Matthew
16: 1-20 September 20,
2020 Rev. Peter Hofstra
Jesus’ parables are colloquial. That means he uses illustrations familiar to
his audience. It also means it can feel
unfamiliar to us, two thousand years later.
In this morning’s parable, Jesus is describing a day laborer economy, a
cash economy. American jobs come with
I-9’s and W-4’s and a ton of paperwork before we even start day one.
Still, this cash economy is typical
to many immigrant communities here. At a
given location, workers and employers will come together. Someone needs three guys for a certain job,
with a certain skill set. Connections
are made, guys are hired, family is supported for the day, and there it
is. We may frown on it, but for many,
this is how they know they can support their families.
Thus Jesus’ parable begins. The vineyard boss picks up a crew at 6am,
12-hour day, 6-6, for the standard day’s wage, a denarius, like we talked about
last week. There is more work than this
crew can finish, so the boss goes out again at 9 and 12 and 3 and finally at
5pm to pick up more workers. The day
ends and it is time to get paid. The
boss starts with the crew who came at 5pm and pays them for one hour what he
agreed to pay those who worked for 12 hours.
Everyone gets the same no matter how long they worked. The 12-hour shift crew, paid last, figured
they would get paid more for the greater time they put in.
Then they grumble when they are paid
the same, as per their agreement before 6am.
The boss has a compelling response.
We agreed on a wage, it is my vineyard, my money, I will do with it as I
please. Why are you complaining? Are you jealous? You have a problem with that?
I do have a problem with that. It is not fair, in a culture that measures
wages on an hourly basis. Same work,
different rates of pay. Sounds like the gender
gap in salary, men averaging 30% than women to this day. Sounds like a company trying to replace union
workers with cheaper non-union employees.
And if this was a parable about faith and employment, I would have a
huge problem.
But Jesus is talking about the
Kingdom of Heaven-as he does in a lot of parables. What is the Kingdom of Heaven? It is the result of the Plan of God,
fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Starts at the resurrection, completed on the
Last day, overlaying all of history, already here but not yet fulfilled. But there are complaints before it has even
come to pass.
It seems to be a question of how
much glory will we receive in the Kingdom of Heaven? If someone has been with Jesus the whole
time, and somebody else shows up to accept salvation on their death bed, it is
the same salvation? How is that even
fair? We have been here the whole time
and all of a sudden we have these strangers just showing up. Have we not earned more due to
longevity? The people who have been
believers for the long haul, they are suddenly joined by people who have come
to the faith at all different points of their lives. With all different kinds of life
experience. They come from all different
kinds of backgrounds-including a lot that were REALLY sinful. The reaction is one of envy.
Jesus’ response? Deal with it.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. It doesn’t matter if you have sixty years or
sixty minutes in the faith. Salvation is
salvation. The Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t
pay by the hour. There is one agreed
upon wage, eternal life. If you are a
cradle to grave Christian, born and raised, confirming Christ in your life or
you sin and frolic and squander the years that you have been given, accepting
Jesus at the very end, you shall also receive eternal life. Because that is how the plan of God works to
establish the Kingdom of Heaven.
In theological terms, this is called
God’s election. God calls us. Sometimes at the beginning of our lives,
sometimes at the very end. The call to
come to Jesus, and in turn to offer our hearts to the Lord, it can be at a
young, middle, or old age. There are
some who go to church their whole life but only respond to that call late in
life, if at all. That is God’s plan,
beyond our understanding. This is why
the Invitation we make each week is structured the way it is. Coming to Jesus for the first time? Have you been on the edge for a while? Same prayer.
It happens in God’s time, not our own.
Thus the Kingdom of Heaven is like
God who has elected us at all different points in our life. Jesus speaks to a community that is jealous
of all the new people coming in. It
might have been all the tax collectors and prostitutes that Jesus was always
having dinner with. It might have been
members of the leadership who the disciples saw threatening Jesus one week and
now asking his aid in the next. This is
the story of every community that has known profound change.
I ran into this at a funeral service. Our Lady of Czestochowa is a Roman Catholic
church on the way into S. Plainfield from 287.
It is named for a famous representation of the Mother of Jesus from
Poland, a church established to serve, what was at that time, the predominantly
Polish Catholic community. Change has
come. Now, this church is focused on the
Vietnamese Catholic population to reflect that change over the last
generations.
The
funeral was for an old-time member of the Polish community. The friend I was there for talked about the
difficulties the church had gone through in its evolution. It lived out the parable Jesus told. Here were people who’d been in this church
their entire lives, doing things meaningful to them, and they felt themselves
pushed to the margins by all these ‘newbees’.
