A parable is a story told in a context or setting familiar to the audience so that they can easily and casually visualize the details of the story.  As the storyteller weaves the plot, the listeners begin to identify with certain characters in the story.  The plot thickens and, as the storyteller moves the parable to a climactic moment, those listening judge the conclusion or moral of the story by the standards of their society.  Caught up in their emotions, they rally to support those standards as they await the Rabbi’s expected affirmation in his story’s concluding line.  To their surprise, Jesus would use his parables to challenge their standards and to totally reverse the accepted “right” way of seeing and doing things.  You can see why he wasn’t so popular among the Pharisees, who were keepers of the religious standards and traditions.

Often times, the gospel writer would add an ending to a parable to make it applicable to their particular congregation’s situation and needs.  Matthew adds his interpretation in verse 16: “So the last will be first and the first will be last.”  And the King James Version includes a phrase found in some other ancient texts: “for many are called, but few are chosen.”  Those comments may be true, but they weren’t a part of the original parable nor were they accurate interpretations of the truth Jesus had originally intended to convey to his listeners.  We need to keep in mind that the gospel writers didn’t understand themselves as writing to the Christian church throughout the ages, but were simply writing to one of their congregations, which was struggling to establish some sense of orthodoxy within the new, fledgling faith known simply as The Way. 

            Let’s read Matthew 20: 1-15 and listen for God’s living Word to speak to us.

        “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.    After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.  When he went out about nine o’clock, he

saw others standing idle in the marketplace;  and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.  When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’  When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’  When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual (full) daily wage.  Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.  And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’  But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

            “I will not like them, here or there. 

            I will not like them anywhere. 

            I will not like them, Sam I am. 

            I will not like green eggs and ham.”

 We don’t like this story of the laborers in the vineyard any more than Sam likes green eggs and ham, because sometimes we don’t like hearing the Good News, especially when it’s somebody else’s good news.

            Isn’t the Gospel just for those who are trying to do what’s right?  Those of us who’ve really worked hard, who’ve given a lifetime of dedication to the church, our reward is going to put others to shame.  Isn’t that the good news?  Well, I would think so!  But that’s not what this parable says.

            Now, get this: Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.  It was harvest time, and apparently the landowner was having a bumper crop, because, as the day went on, he returned to the marketplace to hire more laborers.  He wanted to make sure that he harvested his grapes at their peak.  Each time he returned, he would find a group waiting for someone to hire them.  He promised them fair wages.  That’s cool.  That’s all they could ask for.  At least they were dealing with a fair man.  Finally, at 5 o’clock, an hour before calling it a day, he went back in and found some others standing around.  “Why are you just standing around idle all day?” he asked them.  They simply replied, “No one has hired us.”  I’m sure to their dismay, he hired them on the spot, and away they went to spend the last hour of the day laboring in the vineyard.

            At the close of the day, the landowner had his foreman to call in the laborers for their pay, paying the ones hired last first, and moving down the line to those hired first.  When those who were hired for only an hour opened their envelopes, they found that they had been paid a full day’s wage.  Can you imagine the celebration by those guys?  They thought they would get enough to get them through the night.  Instead, they had enough for the next day—their daily bread (Does that remind you of a familiar prayer?).  So it was with the other partial-day workers and even the one’s who worked from dawn to dusk.  Everybody was paid a full day’s wage.

            The landowner wasn’t concerned with paying proportionately.  He knew that the “fair wage” for those who just worked an hour, or even those who had worked half the day, wasn’t sufficient to meet their families’ needs.  It was nothing other than an act of compassion that he paid them all a day’s wage. 

            Not only was it the kind thing to do, it was a complete reversal of the customary ordered way of doing things.  And you know what happens when you start changing things, especially when money and the ego are involved.  Those who had worked all day long through the heat of the day were blistered by more than just the sun.  Since the latecomers—probably people who weren’t very interested in working or they would’ve been there earlier, anyway—were paid for a full day, those hard working, diligent workers thought they would surely get a big bonus.  But they didn’t, and boy were they ticked off.

            “You call this fair?!  You’ve made these lazy bums equal to us who’ve born the burden of the day!”

            The landowner turned to him and said, “Listen friend” (and the word used here isn’t a friendly term for friend.  Three of the four times it’s used in the NT, it has a negative connotation.  For instance, it described Judas at Jesus’ betrayal).  Maybe it was more like, “Listen Pal, I’m not being unfair to you.  Didn’t I pay you what we agreed upon?  I’m here to celebrate with anybody who’ll celebrate with me, like those guys over there.  You can join the celebration, or you can take what’s yours and leave.  Besides, am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  I’ve been generous.  I’ve shown compassion, and for that you’re angry with me?”  (Literally, “you give me the ‘evil eye’?”)

