Sermon - No Way to Run a Business

Preached on September 21, 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Matthew 20:1-15

If you run a business, this parable will drive you nuts. It’s a parable about a vineyard owner and the workers he hires, but as a model for owning a business or labor relations, it’s a mess from top to bottom.

It’s a twelve hour day in the vineyard, and he hires some workers at the beginning, and then others for nine hours, six hours, three hours, and finally a few more for one last hour in the workday. Some are full-time and some are part-time. No problem. But when the foreman starts to hand out the pay and he begins with the one-hour workers, things go awry. The one-hour workers each get a denarius. Now we remember from the beginning of the parable that a denarius is the wage that the first workers agreed to when they were hired at 6 AM. The owner went out first thing and found workers who agreed on one denarius for one day. In the original greek phrasing, it’s understood that agreed wage means the negotiated wage. So one denarius seemed like enough for the workers, and the owner thought it was not too much: it must be a fair wage. Later in the day, when the owner hired the other workers, he simply said “I’ll pay you what is fair” without negotiation. They were probably happy just to get work.

But now, at the end of the day, the one-hour workers get the full denarius, so the other workers know that this is about to get ridiculous in one way or the other. For a brief moment, they think it might get ridiculous in their favor. “Hey this guy doesn’t pay a denarius per day, he pays one per hour! Now each set of workers is mentally adding up their pay according to the number of hours they worked: three, six, nine, twelve denari. That’s what they might earn in two weeks! What a great job!
Alas, the fantasy is short-lived. As the foreman distributes the pay, it’s one denarius apiece for everyone. So it got ridiculous the other way. How can this be? They demand. How can it be fair to pay the same to those of us who worked in the heat of the day as the guys who barely had time to put their gloves on?

Now, you don’t need to be in business to guess the result. When tomorrow’s workday begins at the vineyard, do you think that a single worker will show up before 5 o’clock? Why work all day when the pay’s the same? And that’s if the full-timers come back at all, having been taken advantage of and humiliated. The owner says it’s his right to be generous, but it is also unfair. It does not inspire hard work or loyalty. It’s no way to run a business.

But of course, this parable is not about business. Now that we’re worked up about the unfairness and incompetence of this as a business story, we remember that Jesus introduced the story by saying “the kingdom of heaven is like….” This parable is about the kingdom of God, and things work differently there. There are a lot of places where we need fairness. We need fair evaluation of test scores and fair legal judgments. We need objective standards instead of insider deals. We need transparency and honesty in financial books and boardrooms. And we need equal pay for equal work. That’s all true. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about.

The grace of God is not about fairness, and for that we may be eternally thankful. The grace of God has nothing to do with what we have earned, or what we deserve. In this case, merit is the last standard we want to have applied. The only standard for God’s grace is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the wideness of his mercy, the power of his love.

The vineyard in this parable is not a business model, and Jesus is not giving a management seminar. The vineyard stands for the kingdom of God, and this would not have been a strange image to the people of the first century. In the prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel were portrayed as God’s vineyard which has gone bad because the people have ignored God’s will. When Jesus told his disciples “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” that was a vineyard metaphor. The vineyard in our parable today is not a business; it is the community of God, working to bear Godly fruit, and to this vineyard everyone is invited by the generous grace of God.

Everyone is invited. Just like another parable in which God is the shepherd who searches for his lost sheep, so God is now the vineyard owner who goes out to the marketplace again and again and again to invite people into the vineyard. And so we as the church continue to extend God’s welcome: an invitation to join in this great and compelling life of faith. This act of welcome is so central to our identity that we are in the midst of a construction project that is designed as a tool that allows us to be as welcoming as we can be. It is designed to remind us that this welcome goes beyond these walls. Our spirit of welcome goes out again and again, at the sixth hour, the ninth hour, the eleventh hour.

I am struck by the conversation the owner has with the workers at the eleventh hour. He asks them “why are you still standing here idle?” And they tell him the difficult truth: “because no one has hired us.”

The biblical scholar J. Ellsworth Kalas[1] tells the story of coming home from school one day to the surprising sight of his father at home at mid-afternoon. He asks what has happened, and in the silence of his father’s response, his mother says “your father lost his job.” This was a revelation for Kalas, because before that day he hadn’t known that good people could lose their jobs. He had grown up thinking that the unemployed were lazy, uncommitted, bad workers. He didn’t know that a person who wanted to work would have any trouble finding it. Think about those last people whom the vineyard owner found at 5 o’clock: “no one has hired us.”

This parable reminds us of the terrible burden of unemployment. What becomes of us when our work is not valued, when we are unwanted? And since the vineyard represents the kingdom of God, we should also ask who is left standing around because no one has told them that they are welcome, that they are valued? No one has told them that there is a great calling for their lives, to give them to something meaningful, to a cause that is worth our work and even our sacrifice. Why are they standing around? Because no one has shown them that they are loved beyond measure.

In this place we worship one who tells us that we have been created for great things. Here we remember that life is not just about taking care of ourselves. Here we are called to look out for one another, to join in a community that cares for the vulnerable, that seeks peace, and lives justly. Here we allow God’s love to make us new, that we may love others not according to their merit, not according to how deserving or lovable they are, but simply because God has first loved us. This life is worth inviting everyone in on, and it doesn’t matter if you start early or late, just join in; we want everyone.

And now we know why the 12-hour workers complained. They were the ones who made a deal: one days’ work for one denarius. They had negotiated a deal, so when the owner is generous, that doesn’t work for them. I wonder, how many of us think that we have negotiated a deal with God? I’ll do this for God, and God will do this for me. If I’m good, then God will keep me safe. If I give enough, then God will cure my ills and solve my problems. If I don’t mess up, then God will love me. Consciously or unconsciously, we have our deal worked out, and so we try to keep up our end. And that’s why we get upset when God’s love is given just the same to those who haven’t lived up to our deal. It’s not fair for them to be treated the same as us!

To which God says “fair? You want fair? You’ve never gotten fair and you wouldn’t want it.”

When we are generally good and when life is good to us, and when that goes on for a long enough time, we gradually forget that we are totally dependent on the grace of God. We think that we’re just working out our little deal. We forget that all our work in the vineyard of God’s kingdom is not to earn us greater rewards – it is its own reward. It is its own reward because when we are in the vineyard, we are not standing around waiting for something to give our lives meaning. When we are in the vineyard, we get to be the ones who hold open the doors and throw the welcome party. This is what we get to do every day, wherever we go: sharing God’s love, sharing God’s generosity, sharing the fruit of God’s vineyard. That’s what we get to do, and it’s such a great gig, we get together every week to do it together right here in this sanctuary, with praise and thanksgiving.

[1] Kalas, J. Ellsworth, Parables from the Back Side.