I want to begin this morning with something I read that expresses where I am, where I think so many of us are today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the news some nights, and I listen to reports about COVID\u2026I also watch our beautiful western states burn. I watch Black lives and blue lives being taken unjustly. I watch fear-mongering and listen to \u2026 brazen lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s all so…heartbreaking.<\/p>Cameron Trible, \u2018Piloting Faith\u201d, email on September 16, 2020<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s my question: in these days of heartbreak, how do we find joy? How do we respond to whatever the day brings? Every day is a basket of occasions; every day has threats and opportunities and invitations to praise. Jesus\u2019 parable of the vineyard workers is about a day when some grumbled, and some laughed. Can we join the laughter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s start with the end and work back to the beginning. Imagine these workers going home; what do you think the conversations were like? Think of the last first. All day long these sat around the dusty corner where day laborers gather. They talked, hoped, gradually gave up. They saw friends get work but they never did. Then, at the last moment, at the moment when they were hopeless and just avoiding home where there wouldn\u2019t be anything to eat, this amazing chance. Five o\u2019clock!\u2014and a guy comes looking for help picking grapes. Who cares what he was offering to pay? Something is better than nothing, anything is better than nothing. So off they went to the vineyard, hoping for just a little, maybe some gleaned grapes. Imagine their surprise, imagine their \u201cit can\u2019t be true\u201d joy when they walk to the pay table and the manager hands them a whole drachma, a day\u2019s wage. I wonder if their eyes widened, I wonder if one by one they slunk away, thinking the guy must have made a mistake, wanting to get away before he figured it out. Think of them grinning as they walk in the door at home and someone looks up, eyes questioning. Think of the grin as they hold out a whole drachma, enough to pay for dinner and breakfast tomorrow both. Imagine the hug and the laughter, the serious laughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now think of the first hired. Tired, hot, dirty after a long day in the fields. Farm work started then as it does not at dawn. They were smart to get down to the corner early, and their smarts was rewarded. A full day\u2019s work but more importantly a full day\u2019s pay, just as agreed. I wonder if they felt a little smug, seeing others who didn\u2019t get to work until noon or later, knowing they wouldn\u2019t get full pay. So imagine their anger, their grumbling, when\u2014impossible!\u2014the manger starts handing out drachmas to everyone. \u201cHow was your day?\u201d, their families ask, and the answer is grumbling about the unfairness of the vineyard owner and the pay tossed on the table. Which home do you want to live in? Can we choose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go back to the beginning. It\u2019s September; well, I know it\u2019s September here but in this story it\u2019s September too: that\u2019s the grape harvest. You know what September is like? One bright, warm sunny day immediately followed by thrashing rains and cold temperatures. Harvest is a crisis because grapes all get ripe at once, the vineyard is ready now, and if you wait, even a day or two can mean you missed the moment. So this vineyard owners goes out at daybreak to hire some day laborers. Every farming community has a corner where these guys hang out. He finds a group, he contracts to hire them for a day\u2019s wage, a denarius, paid as a drachma, a standard coin. So they go to work. Imagine the owner working with them, correcting some of them, helping and realizing it\u2019s not going to be enough, there aren\u2019t enough of them. So at noon he goes and hires more. The same thing happens. He\u2019s getting more frantic so he goes at mid-afternoon, hires more and as the evening starts still more. These others don\u2019t have a contract, he just tells them to trust him, he\u2019ll pay what\u2019s fair. They know they aren\u2019t working a whole day, they\u2019re glad to at least get a few hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the day, the owner\u2019s tired but he\u2019s happy; the grapes are picked, the vineyard is harvested and he makes a decision. He tells his manager to pay everyone, and to start with the last hired first. This is really the central point of this parable and it\u2019s why Matthew, the only one to tell this story, has it here. It\u2019s connected to the spiritual facts Jesus preaches, that God doesn\u2019t play by our rules and that the last are going to be first. So the laborers line up, just as ordered. And the manager starts paying them: one drachma for you, one drachma for you, one drachma for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t take long for them to figure out what\u2019s going on. I wonder what the guys at the end of the line, the ones hired first, who worked all day, thought as they saw these others get paid. Day laborers lived day to day and a day\u2019s pay meant just that, they got through the day, they had enough to eat for the day. One day for you, one day for you, one day for you, on and on the pay goes until the first hired, the ones who had a contract finally get to the head of the line. Did they assume they would get more? Wouldn\u2019t that be fair? What do you think? They worked all day, they bore the heat of the day; on the other hand, they agreed to work for\u2014one drachma, one day\u2019s pay. And that is exactly what they get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost\/A \u2022 September 20, 2020 Matthew 20:1-17 I want to begin this morning with something I read that expresses where I am, where I think so many of us are today. I watch the news some nights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Serious Laughter and the Evil Eye - Finding joy by facing the day with gratitude","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[257,237,254,106,26,256,255],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","tag-fair","tag-grace","tag-gratefulness","tag-matthew","tag-parable","tag-parable-of-the-laborers-in-the-vineyard","tag-thanks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}