            Episcopal priest Robert Capon calls this   “evil eye” the evil bookkeeper’s eye, always fixed on the accounts, always keeping score.  He says with a grin that, in the kingdom of heaven, bookkeeping is a sin.

            Now, bookkeepers and accountants, don’t take offense.  In the world of finance, somebody has to hold us accountable.  Look what happened with Enron!

But in God’s kingdom of grace, there is no minimum balance below which the grace of God refuses to forgive.  There is no debt so high that your credit is cancelled.   There is no worry over your credits because all of us live in the red, eternally indebted.  If we’re going to make it to the celebration, it’ll have to be because we were invited, not because we work our way in.

            We all know that you can’t party with the books in your hands—you’re too preoccupied with the books!  The only bookkeepers in God’s kingdom have thrown out the books and have accepted God’s invitation to put it on God’s tab.

            That’s right, you did hear me say “party.”  To many people’s surprise, the kingdom of God is a big party full of joyful celebrations, not some solemn, boring gathering.  There are plenty of Jesus’ parables that describe invitations to the party, and Jesus exemplified that lifestyle himself.  He partied with anyone who would join him.  It could be at wedding feasts with all the acceptable members of the community, or it could be in the homes of sinners and tax collectors—rejects of society.

            Jesus would have no part of a kingdom that didn’t celebrate life, even if it killed him (and we all know that it did), because he knew that his heavenly Father would give him new life, untouchable by death ever again.

            Jesus loves losers and winners alike.  He’s not concerned so much with what’s fair, but with caring for the person who needs care the most.  Those are the ones who celebrate Jesus’ love and care.  But most winners don’t want to party with those losers.  They don’t want them to even have a reason to party.

And they give you the evil eye if you even think of making the losers winners.

            We often have a deep feeling of outrage when we see people getting what they don’t deserve, thinking that we deserve more.  There aren’t many things that get us as worked up as those stories of a few people who’ve figured out how to exploit the welfare system and seem to be having the life of Riley.  The public perception that there are many such people has worked us up to the place where we’ve rewritten our welfare rules.  It offends our sense of justice.  I suspect our indignation that there might be people who are given something we don’t think they deserve creates so much dissatisfaction with affirmative action—it goes against that innate sense of justice and fair play.  These late workers are being given more than they deserve, and we don’t like it.

            John Wesley once said—and one source says the context was upon his being told that he was no longer allowed to preach at a particular church, another says that it was when he had been kicked out of a pub—whichever place it was, he said, “There are few matters more repugnant to reasonable people than the grace of God.”  Indeed, when our primary way of measuring almost everything is fairness, we lose our sense of grace.

            A preacher tells of a conversation with a mother who understood some of the graciousness portrayed in this parable.  How did she do it?  What guidelines could she offer to others in similar circumstances?  She was asked, “I suppose you loved all your children equally, making sure that you gave them all exactly the same treatment?”

            The wise mother replied, “I loved all of them, loved them greatly, but I never wanted to love them equally. I loved the one who was weak until she was strong.  I loved the one that was hurt until he was healed.  I loved the one who was lost until she was found.”

            Grace goes beyond mere equality, mere fairness.  Grace reaches out to love, not just equally, but extravagantly—to splash it here and there, wherever it’s needed.

            Folks, that’s what the Kingdom is all about.  The kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom, is driven by compassion.  If that were not true, there would be no winners, only losers, because even our best isn’t sufficient.  And if we get angry because of God’s compassion toward someone else, there’s the proof that we’re losers, too.  After all, who are we to question God’s reckless, extravagant grace? 

Isn’t it God’s to give to whom God pleases?

            To live in the kingdom of God, we must live according to the kingdom of God.  If God is driven by compassion, if the kingdom is driven by compassion, then our calling is to live so that everything we do, every decision we make about our personal priorities and the life and mission of this church is based upon our becoming a Compassion-Driven Church.

            How easy it is for us to grumble to ourselves or to others when newcomers to the church, or addicts, or ex-convicts, or people of different backgrounds and orientations receive more recognition than we who have worked so long and so hard to be good and do what is right!

            The most scornful and divisive thing they could say about Jesus was, “This man eats and drinks with sinners.  He’ll party with anybody, have fun with riffraff!”  Heaven is a party for losers.  Would you come to such a party?

            Finally, at the end of the day, when the Lord passes judgment on our lives, our only hope is that Jesus will continue to party with riffraff, drink with sinners, and love losers.