An Attitude of Gratitude
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Matthew 20:1-16
Philippians 1:21-30
“For the kingdom of heaven is like…” This is how Jesus begins the parable we heard read today. How many of us wonder what the kingdom of heaven is like? Or at least have an opinion about it. The book we read last month in Sweet Hollow’s book discussion group was very taken with this question and we even tossed it around a bit ourselves. While we all had ideas, ultimately, we realized that we can’t know what the kingdom of heaven is like until we go there.
Alternatively, we might be reminded that Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was to bring the kingdom here. Was to allow the kingdom of heaven to break through on earth in little pockets of resistance where Jesus’ message was taught and believed, where people heard and really acted upon what they heard. I believe that is what is important for us today. Not only that we hear the word, but that we live the word. And if Jesus was the Word, then we are called to live the lives that are ordered by our understanding of what he’s telling us today.
So what is the kingdom of heaven like and how are we to live it out on earth today? The parable begins in the familiar world of the Jewish people of the time. When harvest came round, it was common practice to hire day-laborers to work in the fields. These were not full-time employees, but people who went from town to town as crops came to fruition working as they were able, much like our migrant farm workers might today. The normal pay for a day was one denarius, which amounted to about a subsistence living. They would not get rich, but they would not starve either. These workers were hired at sun-up and were paid at the end of the day in accordance with Torah regulation and Jewish law. The first-century listener would have felt comfortable with the setting and set-up of the story recognizing the cast of characters, just as we would understand the realm of a temp office worker or a person looking for work with ManPower today. Jesus is speaking about their world and they settle in to hear what happens next in this very predictable scenario.
But what happens next is not what they would have predicted. As the day wears on, the manager of the farm would have perhaps gone down to the market one more time to see if there were more laborers for hire. But in our story it is not the manager, but the landowner who leaves his land and repeatedly goes down to the marketplace to hire more men. He goes down every two, three hours. This is unprecedented. He keeps looking for workers even as all have gone in to his fields and vineyards. The Bible tells us that each time he goes, there are more laborers waiting there. We don’t know why or how. Perhaps the word begins to spread to the nearby towns and villages. Maybe the workers who’ve not been hired for the day in those marketplaces and are mourning the loss of a day’s pay, leave them and make their way to the town of the landowner. They arrive an hour late, two hours late, five and six and nine hours late eventually walking long distances in order to get there. So every time the landowner gets to the village marketplace, there are more who have arrived and are standing about, apparently idle. Every time he hires them, agreeing to pay them whatever is right.
The end of the day comes. It’s been a scorcher, much like we’ve been having here on Long Island this past summer before these past few days of torrential rain. Even those men who’ve worked for the last hour or two have felt the heat, but those that have been outside in the burning sun all day are exhausted, sweaty, muscles aching and bodies ready to drop. The landowner tells the manager to call in the workers from last to first to receive their pay. He calls those who’ve worked an hour at most and gives them one denarius. Then those who worked for two hours and pays them one denarius. The same thing happens for the next group and the next. He pays each person who has worked for him, whether for one hour or two or five or nine, he pays each person the same amount. The amount he agreed to pay the first. Those who’ve slaved in the hot sun all day long. Now, they’ve gotten what they agreed to in the first place. One denarius was the standard rate of pay for a day’s work, so they’re not being mistreated. It only feels unfair in light of those who’ve come behind. So in reality, they’re not objecting to the pay. They’re objecting because others have been made equal to them. Others that they deem are not. They have what they have by justice. Others have gotten what they’ve gotten by grace.
How do you feel when you look at your life? When you look at how hard you work or have worked to earn what you have? Then you look at the neighbor moving in across the street or down the block who is only twenty-five and got a job straight out of school making six figures. He totally guts the house, refurbishes and refinishes it and then sells it for another couple $100,000? How do you feel when you look at the individuals in your area who are retired and presumably are able to take the day as it comes while you drive kids to soccer and swimming and Irish dancing and golf and yourself to PTA and church and work on top of that? How do you feel when you’re struggling in your relationship with your spouse while you watch your best friends who have been high school sweethearts get along through thick and thin year after year after year? How do you feel when you don’t even have a spouse or a partner at all anymore and you have to negotiate life on your own every day without any help?
I’d like to ask Deborah Verma to come up here and help me with a little object lesson…
(Pitcher, cup and bowl exercise)
How many of you can relate to the cup that Deborah was holding in her hand? Feeling a little overwhelmed, as though no matter what you do it isn’t enough even when you seem to be doing all the right things? Imagine how the first day laborers hired felt in Jesus’ story today. They’re not rich. Exactly the opposite as a matter of fact. And they were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there in order to be hired and paid for the day. They worked hard and sweat buckets under the summer sun and got the legal pay for the day. They got what they deserved, so to speak. But look at all these people that came after them. Who got a day’s pay without doing a day’s work. Now was that fair? How should those first workers feel after that?
Let’s look at the passage from Paul and see if we can get a clue. Paul tells the Philippians that he is awaiting trial and there is a possibility that the verdict will mean his death. He’s letting them know that he is not worried for himself, but wants to keep them aware of this possibility. He may no longer be around to give them guidance or keep them in his prayers. He writes, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” In other words, his life even while he possesses it, is not his own but fully dedicated to Christ and to die would mean he would be with Christ forever and therefore his ultimate fulfillment. It is not that one is better than the other, but both are the same. His whole purpose is to yield to Christ and death will complete this surrender. His struggle is that he recognizes the beauty of both.
