The last will be first in the first will be last. This passage we just heard read from Matthews’s gospel is not one for the human relations or personnel department; this is a reading for each one of us who is a disciple of Jesus Christ. Maybe we should start this reading half a dozen verses earlier when Peter says to Jesus ‘we have left everything and followed you, what then will we have?
Jesus has just told the rich young ruler that as well as keeping the commandments he needs to give up everything that he has, give his money to the poor, sell his possessions, then he will have treasure in heaven. And the young man went away sad. Peter asks: what about us, we've given up everything for you, what will we have? And Jesus tells the parable of the workers in the Vineyard. This isn't about fair work commission or pay scales for agricultural workers, this is about our expectations and the way that we live as followers, as disciples of Jesus.
God created people to live together in community, not to be isolated individuals. Both readings this morning, call into question much of the way that we live. The people of Israel had been happy and willing to follow Moses, to leave the oppression of the Egyptians. They had seen the plagues, daubed their doorposts with blood, and left quickly on the night of the Exodus. They had walked through the Red Sea. I am imagining that would have been a terrifying situation for many of them; first coming up against the Red Sea with the Egyptians close behind, then Moses holds out his staff, the East wind blows and they can walk across on dry land, all the time the Egyptians gaining ground.
They travel safely across, then things get a bit tough, and the hardships of the present seem more real than the hardships of the past. The people complained to Moses and Aaron saying: why did you bring us out of Egypt, we are about to die here in the desert, why not let us die in Egypt, where at least we had food to eat. They were hungry and thirsty, they had forgotten the oppression of Egypt, the crossing of the sea, and were struggling to believe the promise of God.
But God was not building a new Egypt; the people that God had liberated were to become a new nation, a nation that followed God's ways, a nation that trusted God; a nation that was guided by God; a nation that relied on God.
Bringing about change in the community is never easy. Often when we decide to make a change in our life, whether it is changing our diet and exercise habits, moving to a new place, taking up a new course of study, there comes a rough patch where it just all seems too hard, where we just want to go back to the way things were. We forget about those moments of inspiration or frustration that led us to making those changes, all we can see is the difficulty. The people of Israel were in the wilderness to 40 years during the Exodus, the implication being that this was pretty much a new generation by the time they got to the Promised Land. And in that time the people had learnt to trust God, to trust God for safety, for food, for water, for guidance.
I know many people find the Bible comforting, and it can be; but we mustn’t let ourselves be lulled by the comfort passages and miss hearing the radical call to live a life where everyone is valued; not only the rich, the high status, the healthy, everyone. The manna that was provided in the story from Exodus was enough for each family for the day. In the parable, the amount given to each worker was enough for their daily needs. When this parable was written, day labourers would go and wait at the marketplace each morning, hoping someone would offer them a day's work, because the wage for one day's work was a denarius and that is what it would cost to feed a family of the day. As happens today the fittest and strongest get chosen first, and the others get left behind and will be unable to provide what their family needs.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we say “give us this day our daily bread.” Yet for many of us, only one day’s food in the cupboard would be stressful. There are people in this city; there are people who are part of God’s amazing creation, who do not have enough for even one day. How do we work towards everyone having enough?
In the parable Jesus tells; there is an expectation that those who have laboured longest will get a greater reward, and once again Jesus turned everything upside down and says the reward that awaits you is not about how long you've served or how faithful a disciple you've been. The reward you receive from God is about the generosity and open heartedness of God. Because even if you're 95 or 105 spent every day worshipping God, never missed a Sunday at church, spent your life working with and behalf of the poor, teaching scripture in school, and working in underprivileged places, your reward is no more and no less than anyone else’s reward. And sometimes it just seems like it's not fair. But I wonder how would we feel if God treated us as we deserve?
Discipleship is not about earning God's favour; it's not doing what we have to do, so that God will bless us. Discipleship is our response to God's generosity, forgiveness, grace, new life, transformation and hope.
And discipleship implies we are working together, together with each other and together with God. Because both of these stories aren’t just about us as individuals, they are about community. In the book of Exodus, community is being formed, a community that will become a nation. The parable in Matthew is about people having what they need, of people not being envious or jealous, but each having enough, and each recognising God’s miraculous and outrageous provision.
We can't earn what God offers us, we can't pay for it, we don't deserve it. None of us can earn God’s love or grace. God doesn’t treat us fairly. What God offers us is worth so much more than we can imagine, there is no way we deserve the generosity, the love, the salvation, the liberation that we are offered by God through Jesus Christ.
Discipleship is our response to God.
How will you respond anew to the challenge of God’s outrageous generosity?
[ following thisI am using an exercise by David Lose, posted at Working Preacher
http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=510">working ]
