a sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 20A/Lectionary 25]
Matthew 20:1-16
Here’s a question: have you heard of surge pricing? Or perhaps you know it by its more official name of dynamic pricing? Surge pricing is the practice of charging more for particular items or services when merchants know that demand for them will be high. Airlines and hotels began doing this with airfare about 40 years ago and we have come to expect it in those industries, but two articles I ran across in the past week say surge pricing soon will be everywhere.[1] Clothing, concerts, groceries. You want a beer when you’re out with the guys on an ordinary Tuesday night? That’ll be $5.00. During a slightly busier evening that same beer will be $6.00. In fact, some pubs in England are adjusting prices for pints by the hour!
But there’s been an outcry. Some consumers claim that this method of pricing and charging people for things is unfair (just ask Taylor Swift fans) but, as a matter of fact, surge pricing is how business has been done for most of human history. The price tag, which affixed a set price to a set item for every buyer over a long period of time, was not invented and put into widespread use until John Wanamaker and Rowland Macy used them in their stores in the late 1800s. That is, we have Wanamaker’s and Macy’s Department stores to thank for the price tag, believe it or not!
All that aside, despite our disappointment with it all most of us are comfortable with some fluctuations in what things cost. Money that we spend is ours to control, even when it feels unfair. But money that we earn? That’s an entirely a different story! That had better be fair. Surge earning is never allowed. It upsets the whole system when people are paid the same for very different work, or when they’re paid differently for the very same work. That’s essentially what all these ongoing strikes are about, from the auto workers to the actors in Hollywood.
That is the issue of this parable Jesus tells his disciples about the workers in the vineyard. I’m not sure that even the fanciest economic theories can explain what’s going on here. It makes so sense at all in terms of basic human justice and fairness and equity and the landowner might just have a strike on his hands. It really leaves us scratching our heads, especially when Jesus says this is what the reign of God is like, I think most of us, including Jesus’ original disciples would have a very different concept of God’s reign, a concept where things shake out fairly. In this vineyard, no one seems to get what’s coming to them.
When I was a boy and then a teenager and then college student my dad would often wake me up early on Saturday mornings about this time of year and take me off to his parents’ tobacco farm to help with the tobacco harvest. Called “priming tobacco,” this was back breaking work that involved walking, row by row, through a whole field of the crop, and pulling leaves off of the stalks, and then tossing them onto a tractor sled. It was sticky, hot, buggy, and to pick the leaves you had to walk bent over, which made you sore. It was so intense, in fact, that we started in the dark hours of dawn so that we’d be done well before noon and out of the heat.
Once all the crop was in for the day, all the workers would stand around drinking Pepsi and Dr. Pepper out of glass bottles and snacking on nabs my Maw Maw had made the night before. And then my aunt would walk around and give all the laborers a wad of cash for their work in front of everyone else. When I was young enough to drive the tractor through the field she finally doled out some cash to me, but I always wondered what the people picking the tobacco had gotten. It looked like more. I’d try to look over their shoulders and count their bills, even though it was none of my business. A few years later, after my first time walking through those sticky and wet leaves, I realized the pay was more than double what the tractor pay was.
In the parable that Jesus tells, the landowner makes everyone’s pay everyone’s business. The first workers that the landowner hires in the parable stand around drinking their Pepsi and snacking on their nabs as they watch their landowner hand everyone down the line the same exact wad of cash. It would have been one thing if the landowner had gone in some order of longevity. The ones who’d sweated more, gotten dirtier, who’d had a greater chance of getting injured on the job, had reason to think that they’d be rewarded and sent home first.
But instead the landowner starts with those who had most recently arrived. Those who were called in to the vineyard at the eleventh hour, which is where we get that phrase from—kind of meaning “at the last minute”—get their wages first. These are workers who had barely broken a sweat. Although the parable doesn’t say so, we may even assume these are workers who were rumored to have been not quite as skilled, which would explain the fact they were still standing idle late in the day.
