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Here the Last are Equal to the First

            The early summer rains flooded many homes in southeastern Wisconsin without proper flood insurance – homes that now need thousands and thousands of dollars to repair or replace that their owners cannot afford. Teachers and families of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq are losing their homes to foreclosure. But not Peter Tubic. He’s the guy in Milwaukee fined four years ago for parking his van without license plates. When he didn’t pay the city sent him reminder notices. When he didn’t pay the city sent inspectors to his house and each time added another fine. When he didn’t pay after 15 notices the city filed a tax lien on his house. Finally, when he didn’t pay, the city foreclosed on his home this summer. But the judge stayed the order to give Tubic one more chance to explain. With the help of pro bono legal counsel he cited several reasons including that he’s been disabled since 2001 when he began caring for his dying parents and psychological disorders make it difficult for him to understand directions. A benevolent local businessman felt sorry for him and paid the $2,697.10 fine. Does that seem fair? This guy receives special treatment, makes no effort to remedy the situation, and beats the system because of a generous benefactor while teachers and soldiers are losing their homes. Jesus tells a similar story today in the parable of the generous landowner, hoping to adjust our standards of mercy for others even as we become a bit less casual about God’s mercy for us as the Peter Tubics of the parable.

In God’s kingdom

            “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.” The kingdom of heaven is not only a place of eternal life up in the sky but every place God’s activity. The term means “how God works,” and in this parable where Jesus compares God to a generous landowner we notice the main operational principle of God’s kingdom: mercy. In Jesus’ day landowners grew grapes and needed extra workers at harvest time, so they’d hire freelance laborers. Well, Jesus can’t even speak the first sentence or the parable without telling us about God’s mercy as a “landowner who went out.” God’s mercy seeks, explores, initiates, goes out to find and doesn’t demand that worthy recipients show up or shape up first. That mercy, unworthy sinner, has found you.

            “He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day.” A denarius is a generous day’s wage and Jesus mentions it as a standard of comparison in the parable. The landowner went out “about the third hour and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’” God’s mercy sees “others” besides those his mercy has already saved. It is always looking for someone else, some troubled soul who doesn’t yet believe, some disillusioned 27-year-old who has drifted from church, someone “doing nothing” because no matter how busy or important a person is, there’s nothing to a person’s life without God’s mercy. This group of laborers doesn’t bargain for a contract but simply accepts the promise from the landowner that he’ll pay them “whatever is right.” In activity that teaches us how persistent and pleading God’s heart beats in mercy, Jesus tells us that the landowner, “went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.” He went out at 6 a.m., 9 a.m., Noon, and 3 p.m. and still the landowner wanted more laborers in his kingdom with whom he could share his generosity. At 5 p.m., with only one hour left in the work day, “he went out and found still others.” He went out. He went out again. He saw others. He found still others. God’s mercy will not give up on you no matter what you have done or how often you have done it. God’s mercy calls you no matter how ashamed you feel, hiding behind your fears. God’s mercy sees your hurting friend or child no matter how far they live from you. God’s mercy finds people who are not interested in finding him. He goes out. He sees. He finds.

            In the parable the work day ends at 6 p.m. and so all the workers show up to receive their paychecks. The foreman gives paychecks first to the workers hired last, at 5 p.m., and “each received a denarius.” That’s the same amount promised to the workers hired first, twelve hours earlier at 6 a.m., so they expect to receive perhaps twelve times more! They’ve already spent the jackpot in their heads when the foreman gives each a denarius. “They began to grumble against the landowner, ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us!’” In God’s kingdom of mercy, the last are equal to the first. Does that seem fair? Let me help you think about that by asking you a question …

In your heart

            How do feel about professional athletes who make as much in a single game as you make in a year? Do you think it’s unfair? From a reasonable viewpoint considering professions and their value to society, one could conclude it’s grossly unfair that Michael Jordan earned $160.97 per second playing for the Bulls in 1996, or that A-Rod and Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees each make over $20 million a year. But ticket buyers, TV watchers, and team jersey wearers have created a different standard of fairness for professional athletes which isn’t fair according to standard logic but is fair within the economy and operations of professional sports. It’s a different, independent standard for fairness.

