Carla Bailey, Senior Pastor

September 21, 2008

Some years ago, I was an associate pastor at a large, Congregational church in Minneapolis.  After I had been there three years or so, one of my colleagues, another associate pastor, left his position.  A committee was formed to choose his successor.  This large church was not part of the United Church of Christ but continued its membership in the denomination of continuing congregational churches that remained after the United Church of Christ was formed – and there was a fair amount of pressure on the senior minister to choose an associate who represented that small denomination, which he did.  A candidate was chosen who, for a variety of reasons, turned out not to be successful in the position after just a few months.  He excelled in one thing however – negotiating his starting salary and benefit package.  Though our responsibilities as associates were largely the same, and though our years of experience in ministry were comparable, his starting salary was considerably higher than I was making at the time of his hire.  It being a church, of course I heard about the disparity.  The arguments defending the salary inequity included references to the fact that he and his spouse had children and Warren and I hadn’t yet started our family, and that he was an excellent negotiator and I was not.  Had I been a better negotiator, I could have received a larger salary.  In any case, it was the salary that had been agreed upon so the issue was finished.

It is no wonder that every time this parable from Matthew comes up in the lectionary, I try to make sense of it.  If ever there were a story that needed just a few more words of explanation from Jesus, it would be this one.  Everything about it is counterintuitive.  The landowner paid workers, not according to hours worked, not according to any standard that could be remotely called fair, but according to some vague sense that what was agreed to was what would suffice.  Was Jesus saying that God is like the landowner?  More generous to some than to others?  And is that what the kingdom of heaven is like?

All of us have a keenly developed understanding of what is fair and what is not.  Ever since we learned that two plus two does not equal three, we’ve understood fair.  Fair means equal.  The child who cuts the cake has to allow the other child to choose the first piece.  The person who works ten hours should be paid more than the person who works four hours.  Women who work at jobs that are of the same value should be paid the same as men who work jobs of that value.  Those who bear greater responsibility for the institution, should be paid more than those whose responsibility for the institution does not include sleepless nights.  Those whose malpractice rates are highest should be paid more than those whose malpractice rates are modest.  Those who could earn significantly more money in the marketplace than in academia should be paid more in academia than those who wouldn’t likely earn very much in the marketplace.  Those who have the greatest athletic skill should be paid a gazillion dollars more than those who write poetry.  Those who have worked more years at the same job should be paid more than the new employees who have advanced degrees but no experience.  We know what equal means, and what our culture values, and what is fair and right and just and practical.

When he told this parable, Jesus could not have foreseen how convoluted standards of compensation would one day become, but he did know, even then, that compensation for hours of labor was a straightforward concept.  If you work one hour, you should be paid for one hour.  If you work ten hours, you should be paid for ten hours.  And the ten-hour worker should take home more money than the one-hour worker.  Jesus knew that his disciples and anyone else who heard him tell this story would draw that conclusion.  It’s just not fair.  And to that standard of unfairness, Jesus compared the kingdom of God.

You know, just about everything about Christian discipleship is counter-intuitive.  The last shall be first.  To enter the kingdom of God, you need to be like a child.  Submit to the yoke of God’s justice to be free.  Die to live.  If you want to be a disciple, pick up your cross.  Pray for those who hurt you.  To think of this story as anything other than a tale about unjust wage practices is counter-intuitive.  Of course, that’s why it’s difficult.  Of course, that’s why Jesus told it.  Of course, to understand God, you have to suspend everything you thought was true. 

We are, as a culture, extremely aware of what is fair and right and just.  We have a sophisticated justice system that is, in principle, if not in practice, fair.  Those who have more, get more because, well, they just do.  Those who are skilled negotiators end up with more money.  If you break the law, mitigating circumstances are not germane.  If you take a human life, the state has the right, the responsibility to take your life.  An eye for an eye, two plus two equals four, kill a police officer, the state is going to kill you, turn the other cheek gets you slapped on both cheeks.  That’s just the way it is.

Jesus told an elaborate tale – describing workers who work all day, and workers who work half a day, and workers who work a quarter of the day, and workers who barely made it to the fields before evening.  Jesus described a landowner who paid the same amount to each of the workers – not according to hours worked but according to another standard – just a flat out equal amount of money no matter how long each one worked or how deserving they each were.  Jesus requires us to think about God’s generosity, which hardly ever looks like prevailing practices, our definition of fair, even our hope for a more equitable world.  God’s generosity doesn’t appear to be fair, right, or equal.  God’s generosity is just given out to everyone indiscriminately – every single human being - no matter who they are or how little they work or whether they’ve earned it or they deserve it or they’re on welfare or have tremendous abilities squandered or modest abilities exploited, or they’re fluent in English, or they’re on death row for crimes they didn’t or did commit, or they’re smart or stupid, lazy or ambitious, or mean or sweet or courageous or tall or short or talented or just plain boring.  God is not discriminating by any standard we can understand.  I think that’s what Jesus meant by telling this story.

And isn’t that just like Jesus, to turn everything we think upside down?  to teach us that God gives grace into every human life?  It wasn’t a popular message.  In fact, you may recall what happened to Jesus after telling all these kinds of stories, after healing all those unpleasant people, after entering the centers of power and turning over the money tables.  Would you not say, these several thousand years after the fact, that the execution of Jesus just wasn’t fair?  It’s hard to be a Christian.  Amen.