Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to Exeter Congregational United Church of Christ on September 19, 1999, the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Exodus 16:2-15; Jonah 3:1-4:11; Matthew 20:1-16

Take what belongs to you and go.
    -Matthew 20:14

     All right now, who was paying attention? These three readings: the manna in the wilderness, the second half of the book of Jonah, and the parable of the laborers in the vineyard - what is the one thing that all three of them have in common?

     Complaining! Yes! Grumbling! They all feature grumbling. The Israelites grumble; they miss the fleshpots of Egypt. Jonah grumbles; he thinks the Ninevites got off too easy. And the laborers who worked all day grumble; they're jealous of the laborers who got the same pay as they did for a lot less work.

     Grumbling is by definition something that we do not do. It is a thing that is only done by other people. We do not grumble. We point out the unfairness of the situation. We offer helpful suggestions. We draw attention to mistakes and problems. Thank goodness we are not whiners like those other people.

     Somebody, I forget who, said that all the sins of the human race can be boiled down to just two: conceit and comparison. That's intriguing. I'm not sure I agree that those two between them cover the whole waterfront of possible sins. I do think comparison covers a pretty good stretch of it, and comparison is at the root of all this grumbling.

     The Israelites compare the life they have in the wilderness with the life they used to have in Egypt. They have wilderness, freedom, a promised land waiting for them, and a God who travels with them. They used to have a home, security, familiarity, and the luxury of being victims - not to mention fleshpots, whatever those are. They prefer what they used to have and it sours their appreciation for what they do have.

     Jonah compares mercy with justice, as applied to the people and animals of Nineveh, that great city, and he prefers justice, whereas God delivers mercy, so he is unhappy.

     At the end of the day the workers who started at dawn and worked till dusk compare their work and their wage with the work and wage of the workers who stood idle all day and didn't start work until an hour before the sun set, and they are unhappy too.

     I compare my circumstances with those of corporate C. E. O.'s and investment portfolio managers and people born to privilege, and my outraged soul cries out for justice, which God does not seem to be in any hurry to deliver. Last year we actually stopped making annual contributions to our seminary, even though we believe strongly in its work and mission, because of the obscene salaries it pays to its money managers. We got tired of waiting for God to do the right thing and strike them dead with a holy thunderbolt.

     We often pray for justice. It's fun to pray for justice. A long time ago we used to get paid, but not enough, for saying prayers at the graduation exercises of a certain élite, expensive and well-endowed institution of higher learning. O Lord, ruler of the universe, we would intone, We beseech thee to pour down thy holy righteous wrath upon these arrogant snits! Burn away their ingratitude with thy white-hot flames! Boil them in their own fleshpots! In thine infinite love, strip them naked and redeem them! Thy will be done, not ours! Amen!

     I still think about that, as you can plainly see, and wish we'd had the nerve to actually do it just once. Not that we would have had the chance to do it twice.

     I'm not really sure what it was that restrained us. Cowardice, certainly, but I think it's more than that. Two additional factors come to mind. One: Unfortunately, comparisons work in both directions. It's fun to think of God redistributing the goodies when we compare ourselves with cats who are fatter than we are. It's not so much fun when we imagine how we look to the 99% of the human race who are less so.

     But secondly, and I think even more importantly, pleasurable as it is to dwell in the lush meadows of resentment and contempt, it inevitably occurs to me while I'm doing so that God must have given me this life, limited and unsatisfactory though it is, for some other reason than to spend my days complaining about it. To put it more succinctly, I can hear God telling me to get a life.

     God says this sort of thing more loudly to me than to folks who really don't seem to have been given much of a life at all, the truly poor and helpless, whom God actually encourages to pray and hope for justice. But I am not called by God to compare myself with either the truly poor or the fabulously rich. I am called to live my own life, on pain of discovering down the road that I've not lived it and won't get another chance.

     Go and work in my vineyard, says the landowner, and I will pay you whatever is right. Would you accept an offer like that? Day laborers might not have much choice. But what's right? Equal pay for equal work? Of course. But if you only get the chance to work for one hour in the day, and one hour's pay isn't enough for you and yours to live on for one day, then what's right?

     Take what belongs to you and go, says the landowner to the grumblers. But what belongs to me? What belongs to you? There are so many ways of looking at it. I could say that what belongs to me is what I am entitled to, regardless of whether I actually possess it. I could say a lot of things belong to me but I got snookered out of them by the greed of others and the unfairness of the system, and I'm going to sit here and pout until I get what belongs to me.

     Or I could say what belongs to me is all my accumulated assets and possessions, regardless of whether I deserve them. Or I could listen to these Scriptures, and if I did I would have to conclude that what belongs to me is neither what I'm entitled to nor my actual estate, but rather what this parable calls the usual daily wage.

     How much is that? you ask. And the only answer you get is: It's enough. Like the manna in the wilderness: no matter how much you grab, all you have is enough for you for now, no more, no less, and it doesn't keep. If you try to save it, it rots.

     This isn't so obscure and mysterious, is it? Manna is today. Manna is the present. Manna is the fact that you are you, and you are alive in this world of wonders and woes for this moment right now. That is the only thing that is yours. And, says the landowner, What are you going to do with it? What are you doing with it?

     Jonah knew exactly what he wanted to do with it. He sat and felt sorry for himself and waited for God to see the light and destroy those nasty Ninevites as they so richly deserved. He really knew how to have a good time, that Jonah.

     But then, as we heard, the Lord made a couple of appointments. First the Lord appointed a bush to come up over Jonah and give him shade from the heat of the sun, which Jonah appreciated. Then the next day the Lord appointed a worm that ate the bush and killed it, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head and he wished he was dead.

     The appointed worm never fails to come along, does it, and take away whatever you thought you could take for granted? You know that, and you know you have to deal with it. It's what brings you here. The appointed worm could take over your life, you know it could. And you figure maybe it'll help if you hang out in a place with other folks who know it too and are looking for the strength and wisdom to do something about it.

     When you come right down to it, a church is a place where people get together and help each other to adopt the attitude of taking nothing whatever for granted except the grace of God which makes possible this one moment in which we live right now: this manna, this appointed bush. We have a word for that attitude. We call it faith. And faith is priceless, but it's not all profit. It's also loss: the loss, the surrender, the rotting, the shedding of everything except to treasure God's grace, love, and purposes: nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. But that loss is freedom, and I say thank God for the appointed worm which brings us together here to be set free. Amen.