We don’t
know why those men were standing around the market place at the eleventh hour,
about five o’clock in the afternoon. The
vineyard owner doesn’t know either, so he asks them, and they give almost a
non-response, “because no-one has hired us.”
I call it almost a non-response, because it’s patently obvious: if
anyone had hired them, they’d be at work in someone’s field or someone’s barn
and not standing around a market place!
Maybe a more probing question might have been, “and why has
no-one hired you?” But the master
doesn’t ask this, and so we can’t get to know.
We don’t know if they were seen as too old to be able to labor, or too
young to know what they were doing, or too odd to be able to get on with the
other workers, or if they looked sickly, or threatening, or if they slept in
and showed up to the market place late, or if they were just unlucky. All we know is that the master called, and
they followed.
The
market place scene at the beginning would be very familiar to Jesus’
audience. Day laborers were a cheap way
for land owners to get seasonal labor.
They would each be paid one denarius a day, that’s what our translation calls
“the usual daily wage,” and about 200 denarii per year would be enough to
subsist on. So, the sight of laborers
standing idle, unhired at the end of the day must have been a familiar one
too. The story starts in a very familiar
way, but then things start getting odd as they always do in parables.
Jesus’
audience would be surprised at a landowner who has to go out himself to hire
workers, and can’t just send a steward.
Maybe this is a landowner who’s struggling financially and so can’t
afford to be generous. But, then, he
keeps going, every three hours to invite and invite more. Finally, he breaks his three hour pattern and
goes out just one hour before sundown to make his final invitation. How much work could he actually expect to get
out of these leftover unwanted workers, who would have to walk to the vineyard,
get oriented to the task and then maybe get half an hour’s work in at
most? And then the payment comes, the shiny
silver denarius. He gives each their
daily bread, but no more. None are
treated unjustly, but only some are extended mercy, the ones who need it.
God
identifies himself with such a landowner.
God identifies himself with a landowner that comes to us personally,
that doesn’t subcontract out to a steward but comes to us, journeys to our
market place and invites us. In God’s
case, it’s not because he can’t afford a steward, but maybe because he
willingly identifies himself always with the poor. With a poor landowner, in this
parable; with the hungry, thirsty, sick, naked and imprisoned now. In Christ,
God comes to us directly. In the incarnation, Jesus leaves his thrown on high
and comes to us, comes to his death, to make the ultimate invitation for us to
love like him, indiscriminately, sacrificially, prodigiously. God identifies himself with a landowner that
doesn’t choose us or evaluate us based on our skills, but sees the value we
have inherently, created in his likeness and, for those of us baptized, clothed
in his grace. God identifies himself
with a landowner that extends that invitation again and again until even those
who are unlucky, those who are unvalued, those who just plain slept in and
forgot to turn up, get the message and come, and follow him. God calls those who think they’re not good
enough, who find themselves unloved and think themselves unlovely, and doesn’t
give up. And God rewards, not based on
our accomplishments, but in the richness of his mercy, he gives us our daily
bread, strength for the journey.
[11am]
The most
beautiful depiction of God’s insistent compelling call I’ve come across is this
poem by George Herbert, with which it’ll be more than fitting to conclude:
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul
drew back,
|
|
Guilty
of dust and sin.
|
|
But
quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
|
|
From
my first entrance in,
|
|
Drew
nearer to me, sweetly questioning
|
|
If
I lack'd anything.
|
|
|
|
'A guest,'
I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
|
|
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
|
|
'I, the
unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
|
|
I
cannot look on Thee.'
|
|
Love took
my hand and smiling did reply,
|
|
'Who
made the eyes but I?'
|
|
|
|
'Truth,
Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
|
|
Go
where it doth deserve.'
|
|
'And know
you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
|
|
'My
dear, then I will serve.'
|
|
'You must
sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
|
|
So
I did sit and eat.
|
[8:30am]
And now,
I., we help you respond to God’s call. The baptism of infants is a beautiful
sign that God doesn’t call us based on our merits, but welcomes the littlest
ones to him. That doesn’t mean that what’s about to happen is cheap or easy
though. No, in baptism, you will be claimed as a daughter of God, and that
means a coworker in the vineyard. This is your baptism into Christ’s mission,
to live as a missionary disciple along with us, as we walk together from this
first embrace of God into God’s final lasting embrace. And those who have been
laboring longer than you, they won’t grouse. They’ll applaud, they’ll help,
they’ll challenge, and they’ll pray. And when I say ‘they’, I mean ‘us’, the Church
you’re being welcomed into, the Church which will in time nourish you in
Eucharist, cleanse you anew in reconciliation, strengthen you in confirmation,
and maybe someday witness your marriage or vows of religious profession as a
nun or sister. We gathered here this morning stand as a symbol of that whole
Church you will soon walk with, but the whole Church, on earth and in heaven
now prays for you. Not just those of us here present, the saints and angels to
pray for you. [Litany of saints]
No comments:
Post a Comment