(A sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at the Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 24, 2017. Texts: Exodus 16: 2-15, Philippians 1: 21-30, and Matthew 20: 1-16.)
The parable of the landowner and the labourers can easily generate outrage. This is not fair! Those who have worked the full day receive only the minimum wage that was promised; while those who started their work much later in the day, even at 5 in the late afternoon when the sun was about to set, receive the same wage. Those who worked the full day complain, for this arrangement is surely not equal pay for equal work. Indeed, we are apt to agree with them and wonder why Jesus told such an apparently unfair parable.
But this story is not about labour relations or equal pay for equal work, at least not initially. We have to come back to that introductory comment of Jesus, “The kingdom of heaven is like….” There is a truth of the kingdom buried in this story of the hard life of day labourers in Jesus’ time.
First, it is important to note that this parable occurs only in Matthew’s Gospel. It has not come from the earlier Gospel of Mark, nor from the early tradition Matthew shares with Luke, so-called “Q”. This is a story that was remembered and cherished by the early community that Matthew was writing for. We know that Matthew’s community was largely Jewish Christian but there were also Gentile Christians.
One common interpretation of the parable is that it speaks to the relation of Jewish and Gentile Christians (especially in Matthew’s community) and that perhaps there were Jewish Christians who were claiming priority in leadership and status because they had known Jesus from the beginning and the Gentile Christians were latecomers. Indeed, they were still walking through the doors, wanting to be baptized.
But God, like the landowner, is wildly generous and Jewish and Gentile Christian are equally and totally accepted in the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God does not respect claims based on how long one has been a Christian or a special affinity to Jesus. All are forgiven, all receive mercy, all are offered generosity.
However, some commentators suggest an earlier concern of Jesus about the leadership of the Twelve. Not long after this passage, James and John, sons of Zebedee, the very earliest of the disciples, ask to be placed at the head of the Kingdom, over against others amongst the Twelve who joined Jesus later. He squarely rebukes them: that length of service or a special link with Jesus is not important; what is important is servanthood. And sometimes those who come later are better servants than those who were there from the beginning.
Thus, a person who is baptized today enters the full Kingdom today, a Kingdom no different than the one we who were baptized as children so many decades ago entered at that time. The Spirit can work through newcomers with the same power, or even more power, than through those who have been around a long time. But, of course, the Spirit can also work through us who have been around a long time, as long as we do not try to quench the Spirit in others.
In a few months, we’ll be electing a new diocesan bishop. There might be a candidate (this story is entirely hypothetical, I do not have anyone in mind) who argues, “I have been a faithful parish priest for thirty years, it is my turn now, I have the years of service”. Today’s Gospel suggests that years of service alone are not a good criterion for leadership, for God’s generosity of Spirit extends equally to those who have arrived later, even much later, and even those who will arrive late tomorrow. And so it is appropriate also to look at candidates who do not have the years of service but have other important gifts, shown in other ministries, even in other dioceses.
Likewise, this parable encourages us if we are in some sense late to the Kingdom. Wasted time no longer matters, God’s full love and mercy is with us. There is still hope for new ministries, new ways of service. Nor, if we have been faithful over many years, is our work discounted in any way.
The parable reminds us of God’s indiscriminate and reckless generosity. If one were a landlord, that is not the way to run the business. Sometimes it seems like that generosity – and I mean much more beyond money – is less and less common. On Friday, I was in Jackson Square and needed to sit down to adjust my shoe. I went to the bench I have often rested at just outside the steps up to the bank. No bench, it has been removed. I went further east, remembering another bench. It too had disappeared. Finally, I went west and found a bench that had not been removed. Why do shopping malls, parks, apartment buildings and airports remove benches? One reason is the suspicion that undesirable people will congregate around them and we really don’t want them. Perhaps we want to keep people moving because we think moving people are shopping people. There is a lack of a generous spirit there. It would be an interesting experiment to put a welcoming bench on our strip of lawn on Forest Avenue to provide rest for those who are walking along and to express our generosity to the neighbourhood. Our bench is now hidden, inaccessible, in the courtyard.
Needless to say, God’s generosity in the parable is the same divine generosity that provided manna in the wilderness to a complaining and sometimes disobedient people, in this morning’s Old Testament lesson.
In the Gospel story, those who have worked the full day and complain about the late comers being treated with generosity, remind one just a bit of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. God is simply boundless in forgiveness and generosity. And that generosity is for us as well, as long as we are willing to share it with others, including those who come, so to speak, late.
