after Pentecost
| Old Testament | Exodus 16:2–15 |
| Psalm | Psalm 105:1–6, 37–45 |
| Epistle | Philippians 1:21–30 |
| Gospel | Matthew 20:1–16 |
Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Nothing exists that can break the connection between us and your love. No death nor life nor fear nor failure can separate us from your love. Stay close to us. Remind us when we forget, so that we can live according to our beliefs. We reside in a world that attempts to unsettle us while insisting we navigate life alone. We believe your love never stops, your grace never runs out, your mercy never gives up. Thank you for holding on to us. Amen.
▶ | Hear These Lessons Preached On the Old Testament lesson — Israel grumbles in the wilderness, Exodus 16 On the Gospel’s scandalous generosity: Abundant Grace |
“If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. … If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; He gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour. … The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.” — This is shouted in Orthodox churches at midnight every Easter. It is your Gospel, turned into a party.
“The scandal of this parable is that we are all equal recipients of God’s gifts. The scandal of our faith is that we are often covetous and jealous when God’s gifts of forgiveness and life are given to others in equal measure.”
“In the end, it’s not about unfair payments. At the parable’s conclusion, the full-day workers don’t moan that they have been cheated. They complain instead to the landowner: You have made them [the one-hour workers] equal to us.”
This passage naturally offers some important wisdom for life in community that is mission-oriented, or strives to be.
One shall not presume and boast about the judgment and one’s election among the first. In other words, sitting in that pew for twenty years doesn’t make it yours. — It reminds us the last shall be first, and the first last (illustrating 19:16ff). Or: one might think twice before complaining that the priest is spending too much time with new members. — We must realize that the newcomers are equally welcome to voice their opinions.
I don’t think we can fully separate the text from the notion that the Gentile mission was affecting the inherited faith of the church. The people that Jesus reached out to during his ministry, and the people the apostles reached out to, were very different from the people who had long awaited the Messiah.
This Sunday there will be a lot of different sermons on this text. And I believe it is safe to say most will be focused on the established church’s need to make room. As insiders, we naturally want to interpret the message to the other insiders.
I want to offer that the real grace of the passage is that it isn’t meant to be — in my opinion — a polemical argument against those already at work in the field. It is quite the contrary.
“Jesus’ message is one of grace to those who come late. He is talking not to the establishment but to the newcomers.”
We would do well to remember this when preaching.
The truth is, most people feel like they are the latecomers. They are not good enough. They have done something so wrong that even though they dared to walk into the church on this particular day, it won’t do any good, because they are doomed.
Most people don’t feel they are good enough to receive the grace of God — and that is precisely the message of the cross. No one can do anything to win it. We have all come late.
We are truly challenged by this somewhat Matthean Paulinism. As Isaac the Syrian provocatively put it, “How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers?” As insiders we just can’t shake our desire to truly be about works. (Allison/Davies, Matthew, vol. 3, 77)
Allison and Davies write:
Hence the less deserving may receive as much as the more deserving. Like the Spirit, the divine grace blows where it wills. That destroys all human reckoning and therefore all Christian presumption. … Hope should never become self-satisfaction.
I agree with my fellow semi-Pelagians that we cannot completely lift this out of context, for Matthew has plenty to say about how Christians behave in the vineyard. But I would remind us all that this is in response to the grace of God; it is not in order to receive the grace of God.
But it is clear that there is tremendous good news this week in the Gospel: nobody ever comes late. We are all just arriving right on time.
This is one of the most positive letters that Paul writes. He is in prison, encouraging the Philippians to read and know about the mission of the Gospel. He tells them how he has spread the Gospel to his captors, and how they are sharing in the Good News.
He appears worried about his potential death, and knows that Christ has not yet returned and he will not likely see him. He understands that the mission of Christ must go on, and that the spreading of the faith is essential — even without him. We can almost feel his emotions as he ponders his fate. He is hopeful both for his life with Christ after death and for the life of the faithful after his leaving.
God has really done a number on Paul. He understands his whole life, and the very meaning of creation, now through the lens of a living Christ. He believes that while he is one with Christ in this world, in the next that unity will be solidified. For his life, he has understood that he was to be a laborer in the vineyard. Even though he was not one of the original followers, he has understood his work to be no less essential, and his preaching of Christ to be the fullness of his call.
He is hopeful that he will be with the Christians for a while longer, so that he may continue the progress of the kingdom in which he has a share. Regardless of whether he is with them or not, he holds them up to a high practice of living a life of Christ. He tells them to live in community and to reflect to one another and to the world the servanthood of Christ. They are to be strong in their faith. They are to be bound together and not divided. They are to work together and be of one mind in their faith.
These are difficult times, but he encourages them to be united in their cause. Speaking from prison, where he himself is jailed because of his faith, he tells them not to be discouraged by those who will challenge them. They should be strong in their faith and be sure of their own inheritance of the kingdom of God. Like Paul and like Christ, though they may suffer, they are suffering in community with others. It is a much greater thing to persevere and to be supportive of one another, with the assurances that come from God and God’s love for them.
If they will labor on like Paul, still others will come to know Christ through their witness.
What strikes me in particular is how at every turn Paul is attempting to make a witness of Christ’s love, of Christ’s forgiveness, of Christ’s relationship with those who may cause suffering and persecution. He himself is undaunted in trying to tell the story of the Good News to his captors, and in turn helps them receive Christ. To those in Philippi he urges them to make a witness to those who harass them. This behavior is the opposite of how we deal with those who are against us today.
If someone is against us, we rail back. We seek their demise. We seek to win by power and control. We do not become weak, or as a servant, so that they may hear and be converted. We do the opposite of what Paul intends in making a witness. It reminds me that there is a great deal of courage needed when we seek to be like Christ and become lower than we believe we should be, in order to serve the very people who may in the end be our undoing. That is quite a different model of Christianity than the one we typically model in our contemporary society.
The passage for this Sunday from Exodus is the story of the manna and quail in the wilderness. It is about God’s providence for the hungry. It is about God’s listening ear and God’s intervention in the world.
The passage appears in John’s Gospel and is an allusion — along with other Exodus mentions — that correlates the ministry of Jesus with the work of Moses. Scholar Richard Hays, in Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (p. 291), makes the comment that while the author of John’s Gospel does use the references, there is no particular explanation; rather, the reader is supposed to understand the significance. The Passover of Israel is a common theme, mentioned four times throughout the Gospel as it makes its way towards the Last Supper.
Left to our own devices, we might see that at the minimum the Gospel is revealing in the work of Jesus the themes of God from the history of Israel. Jesus’ own ministry is defined in similar spiritual terms as that of Moses. Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand is connected then to the manna and quail from heaven. Here what we can say is that God in Christ Jesus is doing and working out God’s purposes just as God did with Moses. God hears God’s people crying, and God frees them, feeds them, and delivers them.
It is not simply that Jesus mimics what came before in the history of Israel, but that the arc of salvation stretches backwards just as it stretches forwards. The very nature of God is to care, deliver, and provide for God’s people. In this way the work of God in Christ Jesus is not unique, but part of the continuing and emerging story of the relationship between God and God’s creation.
Furthermore, what John’s Gospel does tell us is that while it is similar work, it is also different. Jesus is not another Moses, or doing similar work, but is in line with God’s eternal work. The difference is important, though. That difference is that while the manna and quail in the wilderness were temporary and perished, the work of the Christ will be eternal.
The full-day workers do not complain that they were cheated; they complain that the others were made equal to them. Where does equality feel to you like loss?
Israel grumbled in the wilderness on the very morning God was preparing to feed them. What are you grumbling about that God may already be answering?
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