            “Don’t impose your limited standards of fairness on me!” the generous landowner reprimands the 12-hour workers. Using a derogatory term for “friend” more like, “Hey, buddy,” the landowner explains to one of them, “I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go.” The 12-hour workers were in it for a denarius according to their agreement. So the landowner gave it to them. The other workers were in it because they were just happy to be there, and they trusted the landowner’s fairness (especially the one-hour workers hired at 5 p.m. in the afternoon, probably because no other landowner wanted them!)   To their surprise, he thought it was fair to give them more than they really deserved.

            So what are you in it for? Why are you here today? What is the purpose of your prayers? What do you expect from the payments you put in the church offering envelopes? What’s the goal of your promises to Jesus? Does your standard expect to be rewarded for how good you are, or wait to be punished for how bad you are? That’s not how God works. That’s a standard his mercy doesn’t know. If you want to use that standard then God says, “Fine, take your treatment for how good or bad you are. And leave. You have no part of me because I don’t know that kind of fairness.” God’s mercy operates with his own independent fairness expressed in the words of the landowner to the grumbling workers, “I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” Two times in two statements the landowner says, “I want.” Nobody is imposing this standard of fairness on God! God wants to act in his way of fairness, and his way of fairness is mercy. God wants you to trust in his forgiving mercy that accepts you because of what he has done. “It does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Romans 9:16). God wants you to take what he gives as the precious price to make you right with him. “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

            I know, some of us look like we’re last. Others of us feel like we’re last. Others of us have been told from little on that we’re last. And some of us are actually last on the quarterly sales report or the medical test or GPA spreadsheet, or last to be picked for every team. But God doesn’t know it. God’s mercy doesn’t know last. In God’s mercy you are first. Because Jesus became last for you and took your worst shame, worst guilt, worst fear, and worst suffering. Mercy says there is no last place and no second place, only first place. In God’s heart you are first place … and he doesn’t want to be second place in yours.

In our church’s mission

            Adam, a 13-year old with autism, is over six feet tall and weighs 225 pounds. When at church he has struck other children, nearly knocked over elderly worshipers, and he spits, urinates and fights when being restrained. The church filed a restraining order against his parents. The case made the papers and prompted other churches to respond with stories of their own. For example, a church in New Brunswick, New Jersey revised its service to help an 18-year-old young man with autism. The worship service used to start softly and build, but to accommodate his comfort level they now start worship with a bit more noise. Another church in Minneapolis has trained some members to work with 13-year-old autistic twins while their mother sings in the choir. The stories make me think about how merciful we are at Grace.

            You will run into people everywhere looking for mercy, but the church attracts more people more often looking for mercy and hoping to find it here. Thank you for showing your mercy in this church. Thank you for the kind word after the service to somebody you didn’t know – they were looking for mercy and they found it in you. Thank you for folding bulletins in the church office, volunteering in our new staffed nursery, organizing Oktoberfest, singing in the choir, leading a Grace Group, working in the coffee shop, entering computer data … thank you for setting up, fixing up, and cleaning up. Because of your service, somebody looking for mercy found it, in you. I do need to say, though, that so many people come here looking for mercy we can’t help them all. And we can’t help all the people already here as much as we’d like. So if you’re not involved in some role or task in this church, please volunteer. You can help extend the arms of Jesus even wider in mercy to others.

            You might be surprised that Jesus spoke this parable not to a bunch of snobbish Pharisees but to his own disciples. His own weary, worried disciples would soon watch him suffer and die and wonder if they’d done something wrong. They’d soon be responsible for taking the gospel to the world and wonder if they were worthy of such a task. Jesus’ reply to them is his message to us: if there’s one thing wrong with God’s mercy, it’s that it is way too generous. Well, he won’t hear any complaints from us who need lots of it every day. And neither will we hear complaints from those with whom we share it.  Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on September 14, 2008

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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