You also go into the vineyard.
We had only recently joined a large downtown parish in Austin Texas with our three young sons, when the Rector invited Sey and me to consider teaching the 3rd grade Sunday Morning class. I wasn’t at all sure this was my ministry. I taught all week at the university and wanted something away from my daily teaching responsibilities. But the Rector was persuasive, the other couple who would share the role, was delightful, and I knew that teachers were needed. So Sey and I began teaching these young children in a temporary walled off space in the basement at St. David’s Episcopal Church. Our first few Sundays were chaotic. The children were energetic and we soon realized that we had to have more than a couple of plans to engage them. Some Sundays were more successful than others, in terms of having the children actually participate in the lesson.
But I soon realized that I was really enjoying church. I looked forward to this time with the children and seeing where they would take the story or experience we were offering. As I relaxed into the joy and the spontaneity of this gathering, I saw that my relationship with God was growing and I was learning alongside the children. I had no idea when I began this adventure, that my work with these 8 and 9 year olds would so inspire my creativity, so draw me into wanting to explore more deeply the stories in our scripture, and so enliven my own journey with God that, in no small measure, it led me to be here with you today. Jesus says, “You also go into the vineyard.”
In our reading this morning from the Gospel according to Matthew, we hear another parable from Jesus. Parables are not set in vaulted places of worship. They occur in the daily life of the people. They are about day in and day out stuff (yeast, seeds, working in the fields, lost sheep) that would have allowed Jesus to connect with his listeners. But parables are never mundane. Rather they are often extravagant. They are intended to open our view of the world to a radically different way of seeing and to bring forth the scandalous quality of God’s love.
The parable begins, “the kingdom of God is like…a landowner went out early in the morning to find workers for his vineyard.” If we are listening carefully we immediately know that this is a story that will be different. The landowner has a manager, but yet it is the landowner who goes out early to find workers for his vineyard.
He finds a group of workers and makes an agreement with them to work for a certain amount of money—the usual daily wage. The workers agree and head to the field. This would normally be the end of it. The landowner has hired those needed to accomplish the work necessary for a fruitful (successful) harvest. But the parable continues.
The landowner once again goes out and finds workers in the marketplace, “standing idle.” And this time he sends them into the vineyard and tells them he will pay them “what is right.” (dikaios translated from the Greek it can also be translated, “just,” “fair,” or “proper”)” He will pay them what is just. Around noon and again in the early afternoon he goes out and once more tells those he finds to go work to the vineyard. Finally, the story tells us that the landowner returns to the marketplace one last time just before the workday ends. When he finds more workers, he asks, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” To which they reply, “Because no one has hired us.” The landowner sends them to the vineyard as well.
Over and over this landowner goes in search of workers who are unemployed—standing idle—without work. And over and over he sends them to work in his vineyard.
Did he not plan properly for the number of workers he would need to harvest?
Does he suddenly realize he needs to quickly harvest his grapes that day before bad weather sets in?
We don’t know. We hear nothing of this, only that the landowner continues to go out into the marketplace looking for workers and when he finds people without work—he sends them into his vineyard. He gives them work to do.
The importance of work is something that most of us know from our life. Whether the work we do causes us to leap from our bed each morning in eager anticipation, or whether we go out of a sense of obligation, work gives us meaning.
It allows us to take the gifts we have been freely given by God and put them to use in ways that expand our vistas and hopefully contribute to the lives of others in ways both large and small.
It is where we learn much about ourselves and how to be in relationship with others. It can teach us humility and faithfulness as we learn how to cope with early struggling steps.
It can teach us perseverance as we face and learn from our failures. It teaches us resilience as we grow in our abilities and rise to find our own footing with pride in our successes and measurable accomplishments. And it develops within us a deep sense of purpose as we see the results of our labors reflected back in the lives of those whom our efforts have touched.
Work matters.
Life is better when one has work to do and our society is better when all of us have the chance to contribute our gifts to the good of the whole.
