This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 24 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45, Philippians 1:21-30, and Matthew 20:1-16.
Last week Western Mass News reported on a back-to-school controversy in Lebanon, Ohio of all places. The Donovan Elementary school had posted about the ice cream social for its third and fourth graders, so kids about 8 or 9. But not everyone would get ice cream. The school explained that students with a negative balance on their school lunch account would not be allowed to get ice cream, not even if they brought money to school to purchase it. Moreover, other students would not be allowed to buy an ice cream for a friend who didn’t have one.
A lot of parents and community members reacted with outrage, sharing and flaming the post. But some went a bit further. They called the school district, offering to pay off students’ accounts. These folks, they weren’t thinking about the precedent it would set. They weren’t concerning themselves with whether the indebted students or their parents had been irresponsible to let their balances get that way. No, the community members were focused instead on what it feels like to be an eight or nine year old watching everyone else get ice cream. People like small business owner Naiyozcsia King were remembering what it had felt like to be a parent who couldn’t pay off their kids’ school lunch debts.
At the end of the day, the school took down the post and reserved its policy, but not before the collective school lunch accounts were over $4,000 overfilled. Actions, moments, like this matter. They mattered for those individual third and fourth graders who were spared shame and exclusion. These glimpses of the kingdom of heaven matter even more if they get us to ask ourselves, why does it have to be this way?
Jesus’ most powerful teaching tool, the parable, has stood the test of time because each one contains an element of surprise - a moment at which the script of what’s proper and fair and expected gets flipped on its head. If you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable that even after over a thousand years of the supposed cultural dominance of Christianity, parables like the one today still fly in the face of what “should be done.” Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of heaven still jolts us, God’s radical grace is still offensive. But I think that’s partly why we keep listening to what Jesus has to say. He’s getting us to ask, why does it have to be this way? What could the kingdom of heaven look like here and now?
The proper, expected role of the vineyard owner hasn’t changed much from the time Jesus told this parable to today. His job is to make as much profit as he can from his property. The workers are pretty much like day laborers today, too. They’re to hang around the marketplace waiting for an opportunity to work as hard and as much as they can to earn enough to support themselves and their families. But even from the start, the landowner’s behaving a bit strangely. He keeps going out and hiring more people - he even hires the rejects who are left at the late afternoon, the ones who no one else wanted. And then at the end of the day, the vineyard owner pays the workers who only worked an hour the full day’s wage. In fact, he pays everyone the same, starting with the last hired and continuing to the first.
The workers who were hired at the beginning, who worked the whole day, are greatly annoyed. Let’s pay attention for a moment to why they have said they are upset. It’s not because they didn’t get enough for their labor - they did actually receive enough, the agreed upon amount. No, the whole-day workers are angry because the landowner is setting dangerous precedents for how work is rewarded. He’s messing with their concepts of deservedness. It’s just not how it's done. It's not fair.
Whenever I preach about this parable or mention that it’s one of my all-time favorite parables, someone usually points out that if everyone paid a full day’s wage to every worker no matter how many hours they worked, then no one would choose to work a full day. I’ve had several memorable conversations with parishioners who earnestly wanted to make sure I understood economic incentives and how society would fall apart if we all followed this example.
I’ll concede we need roles, and rules, and expectations, but Jesus warns us to watch out for when the script of the way things are done cut into the fullness of our humanity; whenever our focus is turned away from the ones who are left standing there trying to make do with a tiny fraction of daily wage - whether it’s their fault or not.
The landowner refused to let his profit motives or expectations about compensation restrict his compassion and generosity. What if for this moment the workers could also have thought to themselves - I remember what it was like when I stood out on the corner and no one would hire me. What if instead of fretting about the way it’s done and the precedents this sets, or about the irresponsibility or deservedness of the late-day laborers - they simply focused on whether everyone had received enough to live, to thrive. What if they began to imagine a world, a kingdom, where that could always be true?
I thought of all of this - about scripts and precedents and teaching hard work and responsibility - when I read a Facebook post from my wise friend Nettie Pinell. Over the weekend, Nettie opened her mailbox to find a handwritten note that said, “PLEASE MOW your grass this is a nice neighborhood.”
Nettie wrote that at first she felt confused, amused, angry, and embarrassed all at once. Nettie could see, everyone could see, that her lawn wasn’t in great shape. What the neighbor didn’t see, though, was why Nettie’s lawn had gotten so scraggly. They didn’t know - because they hadn’t asked or maybe hadn’t even wondered. If they had approached with curiosity first, they may have discovered that Nettie’s husband Daniel is an Episcopal priest who regularly works six or sometimes seven days a week. They might have learned that Nettie and Daniel are raising four young children, complete with all the beginning of the school year sicknesses - and that on top of that, Nettie’s been working hard to advocate for the special needs of the eldest at his school. They might even have discovered, Nettie writes, “that we’ve actually been despairing over our grass but recently our spare time has all been spent getting a room ready in our home for a loved one who was disabled in a terrible car accident.” The neighbor didn’t know, because the neighbor didn’t ask.
Nettie knew what it would look like to fall into the well-worn roles of “a good old passive-aggressive standoff” between feuding neighbors. She also knew that she could just let it go and move on without attempting to heal or reconcile with the anonymous neighbor. But that’s not how Nettie operates. Instead, she says, “I decided to try and answer “nice” with “kind.”
In her post, Nettie explained what she teaches her children about the difference between nice and kind. “Nice is surface level. Nice is avoidant. Nice has become a mask, a false smile, a bandaid where a suture is needed.” But kind, “Kind is taking a step further towards someone. Kind is looking below the surface at the real need. But kind isn’t a doormat to walk on either - kind is telling the truth in a way that builds relationship.”
So forget your nice neighborhood, Nettie thought. What would a kind neighborhood look like instead? And how can I make it a reality?
So this is what she did. She and her kids baked batches of cookies and bagged them up and put out a card table on that lawn with a big sign on it that said, “Hello neighbors! None of us know what each other is going through or struggling with (unless we ask!) But one thing we can all use is more kindness. Whatever kind of day you are having, I hope cookies can improve it.” And then in smaller font on the bottom of the sign, “If you ever want or need to talk, just knock…coffee is always ready to go.” Nettie’s four little kids got really into inviting everyone who passed by to take some cookies and soon they all got neighbors gathering around the small table that hadn’t talked in months. Nettie’s family’s actions focused on who might be struggling or left behind, and in doing so, taught her kids and her neighbors, “if we don’t have a community we can turn to when we’re hurting, we’ve got nothing.”
There are folks who will say in response to this story, well, if everyone, all the time, let their lawns overgrow and their yards go to the birds, the neighborhood wouldn’t be a nice and pleasant place to live anymore. If everyone, all the time, just worked one hour for a whole day’s pay, how would the vineyards get harvested? If students just received free lunches all the time, what would they be learning about responsibility? What about what’s nice and orderly and fair?
Yes, if everyone stopped playing their roles, society would fall apart. But sometimes, perhaps more often than we like to admit, we can step outside the way things are done and we can break our rules in favor of kindness. When people are being left behind in the marketplace, when neighbors are struggling to get through the day, when eight year olds are sadly watching their friends eat ice cream, we can let go of “fair” and we can forget “nice” in favor of making sure that everyone has enough.
We can begin to imagine the kingdom of heaven.
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