We know about community evolution
here in Perth Amboy. In 1685, Scottish
immigrants and their pastor washed ashore.
By the Revolution, Anglicans made it a loyalist city and the
Presbyterian meeting house stabled British horses. Neighborhoods in this town, like the Budapest
Neighborhood, were named for their immigrant communities. In this congregation, remember Sue
Niemeira? She was the last connection to
the Slovak Presbyterian Church that existed in town. Things continue to evolve. Have you heard the stories of the signs put
up in the airports in Puerto Rico to “come to Perth Amboy”? Drive through town now, see the Peruvian, the
Dominican, and the Mexican influences.
Newbee after newbee after newbee.
That is the Kingdom of Heaven
reflected here on earth. I have heard sermons
on this parable that focused only on the new Christian, someone who had just
come to Christ. So the first crew are
those who have been Christians all their lives and it is the new converts, with
different expectations, that are threatening the status quo. There is truth there too. It can be difficult for mature Christians to
adapt to a bunch of newly enthusiastic “wet-behind-the-ears” Christians eager
to turn the world upside down.
But that is not the only ‘new’
group. This Kingdom of Heaven
encompasses people of different theological points of view where, who often
reject each other as, at best ‘different’ or, at worst ‘erroneous’. Some have no concept of the confessional
nature of the Presbyterian Church and would dismiss it with “I believe the
Bible”. As if we did not? We Presbyterians DO believe in the Bible, a
belief honed in history, from the second century’s Apostle’s Creed to the
Westminster Standards of the sixteenth century to the Belhar confession written
in the 1980’s at the of apartheid in South Africa, with all the lessons and
learning and devotion and worship and blood, sweat, and tears that came in
between. See all the different kinds of
people that can be tossed into the melting pot of the Church?
This is all going to get
straightened out when the Kingdom of Heaven is fulfilled. When Jesus returns, on the Last Day, at the
Final Trumpet, in the Twinkling of an Eye, all the differences that we perceive
will fall away and we will all stand together as Children of the Living God,
co-heirs with Christ to the promises of salvation.
Until then, the work of offering our
hearts to the Lord includes building that Kingdom of Heaven. It is already here, but it is not yet
fulfilled. We need to open our hearts
and our minds to accept that we too can fall to the prejudice against ‘new
people’. We have been here since the
earliest morning, they come midmorning?
At noon? In the afternoon? At day’s end?
Our call is to see them as fellow believers, as fellow members of God’s
elect, as fellow workers to spread the love of Jesus Christ to a world in
need. It is not to see “them”, it is not
to see those “newbees” as competition.
Therein
is the expression of offering our hearts to the Lord. We will welcome all to join who come into
this Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.
While that is a grand and wonderful statement of universal love and
welcome to make, it exposes many tendencies of the sinful life that have crept
into our Christian community.
Because the world is a dangerous
place. Not to acknowledge that is
naïve. For example, on Sunday mornings,
the Market Street door stays locked during Sunday worship because I do not want
persons unknown getting into the church behind us as we worship and count,
gathering in Jesus’ name. I am all about
trusting the Lord, but it is people that make me worry.
This parable could easily become a
biblical bat with which to beat on us in this church for not adapting to the
community around us. We know who is
here, we know who lives in the community around us, we know there has been
great change during our lifetimes in Perth Amboy.
Instead, this parable causes me to
grieve. How much of the joy of being a
Christian is never celebrated because focus on “newbees” is that they are
different, not gifts to expand the horizons of our faith? In the Kingdom of Heaven, we have tasted of
the love and joy and forgiveness that come in Jesus. Christianity is a life lived in Jesus,
something that continues to grow and renew who we are into the wondrous beings
that God has planned for us to be. It is
the invasion of sin that takes our eyes off the prize. Instead of seeing someone coming into our
midst as a gift from God, someone to be taken in, sheltered, helped as we are
able, sin turns our vision inward, to holding onto what we have, to seeing
‘them’ as suspicious interlopers to our piece of the Kingdom.
It is the other reason we have a
prayer of confession. It is not just to
ask for forgiveness. It is to have God
remove the blocks from our lives that hold us back from living into the true
joy of the Kingdom of Heaven. When those
blocks are down, we can worship with a spirit of Joy for all who are in the
Kingdom. We can touch the Hand of God
and truly know how all things are possible.
It is to know that the new brother or sister in Christ is cause for
celebration and not suspicion. For a
time, we can shed the fears and prejudices and judgements that seem hard-wired
into our beings and we can taste what it will be like when sin is finally
banished from the Kingdom and we can truly enjoy God forever.
Amen
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