What the landowner is doing is arranging his payroll in order to teach the first workers a lesson—a lesson about grace and abundance and generosity. It would have been yet another lesson to the disciples that God kingdom in Jesus flips this world’s schemes and plans on its head in so many ways. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
So much of what makes our societies function are systems of merit. Broadly-speaking, those who are privileged with intellect or beauty or definitely athletic skill find themselves first in so many ways, to say nothing of those who are privileged by race or gender or ethnic background. And, sad to say, systems of privilege creep their way into communities of faith, as well. We find ourselves listening a little more to certain voices, or certain perspectives that may have seniority or influence, which is not altogether a bad thing until we also let it inform how we value people and how we treat them.
Maybe this is why Jesus tells this controversial parable at this point. Not too long before this Peter makes a point to remind Jesus just how much he and the other eleven had placed on the line to follow him, as if they get first dibs on whatever Jesus will be passing out later, as if Jesus didn’t already know. And just after this parable the mother of James and John, two other disciples, requests that her two sons sit in positions of authority when Jesus comes into his kingdom. Jesus tells them that positions of authority and honor are not his to grant. It’s like this issue of being first and having privilege is really on their mind at the moment, and they want to make sure that when it comes to God’s promises and God’s forgiveness and love their hard work and their commitment and their proximity to him will not be overlooked.
Are these things on our minds? Do we as people of faith instinctively place ourselves first—or if not necessarily first then at least in better places in relation to where others are standing? Politically- or socio-economically-speaking do we favor ourselves and those who’ve responded in faith like we have? What would it look like if we reflected the landowner’s kind of grace in all of our relationships? What if we remembered the last are first, if we viewed our fellow human beings not as people who’ve somehow earned their worth but in the way the landowner does—that all are equal? That God is creating a system where we all stand on equal ground?
In Jesus, we discover God reverses all of these orders of merit and honor and teaches us the uselessness of constantly comparing ourselves with everyone else. God calls everyone to be a part of his work staff—regardless of who they are or where they’ve been or what they’ve done or what baggage they may be carrying—and receive the riches of the kingdom. And God wants all the workers to see, but especially the most privileged, just how inclusive and radically generous God’s kingdom is designed to be.
And it is all because the One who called us freely puts himself last. Jesus can say this line over and over, which he does, about the first being last and the last being first because he is preparing to wind up last of all. He goes and stands at the very end of the line, mocked and abandoned, the worker left out and never called, so that none of us will ever endure that alone. And then he pushes us forward to receive the surge of God’s unconditional love.
About a month ago it was our 7 year old son’s baptismal anniversary. Over the years Melinda and I have tried to be intentional about reminding our kids of their identity as God’s children on the dates of their baptisms. We’ve not always been as consistent with them as we would have liked to have been, but the dates are always on our family calendar, and on most years Melinda will try to make a cake. We’ll take time to look at a photo or two of that day.
Well, Jasper was really into it this year, so we didn’t have to be. He requested a red velvet cake from Melinda, who had to go out and buy the supplies. He told me he should get his favorite meal, so I had to make chicken curry in the middle of a busy Monday evening. He walked into his gymnastics class and announced at the top of his voice, to a bunch of perplexed faces, “Hey everybody, it’s my baptismal birthday!” There was talk of presents and other gestures of honor and favoritism. He was really milking this for all he could!
At one point that evening after he mentioned that he deserved some other kind of treatment we were standing in the kitchen and I finally asked him, “Jasper, do you know what your baptismal birthday means? Do you know what we’re celebrating and remembering today?” At that point he turned around, walked over to me from across the room, threw his arms around my legs and looked up at me and said, “I have no clue.”
Praise be to the God who always makes a big deal about us, who never bases his love on how long we’ve believed, or how many times we’ve gone to church. or how many lunches for the homeless we’ve packed, or how many Bible stories we’ve memorized. Praise be to the God who showers goodness on us even when we don’t have a clue, when all we can do is turn and come to him. Praise be to the God who sends us Jesus, who believes whole-heartedly in surge loving.
Amen!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
[1] The rise of surge pricing: ‘It will eventually be everywhere’ | Financial Times (ft.com)
Said Another Way 