Today’s Collect begins, ‘Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth, and ourselves in your image”. We are created in God’s image of reckless and inclusive generosity. Our temptation, of course, is to pull back, to judge, perhaps taking God’s generosity to us for granted but not very interested in sharing it. Sometimes those who come later have felt the generosity more intensely and respond with greater fervour. We are created in the image of God the generous giver of manna. But if we are only satisfied and complacent, we, though initially the first, may run the risk of being the last: the final warning of today’s Gospel.
Thus, the ongoing renewal in Christ that Paul has been espousing in Romans over the past weeks and in Philippians today is so important. Even the latecomer, maybe especially the latecomer, needs to let the power of Christ – living Christ’s death and resurrection – abound and flourish, especially in relations with others and in participation in God’s mission in the world.
Finally, to go back to the Gospel, it might be tempting to read it only in terms of the internal discipline and relationships within the church. But God’s reckless generosity extends beyond the bounds of the church to the whole world. And, created in God’s image, we are invited into that generous stance with the world – generous even to those very difficult from ourselves, to refugees, to people of other faiths, to those on the margins. The measure we give will be the measure we receive, multiplied by God’s generosity. But if we are stingy and ingrown in our love, growth becomes difficult indeed. Let us be at least a little bit unpredictable and crazy in our generosity, like the landlord; not measuring out every penny for every hour of work given, but generous even to those who are late, or may seem to have nothing to offer us, for in doing so, in a mysterious way, we are helping to facilitate the growth of God’s kingdom of heaven on earth and beyond. And the justice of that Kingdom will eventually reach even the poor day labourer who will now receive a living wage. Let God’s boundless generosity be our generosity.
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at the Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, September 10, 2017. Texts: Exodus 12: 1-14, Romans 13: 8-14, and Matthew 18: 15-20.)
We live in a time when many so-called Christians give Christianity a bad name through racial hatred, violent rage, and incongruous inconsistency. We have only to look at Charlottetown or even the White House. Yet this problem is not exactly new. Almost from the beginning, especially as belief in Jesus of Nazareth as God’s Son and the Messiah moved from the Jewish to the Greek world and beyond, an enormous variety of beliefs and activities ensued, some consistent with Jesus’ teachings, some not.
Already in his epistles, Paul is struggling with this issue, as Jewish Christians try to impose their views on the new Gentile Christians. And the development of the canon of Scripture – keeping some early writings and blessing them to be used for future generations, and rejecting others – was an attempt to address this issue of unacceptable belief and behaviour in the name of Jesus. Likewise, the early development of the episcopate, elders who are guardians of the faith and signs of unity, were an attempt to bring some order to this potential and sometimes actual chaos. And, likewise, early church councils that gave us our creeds.
The early church in Rome was no exception and it likely had bigger problems than small local churches scattered around the Mediterranean. It was the centre of the Empire where all nationalities, all religions and all social classes came together. Trade brought foreigners from afar, with their strange tongues and strange religions. Some became Christians. There were Jewish synagogues, temples of mystery religions, the official cult of the emperor, pagans from the north and new Christian churches reflecting this enormous diversity.
As one of the leaders of this early church in Rome, how does Paul hold them all together? Today’s epistle goes right to the core of Christianity: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” A simple piece of teaching then sums up all the laws: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Paul teaches with a sense of urgency, for they were troubled times and some were falling away. He counsels the community to turn away from “the flesh” (Greek, sarx, flawed human nature) to “love” (Greek, agape, self-giving love, modelled on God’s love in Jesus Christ). “Owe no one anything but to love one another.”
When I first heard those words many years ago, I felt a sense of liberation: that this was a command to be creative, to find ways to love in difficult situations, giving permission to love difficult people, permission to love in ways that I thought appropriate even though some might judge me. It was a command to listen to people and get to know them and to see how one could be helpful. It certainly was a helpful teaching in relating with people of very different cultures. Within the church the command is mutual so that it also enables one to be comfortable about receiving love. And I am aware that over the years as a Christian, I have received a great deal of love from fellow Christians and still do. Trite as it is, for Christians, love does make the world go ‘round.
But how do we nurture this love? Let me make three brief suggestions.
First, we pray for one another and our neighbours, and even for those who wish us ill. Today we pray for those whose lives have been or are about to be upset by natural disasters – earthquakes in Mexico, hurricanes in the Caribbean and the United States, floods in south Asia, fires in western North America. We pray without judgement on anyone’s political or religious views. But we also pray for understanding of how our human activities might have accentuated or even caused some of these disasters.
