Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 22, 2002
Exodus16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-20

I. INTRODUCTION

I was once a Domino’s Pizza delivery guy.

I had the blue and orange hat and shirt. The blue pants. The red pizza bag. And for a summer in college, I drove the streets and avenues of Albany, New York delivering pizzas. It wasn’t bad work, though sometimes the hours were long. You learned a lot about your city. Where all the shortcuts were. You learned how you could usually leave your car running on the street and it wouldn’t get stolen. And you learned that your tips varied widely depending on where you were delivering to. And we all knew it. (Be careful in your tipping–the drivers are paying attention!)

There were some addresses that were renowned as good tippers. The drivers would congratulate each other if they got sent on a run to one of those. And there were the ones renowned for being bad tippers. If ever anyone pulled a delivery to 42 Mountain View Terrace, all the other drivers would usually laugh. A small cheese pizza (back then we called them small–not medium–calling a small a medium was a Pizza Hut thing), a small cheese pizza was $5.80. The woman at 42 Mountain View Terrace would come out into the driveway with exactly five dollars and eighty cents–if she had to use pennies to do it.

And while there was a certain humor in her predictability, at the same time, you couldn’t help but think, “C’mon lady–I’m workin’ here! I’m killing my car prematurely so that you can have your stinkin’ pizza and you can’t even spare an extra 20 cents and give me six bucks?”

Now of course, I was getting paid. I was earning a wage for my labor. The tips from customers were a gratuity, a bonus. I was still earning by the hour–albeit not very much.

As anyone who has ever worked at a job where you’re paid by the hour, you keep good track of your time. It’s the main difference between salaried employees and hourly employees. Salaried employees get the same amount of pay no matter how many hours they work. Hourly employees get paid for the time they put in. Every hour you work is worth a certain amount. The more hours you work, the more you get paid. If you have to work more than the set 40 hours a week–or on a holiday, you get paid overtime. . It’s only fair.

We all feel that we are deserving of just compensation for the effort we spend.

II. THE TEXT

And that’s why this parable of Jesus’ as found here in Matthew is so discomforting. Some day laborers are hired by a wealthy landowner to do a day’s work. They are told they will be paid the day’s wage. This happens all the time, by the way. You can go to places all around the city and find men, mostly Hispanic, mostly immigrant, standing around waiting for someone to come by and offer them a day’s work. That is what is happening here. The wealthy landowner goes out into the marketplace, finds some men, and gives them a day’s work in his vineyard. Later on at various points in the day, the master goes and recruits more workers. Even at 5 o’clock, he recruits more workers who work only an hour. But he pays all of them a day’s wage. Those who had been there since the morning complain–we’ve been here all day and you pay us the same as them. The vineyard owner simply states–you got paid what I promised. What do you care what I do with my money.

III. FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE

Well, we do care what employers do with their money, don’t we? We have minimum wage laws. We have wage-parity laws. Laws that prevent different wages on account of race, gender, etc. We have the Fair Labor Standards Act which requires payment of a minimum wage. We have trade unions that collectively bargain for wage equity. We believe in justice.

As a lawyer, I had occasion to represent two women in two different cases involving wages. Each had come to this country to work as a domestic for an international worker, an employee of the UN or the International Monetary Fund who was from her home country. Each was promised a wage under a contract. Each worked long hours, without days off, for years on end. Neither was paid what they were promised. One was “given” money that was deposited into an account she did not have access to and that her boss did. A few hundred dollars over 2 years. The other was “given” money that she was told was sent back to her home country–amounting to about $1000. Over nine years.

There was a righteous intensity to the way I litigated those cases. Cases of involuntary servitude. Slavery cases. Those of us who worked on these cases, along with the non-profit organization, the Institute for Policy Studies, felt that we were on the side of right. We were going to get these poor women what they were owed. And our allies–the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Maryland and New York versions of the same–allowed for stiff penalties. Double and treble damages. Justice demanded fair compensation for all that work and we were determined to get it for our clients.

IV. EARNING UNMERITED GRACE

And it is with that sense of justice, that sense of fairness that we turn again to this parable. And we find our sense of justice turned on its head. My father is a teacher and is active in the local and state teachers’ unions–and he hates this parable. He thinks it’s completely unfair.

For there is a sense that we the readers and the day-laborers have that while the newcomers have somehow been recipients of the master’s grace, those who began early have earned their wages. It is entirely possible that Matthew included this parable to address older Christians, Jewish Christians, who had been pious and faithful their entire lives and were watching Gentiles enter the Church and be promised grace. We feel the same injustice as we read this parable: “Hey! We’ve been doing all the work–this whole time. We’ve been earning our keep and these guys show up and you just give them money? How is that fair?”

Well, there’s just one problem with that–who says we earned anything? The interesting thing about this parable, is that nowhere does it say that the master went out in the morning and selected all the available laborers. In fact, the first workers are called, but they are not the only workers available. The others are still there. The master goes back later and gets them. In effect, even those first workers were chosen–they did not earn their wage. They, too, had been recipients of grace.

Those of us who have been in the faith our whole lives can be tempted to think that somehow we have earned the grace has given us. We might concede that the ones who came to faith late had received grace, but us, well we put in our time.

We live in a meritocracy in many ways. The benefits we receive in our lives are often due to what we have done. We write good papers and take good exams, we get good grades. If we get good grades, we get scholarship money. The higher we place in our class, the better the internship and job opportunities are. The better the job or the more we work the more money we make. The faster we deliver our pizzas the more tips we get. All of our benefits in this life are tied to what we do. They are the earnings of all our hard work.

And we are tempted to think that we can earn our salvation. That if we do the right things, say the right things, believe the right things then God will owe us. God will have to grant us eternal life.

But God is not like that. God’s grace cannot be earned. God’s grace is unmerited–like the manna that fed the Israelites in the desert. Indeed, were we to try, we could not possibly do enough to earn the grace of God and the gift of eternal life. The point of the parable of the workers is not that some have earned and others have received grace, it’s that all have received grace. The early workers did not earn their wages because they had worked all day, they got their wages because God had chosen them to receive.

V. RESPONSE TO THE GIFT

And so it is with us. We benefit from God’s grace not on account of our merit. Not for what we do. Or what we think. Or as hard as it is for us to imagine, for what we believe. God’s grace comes to us freely. In fact, the word “grace” comes from the Latin, ‘gratia’–from where we get the words ‘gratis’ and ‘gratuity.’ God’s grace is not merited or earned but given as a bonus. Something extra. And unlike the woman at 42 Mountain View Terrace, God gives abundantly and generously without thought as to cost.

Now, this still leaves a lot of us anxious. Because if we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s grace, where is the incentive to do anything? Where is the incentive to show up at 6 o’clock in the morning and work all day in the vineyard? And there is a certain point to that objection–if you can’t earn it–why try? But is any of us good because he or she fears hell? Is any of us good because he or she desires heaven? Or rather are we good because we desire to do what God asks of us–to respond to the gift of grace already given. It’s a liberating feeling. Our Christian work changes from being a job to being a vocation–a calling, a task we are happy to fulfill. It is our joy to spread the message of the love of God when we realize that we have earned nothing and have received everything.

And so we respond as anyone who had received a gift of great value would: in praise and thanksgiving. What we are doing here tonight is thanking God for what God has already done for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are not here earning our way into heaven. We are not punching the clock for the wages of grace.

We are here in response to that grace that has already been shown to us. That grace that we seek to embody in our lives and in our witnessing to the One who has done so much for us already. Freely, freely we have received. And in our worship, in our devotion, in our acts of justice and compassion to others, freely, freely we give.