And I believe God needs our work. God needs all of us to give fully who we are and what we have –to build up the kingdom. In a reading in the ninth chapter of Matthew, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” God needs all of us. God needs our gifts to be put to use in service to God and to God’s creation whether in our professional life earning a living wage or as gifts we share freely with others. There is much work to do and each of us has something important to contribute that only we can give.
God has given us a place to give our gifts. God comes looking for us. And when we are found, God invites us to the vineyard. God knows the power of having good work to do that fills our life with purpose and reminds us of who we were created to be. Each of has something that is needed in the world, something that will bring us joy and offer goodness to others.
Every Sunday morning here at Crissey Farm, we gather as Grace Church to worship God and celebrate the importance of this community in music, prayers, stories, and fellowship. This time together happens through the gifts of many.
Some of the work is obvious. Everyone delights in Sara’s playing and Chris’s leading our gifted choir in song. Acolytes help lead the service and ministers offer the Eucharist and prayers for healing. People from our community lead us in reading scripture and prayers.
And there are many whose work is not as obvious, but whose contribution is essential to our celebration of God’s love in community. People who create our bulletins so all may participate fully in our worship. People who prepare our sacred space by setting the altar, arranging the flowers, adjusting the sound system so all can hear and engage in the words of scripture and prayer, and laying a table of abundance for our time together in fellowship.
Other gifts are offered that welcome our children into this community of love and invite them into an exploration of our faith in Jesus Christ.
Beyond our time together on Sunday mornings, our work continues. In Gideon’s Garden the gifts of planting, watering, harvesting, and mentoring are invited. We meet together in small groups to open up our scripture, share books and conversation, and recount our stories over meals together.
Persons give of their ability to compose beautiful prose and poetry in sharing the good news of our community with all who live near and far.
And as we come to the fourth and final Community Dinner we have listened carefully to the needs of our neighbors—young people in our community who need a friendly face and a listening heart, immigrants who offer themselves in service and long for a partner who will help them find a welcoming place in our community, and those who live alone and hope that someone will check in and let them know that they have not been forgotten.
In the parable, the landowner first offers the early workers a daily wage. The next called he promises to give them “what is right or fair.” And finally, the workers who come to the vineyard at the end of the day are simply offered the opportunity to work.
When the landowner asks his manager to pay the workers —
he tells him to pay first those who came last to the vineyard. And when these last workers are paid, they receive a full day’s wage—a sum that could be considered generous under the circumstances.
As each worker comes forward, they too receive what is right—what is just—they receive a full day’s wage. But the workers who have worked all day grumble because they believe that they should receive more than the others. Because they see themselves as having borne the heat of the day and its burdens– their concern extends to the landowner having treated all equally. They have witnessed the landowner’s generosity and so have learned their own economic lesson: the point is not that those who have “get more” but those who have not “get enough.”
This parable speaks to the nature of God. God is generous to all. God cares that we have the wages we need to feed ourselves and our families, God cares that we have a safe and warm place to sleep for the night. God cares about our here and now—on earth. This is God’s love. And we who follow Christ are charged with acting as God acts, with generosity to all.
So we who live in a time when not all who are called into the field and righteously fulfill a contract receive what is right—receive a living wage. We who live in a time when there is not enough good work for those who are prepared and willing to take it. We who live in a time when our creation cries out for our attention and our stewardship. We who live in a time when there are many children to be loved, elders to be visited, transportation systems funded that will carry people to work, to medical appointments and to food pantries, We know that there is much work to do. “You also go into the vineyard.”
Where is God calling us to work? God continues to go out and search for each of us. God places a call on our heart and it is work that only we can do—because only we have the gifts and the need to work this day in this place. God invites us all to labor in the vineyard. Each of us bringing what we have, sharing what we can, inviting others to join us, responding to real needs in God’s vineyard.
Through God’s generous grace, may we daily seek to do that one thing that only we can do to love and serve God and our neighbors. We never know the potential of God working in us to transform the world, until we accept his offer of work. “You also go into the vineyard.”