Paul is reminding us through his own experience that what is important in life is not the external world, but that we live it for Jesus. This is not only true for him, but for the Philippians and for us today. It is easy to get caught up in the world’s ideals. Our wondrous, blessed, bounteous society here in the United States gives us great temptation to fall out of the Christian way of life. We are inundated with calls on our time, our talents, our finances. We live in a world that deifies production and consumption. If we are not producing or consuming, we are not valuable. So we work hard to make more money to buy more things to work harder to make more money to buy more things to work harder and so on. Or if we are no longer in the work force, we still believe that our value lies in our purchase power – our ability to consume. We believe that we are more or less valuable according to the amount of expendable income that we have and how we use it.
Jesus blows this whole idea out of the water with the parable we read today. No matter what their level of production, the workers all got paid the same. We with our Calvinistic, Protestant work ethic upbringings do not care for this at all. We are taught to do a good day’s work and that we will receive a good day’s pay for it. We are taught that if we work hard enough we will have all those things that the neighbors have that, if we’re honest, we admit we covet from time to time. Meanwhile, our world impinges on us with media and advertising telling us all the time that we will be happier, better, more likeable, sexier, cleaner, wiser, richer people if we will only buy their product. That our children will fit in better if they wear certain clothes or play certain sports or go to certain schools. That our relationships will be stronger if we keep our money in certain banks, belong to certain clubs, give each other certain gifts.
So does this mean that we shouldn’t work hard, do our best, and so on? No, I don’t think that is what Jesus or Paul, either one are saying. Instead, they are both talking about the motivation behind what you do and therefore, how you do it.
I’m talking about grace here. Grace is what is given the workers that come late. Grace is given to the early Christians in the town of Philippi. Grace is given to each and every one of us on a daily basis. Now there may be some circumstance in which the particularities of the case are not graceful. The payment our first workers in the parable received on that day was not grace. Grace is never grace if it is presumed, calculated upon being received. They were looking at the pay that the later workers received and calculating their value in relation to it and were disappointed when they did not receive what they deemed they deserved. Had they gotten two or three denarius for the day – or even one and a half – it still wouldn’t have been grace. Because, you see, it is only grace when it comes unexpected –then it is amazing grace.
Grace comes from the Greek word charis – it’s not too hard to figure out what other English words might come from that. But let’s even look at English words that are related to “grace.” How about grateful, gracious, gratified, gratuity, congratulations? Philip Yancey calls the word grace “the last best word” because even each of the words that are derived from it carries some glory of the original. He writes, “It contains the essence of the gospel as a drop of water can contain the image of the sun.”
If you trace the roots of grace or charis in Greek, you will find a verb that means “I rejoice, I am glad.” This is why we are here, folks, in church in the first place. Sometimes we forget and our own judgmental tendencies kick in – okay, let’s admit it, most of the time we forget and our own judgmental tendencies kick in. We, like the early laborers in the field, forget that God’s grace has been given to us, too, and that we are to rejoice at the ones who come later.
Remember this parable begins: “The kingdom of heaven is like:” Matthew is trying to help Christians understand themselves as belonging to a community, so that no decision is purely personal and individual. His perspective calls for Christians to understand their lives as being lived in the light of the present and coming kingdom of God, which represents a reversal of cultural values rather than their confirmation.
We live in a world that lacks grace to the nth degree, or a world that is, shall we say, filled with ungrace. Corporations, the military, the government, schools, sports franchises, businesses, every institution, even the church at times insist that we earn our way. That we work hard to achieve their goals and aims, whatever they may be. Our cultural definitions of beauty communicate ungrace. We live in an atmosphere of ungrace: a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, look-out-for-number-one world.
While grace, God’s grace, the grace of being loved and forgiven no matter who you are or what you’ve done, comes free of charge with no strings attached to all those who don’t deserve it – and I am one of those people. It is precisely because we are recipients of this grace that we are free to be loosed from the bonds and constrictions of this world. We are free to step away from the production and consumption game and step into the gratitude game. We are free to say, “I choose not to be overwhelmed by the life that twenty-first century America tells me I have to have and instead to walk in the way of Jesus Christ. I choose not to put my child or children in every extra-curricular activity that comes along and run myself ragged getting him or her or them to every game and lesson and meeting, but instead to be together at 6:00 p.m. and share supper sitting down at the table together at least two or three times a week. I choose not to spend every waking hour at the office so that I can get that promotion so that I can make more money so that I can spend more time at the office making more money, but instead be home twice a week to watch the sunset with my wife or husband (and that’s getting earlier every day, folks!). I choose not to complain about what I don’t have, but instead to recognize all the bounty that I do have. I choose to see every person I meet with the eyes of Jesus Christ – or even better, I choose to see every person I meet as Jesus Christ and offer him or her the honor, affection and time that I would if it were Jesus in front of me speaking to me.
We have been granted a free gift of grace, people. Oh, there may be places in our lives where we are the laborers that showed up at dawn, but there are far more where we’re the ones who’ve showed up late and are still granted all the benefits of the early birds. We just have a tendency not to see it. I challenge you this week to open your eyes to the grace in your life and to let it flow through you as an attitude of gratitude. I want to close this time together with another illustration. Ron, will you come help me this time, please?
(Pitcher, cup and bowl exercise but with things we are grateful for)
I believe this is Jesus’ lesson, Paul’s lesson for us today. That we are not to live our lives as the first workers who were only able to be overwhelmed by their responsibilities, but that we are to live our lives with an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude for grace that we have been freely given – each and every one of us each and every day in the love and forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ – overflowing gratitude. May that gratitude be the dominant attitude that imbues our lives. Today, tomorrow, from now on. Amen.