Of course, we even pray for our enemies. I wonder how many of us have ISIS and the Taliban or political leaders we do not like on our prayer lists. Ever so often, I reflect on whom I am really not very happy with these days and add them to my prayer list.
As a parish, we are held together by prayer. Ever so often, praying, I work my way through the parish list. We have our parish directories. They can be prayer lists for us, building an unseen chain of love, as I mentioned to the children this morning. To pray for another is to love them. Of course, we do not pray judgmentally: not, “I pray for that stupid jerk who ran the red light and almost hit me.” We do not know what was on that person’s mind that caused him to run the red light. We just pray for him.
Secondly, we cultivate friendship, especially with those different from ourselves but also, and this can be more difficult, with those perhaps a little bit too much like ourselves. Freud wrote of conflicts caused by the “narcissism of small differences” – how can be thrown into anger and hatred by the ways someone like ourselves reminds us of our failings and thus buttresses us in our narrow identities. Cultivating friendship requires the will to do so and an interest in listening. Listening is a skill and sometimes needs developing. (We cannot say, “I have already heard your story, I don’t want to hear it again. Rather, we listen again, more carefully.) We all need someone to listen. We all have the capacity to listen. Listening says to the other person, your story is valuable, I want to know it. We do not listen because we want to gossip afterwards, though that can be a temptation. Our goal is to see others, indeed to see ourselves, as God sees us. God listens endlessly; we are called to listen endlessly, even if the listening makes us cross or confuses us.
Today we have called “Welcome Sunday” both to welcome back parishioners who have been away over the summer and to welcome new parishioners and visitors. We shall gather in a community meal afterwards and all are invited. The tradition of gathering to eat after worship is an ancient one, the “agape feast” of 1 Corinthians which ran into some problem that Paul had to correct. It has been a source of renewal in the church, for example, in early Methodist love feasts. For us, it is a time to share food and listen to one another. I would encourage you to sit with someone you do not know so well and listen to their story.
Finally, sometimes Christians sin and such sin can badly affect the life of the community, as today’s Gospel illustrates: how Matthew’s community understood Jesus’ teaching about resolving unloving or destructive behaviour in the community. I think Jesus’ words here must be read as having gone through the lens of the church discipline of Matthew’s community but that does not blunt the direction of the advice: talk to the person privately, then with a small group, then expulsion or some form of restriction. The church over the years has tended to follow this advice, though sometimes too strictly, sometimes not strict enough. As modern Anglicans, we have recoiled from being too judgmental about people’s personal lives and areas such as smoking and drinking, not wanting to set up rules. Yet, our reluctance to criticize has sometimes made us overly innocent, for example, when we do not believe a priest could abuse children. All our new child protection protocols are necessary and valuable and reflect the direction of today’s Gospel in saying there are some situations that are intolerable to the community.
But we do not want a church that is primarily about judging each other’s behaviour. If that happens, harmless and even good behaviour come to be seen as suspicious. We are called back to the epistle, “Owe no one anything but to love one another” and “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Those commands build up the church and our relations with our neighbourhood and the community.
Finally, who is our neighbour? In this global world of Facebook and Twitter, our neighbour may be thousands of miles away, in any part of the world. But our neighbour is also still those who share our street or apartment building and the stores, restaurants and pubs we frequent. Our neighbour is those we work with professionally or with whom we are in social relationships. The neighbour is our family, those we are most intimate with. But our neighbour is also the stranger, the Welcome Baby mothers and staff, the other groups that use our space, those who come to us for assistance of one kind or another. Indeed, the apartment buildings and hospital that surround us are our neighbour. And in our relations with all, the command is the same: “Love your neighbour as yourself” and “Owe no one anything but to love one another.” How to implement these commands is the challenge.
Before our community “agape meal”, we shall gather at the Eucharist. For us as Christians, it is the meal above all meals, related to the Jewish Passover meal we hear about in the Old Testament reading today, for it unites us with God and one another, strengthening us for the tasks of love we are called to do. Let us come to this sacred meal with hope, bringing the great network of friends that we all have to the altar, including both our accomplishments and failures in love, and, having received Christ’s body and blood, let us return to the world strengthened and encouraged to do the work of Christ’s love in the world. “Owe no one anything but to love one another”. Thanks be to God. Amen.
