God's Labor Practices

Matthew 20:1-16; Exodus 16:2-15

Would you accept work under these conditions?

·      When the job offer comes with no clear wage offer, just a broad “we’ll pay you what’s right when you’re done”?

·      When the job offer comes without any wage agreement, just a “well, go start work” directive?

·      When the employer makes it very obvious on day one that people coming in late and doing less work than you get paid the same?

 

In some cases, given the realities of our cultural and employment systems, some of us and our neighbors have worked under conditions like those.

But many of us wouldn’t. Maybe we all shouldn’t.
These are all unfair labor practices.

 

And all of them happen in Jesus’ story this morning.

A story about what the kingdom of heaven is like.

A story you and I are trained to think is about how God treats us. Treats people in general and you and me in particular.

 

This story Jesus is telling is rife with unfairness. With inequity.

 

The story may get a bit more comfortable if we treat it as an allegory, a story explaining that God gives full salvation and love to people who get involved with God late – on their deathbed, maybe – or people who didn’t really work to earn God’s love and salvation.

We still know it’s not fair, but that interpretation may make it an unfairness we can be okay with. An unfairness we can be glad of, when we remember that none of us work at salvation as hard as Paul, or Peter, or Francis, or a bunch of other “saints”. And that even saints can’t earn salvation and love. 

 

We don’t hear anything about being glad in the story as Jesus tells it, though.

We hear the controversy.

 

The way this story is structured, the way Matthew frames it with a repetition of Jesus’ frequent teaching that the first will be last, and the last, first, may be meant to focus our attention on that moment when the first-hired workers are set up to witness the unfair generosity of the employer.
The first in the field are literally last at the pay table, a set up that probably reverses what was usual for the context, and actively forces the early workers to notice that the latecomers are being paid a full day’s wage.

 

This employer isn’t just being generous with his own resources. He’s making sure everyone notices.
And – if one assumes a common sense knowledge of human nature – he’s setting up for trouble, for resentment from the early workers about how unfair the distribution of reward is, and he gets it. Gets direct criticism and complaint from the all-day workers.

The employer makes an equally direct point that the original labor contract and early workers’ personal payment is just and righteous – a standard day’s pay for a standard day’s work. And says it’s none of their business what anyone else gets paid. 

But he’s made a point of making those early laborers notice.  

And so, I think you and I are also supposed to notice.  
We’re supposed to get our sense of fairness twinged (or slammed). But I don’t think that’s where we’re supposed to stop responding to this story.

 

Jesus and Matthew give the last word to the employer: I can do what I want with what I have; accept what you have, and don’t envy generosity that benefits someone else. So I think they might want us to conclude that being mad at the unfairness is not the right way for the early workers to leave, or the important thing for you and I to take from this story. We’re supposed to go on from there, embrace what happens.

 

Which still leaves us with the question of just how this uncomfortable generous unfairness is like the kingdom of heaven.

And I’m wondering if that answer lies in the story before the controversy. And maybe after the equal but unfair payday.

I wonder if the experience of the kingdom of heaven is one where we do – where we honestly can – take up work without a contract. Take up fruitful work without any understanding of how our effort will pay us back. Take up holy work knowing perfectly well that other people get a shinier and more generous reward for less effort. 

 

And that we can do that because we’ve already seen the end of the day – the end of the day when you, and I, and everyone else, no matter when they showed up, leave with enough. With a righteous reward of labor. 

 

Because while those labor practices are certainly unfair in auto plants or architect’s offices, geology labs or grocery stores – or Episcopal Church staffing, for that matter – those are labor practices of trust in the country of God. 

 

In the kingdom of heaven, the promised land, the overlay of God’s heart on the world here and now, however you define and experience the country of God – every one of us gets enough. Every one of us can trust that we get what we need – whether that feels like too little, too much, or just right. 

 

That’s one of the points of the story of the manna that we heard today. Fresh out of rescue from slavery, on their way to the land of promise, God’s people find themselves stuck in a wilderness with no food, and their provisions are running out. There’s a real danger here. 

They go grumbling and complaining to Moses, and God hears them.  

An odd, honey-wafer sort of carb coats their whole camp in the morning, and quails appear in the evening.
And when they go out to gather food, everyone gets enough – whether they spend all day on it or a few minutes. 

Everyone gets enough - just enough for need, however hungry you are or feel – and never too much (anything you try to keep as leftovers goes bad). 

[It’s an important detail in the story, too, that God provides enough in a way that enables God’s people to follow God’s commandments, to keep Sabbath. It’s enough in a way that enables us to be cared for by God in our rest.]

 

So the first hearers of Jesus’ story would already know that God feeds the effortful and lazy or careless alike – at least when they have to depend on God to be fed.  

Some commenters suggest that this wilderness manna is a practice run for how you need to live in the land of promise, in God’s country – knowing that our enough comes from God. Not from Pharoah, not Moses, not the boss, not our own efforts. So we can work and rest, and live and love, more freely, not having to worry about whether we get a fair reward. If what we get will be enough. 

 

One of the truths of the land of promise, of the kingdom of heaven, is that God can be trusted to provide what we need. Provide for our real needs, if maybe not all our wants. Provide enough.

And it’s a truth that what seems insufficient – because we worked harder than “enough”, because others got more – what seems insufficient, is enough in the country of God. And what seemed like too much – when we saw others get it, or when we get more than we worked for ourselves – is in fact, just the enough we need, and no more. 

 

What seems insufficient – not enough work, not enough pay, not enough bread, enough fairness, enough workers, in these stories;

not enough budget for all we need for our household, our church, our business;

not enough workers for the job, volunteers for the project, not enough time to accomplish all that’s asked of us, today;

is, in fact, enough.

(Although enough – or even abundance – may look different than the way we wanted it to.)

 

And the miracle here, if you ask me, isn’t entirely that God provides, that God makes absolutely sure that you have enough of what you need from God, and so do I.
The miracle, the real distinguishing feature of the country of God, is when you and I and others deeply and confidently trust that God provides.
(Getting to that trust out of basic human nature may actually be a lot more difficult than making birds appear in a barren, rocky wilderness exactly at hunting-for-meals time.)

 

And maybe – just maybe as the vineyard workers, and God’s people in the wilderness, and you and I here and now practice living daily in that miracle of trust in God, that trust may even lead us to the place where we’re like the householder in Jesus’ story, delighting in spending God’s abundance unfairly, for everyone’s enough.