The Promised Land. Everything looks great, but then some of the dysfunctions started taking place. The desert isn’t an inviting place

 

The complaining and the bickering started.

 

All the hopes and dreams and God’s awesome miracles faded into negativity and cynicism: the grumbling began.

 

“The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them:

‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought up out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”

 

What you have here is a three way dynamic: you have the people of God, the leadership, and then you have God himself. Moses pointed out to the people that they were actually were not complaining about him, but about God.

 

God was the one who actually fixed the problem: God sent bread in the morning and meat in the form of quail in the evening. They were to take double on the sixth day so that they would have enough to get through the Sabbath day without working. Problem solved. The grumbling stopped… for the time being.

 

The simple theology here is that “God provides what is needed to those who are faithful.”

 

Now God put instructions to be followed in gathering the manna from heaven and the meat in the evening: you were only to take what was needed; some took more and some took less, but the less always had enough, and those who took extra never had any left over. The extra taken just melted in the hot sun and was filled with worms and became inedible.

 

A little more theology here: don’t be greedy, God is only going to provide you with what you need, not more than you need. God does not sanction greed.

 

In this story, the people of God shifted from one realm to another:

-they started out as well fed slaves,

-they became freedom fighters,

-they became depressed, sullen and defeated, and then

-they became happy faithful, well-fed people of God.

 

Desire for freedom propelled them into freedom fighters.

Discomfort propelled them into sullen defeated whiners and complainers.

God’s response to their need propelled them into faithful obedience.

 

In the kingdom of heaven story that Jesus told, we have people also being propelled from one realm into the next: from being out of work - to being employed. Some of the workers went from the realm of satisfaction - to the realm of jealousy.

 

Jesus told this story to illustrate the realm he was establishing called, “the kingdom of heaven.”

 

The story is not just about being a landowner, but a different kind of landowner. Listen to the first five words.

 

“For the kingdom of heaven… is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.”

 

So we are clear here: in the morning, he went out to manpower, hired those men who were out of work and gave them a job for the day and both parties agreed on the going rate of pay. Work started.

 

Now the unique, “realm shifting” part of the story begins to take shape:

-several hours later at nine AM, he saw some more idle, out of work men and hired them to add to the workforce.

-again at 12 noon, he added some more workers to those already working.

-at 3 PM he did the same,

-at 5 PM he did the same, again.

 

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.

 

But the unexpected happened, they all got the same amount of pay, and the first labourers were upset when they saw the five o’clock crowd getting the full days pay, just like them even though they had worked all of the day and even in the heat of the day.

 

They didn’t think that it was fair!! They didn’t think that it was fair at all!!

 

They thought that they should have gotten more because they worked more, even if their contract had been signed and kept to the letter! They assumed that it should have been renegotiated.

 

When they grumbled, the owner said, “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.”

 

The only rule that the landowner “broke” was that he was generous. They expected him to either keep the wages in line according to work done, or renegotiate with everyone.

 

People don’t expect generosity, do they? What does every adult say after opening their present? “You shouldn’t have.”

 

When we studied this text one Thursday evening, not everyone agreed with Jesus because the story does not go along with our typical human way of thinking.

 

But Jesus is trying to take us somewhere else. He is trying to propel us and our understanding into “the kingdom of heaven.”

 

Jesus is trying to get us propelled from the realm of “tit for tat” human thinking into the irrational, unexpected, generous realm of God’s thinking.

 

If you are thinking that the first workers should have been paid over and above what had been agreed, then you miss the point that all of the men that worked in the vineyard later that day and were still able to go home and feed their families, and that is God’s point of view, and secondly God can be generous if God wants to be generous.

 

This parable challenges us on our views of God.

 

There are people that are saying that “911” and Hurricane Katrina are God’s wrath on the USA.

 

Those people are wrong according to my Bible because that idea of vengeance is a description of an abusive God. Jesus just gave us a description of a generous God. Those two notions of vengeance and generosity are incompatible. The idea that God is sending punishment down on poor defenseless people, destroying their lives, and homes is unhealthy in the extreme. The simple truth is that if you live on a flood plain and there is a storm, you will get swamped, no matter what or who you are: Christian or atheist.

 

God sent us Jesus Christ to propel us out of our small, negative, cynical human thinking and into the realm of God’s generous, expansive thinking he called “the kingdom of heaven.”

 

Which realm are you in?

 

Let us pray that God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit propels us out of negativity and cynicism into the joy, glory, and generosity of God’s realm of love and peace for all humanity.

 

AMEN                   Rev. Alan Stewart