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Sermon - The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 21st September 2008
St Aidan’s West Epping 8.30 am
Readings:Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus had an impossible task. He had to explain to simple people, the nature of the Kingdom of God.
God’s kingdom is very different to worldly kingdoms. It has different standards, different values and even today, as we read our gospel reading we struggle with God’s justice and God’s forgiveness. When Jesus talked about love, he had to redefine it because God’s love is not like human love. When it comes to forgiveness, God’s understanding of forgiveness is very different to ours.
When it comes to justice, to deciding what is fair, God’s approach is so different to our own. So its no wonder the disciples struggled to understand God’s kingdom and what it would be like. In these chapters of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is addressing the issue of who can be a member of God’s kingdom. In the previous chapter, chapter 19 verse 13 we have Jesus welcoming the children who come to him.
We are familiar with the phrase “Children should be seen and not heard.” But is Jewish society the children were invisible, they were not even seen. They were treated as if they didn’t exist. So when these children approached Jesus, the disciples were very unhappy about it. They wanted the children gone. They saw that the children had no right to be there at all.
But Jesus pointed out the exact opposite. Not only should they be there, they also demonstrated qualities of the Kingdom. If you’ve spent much time with young children, you will be aware of their willingness to show both trust and love. They give these things so willingly and freely. These are true kingdom qualities – trust and love. I remember a few years ago I was teaching scripture to a year 1/2 infants class. One day as I approached the classroom for their lesson several of the children were in the playground also walking to their classroom. As we walked along together several children reached out and held my hand as we walked together.
It was a simple gesture but it was typical of what children are like. So rather than sending the children away, Jesus pointed out that children of all people, were more likely to demonstrate qualities of the kingdom. And they are a great contrast to the man who appeared next. We are told that he was young and he was rich. Rich people in Jewish society were always given great honour and great respect. Here we have a rich man approaching Jesus – Jesus, who had virtually nothing.
The rich man asked what he needed to do to be a part of God’s kingdom. “Eternal life” is just another way of talking about the same thing. People might have expected Jesus to jump up and give proper respect to this rich man. Rather, Jesus pointed to the commandments. That would be a good place to start. But the rich man brushed this suggestion to one side.
“The Commandments – I’ve done all of that.” What else do you require?
Jesus said he should give all his wealth to the poor, and then become a follower. That got the man’s attention. His status, his wealth, would give him no advantage. You can’t buy the Kingdom. The disciples were shocked; if the rich can’t get in, what hope would they have? They failed to grasp the strange set of values that come with the Kingdom.
The Kingdom is not what we might expect. And its hard for us to understand the Kingdom. So Jesus teaches us the Kingdom through stories and analogies. So the qualities of the Kingdom are demonstrated in the trust and love shown by children.
The generosity of the Kingdom is demonstrated in the parable of the vineyard. This is a very straightforward story but it is regularly voted the most unpopular parable Jesus ever taught. The story is simple enough. And notice Jesus opening words to it.
He starts by saying ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like’…this. If you think about the Kingdom, if you are wanting to be a member of this kingdom, if you are longing for the coming of the Kingdom, well, just be aware, the Kingdom is like this. At the beginning of the day, 6.00am the farmer hired men to work in his vineyard for a full day and he would pay them a denarius. This was the standard practice.
People were hired on a daily basis, particularly for seasonal work like this in a vineyard. People were expected to work from sun up to sun down. And the standard salary was one denarius per day. There are no surprises here. But then the farmer goes out again at the third hour – that is, 9.00am and seeing some men available, makes them the vague offer of work and he will pay ‘whatever is right.’- whatever that means. Then he went out again and did the same thing at noon, and at 3.00pm and at five o’clock. The last ones hired would not even complete an hour’s work. Then came time to down tools and be paid. And he began with those who were hired last. Amazingly they were paid a full day’s wage of one denarius. Those who were hired first began to speculate on how much they would get. “If you get one denarius for one hour, how much for working twelve hours?”
I don’t have a calculator, but it sounds like a lot. So you can imagine their disappointment when they too received a denarius which was what they had agreed to at the start of the day. But they were envious because the farmer had chosen to be generous to the other workers. And there are a few things to note here. First we see our natural tendency to compare ourselves to those who have done less than us.
We don’t feel comfortable comparing ourselves with those who work harder. We don’t compare ourselves to those who are worse off. Those paid a denarius don’t compare themselves to workers on other farms who might have worked just as hard, but weren’t paid as much. No, their only concern was over those who had only worked an hour but had also received the denarius. We can be tempted to do the same thing over money.
People tell us Australia is a rich country and our first reaction is to say we aren’t that rich, and then we compare ourselves to someone like James Packer, or Bill Gates. They are the rich ones – not us! But we don’t compare ourselves to the poor and starving in Zimbabwe, or those who suffer persecution in Tibet. Because, when we compare ourselves to them we begin to realise just how rich we really are. We try to justify ourselves by who we choose to compare ourselves to. But in the Kingdom of God there are no comparisons. We are all treated equally.
No matter what we have done in the church, no matter what we have done for our faith, we are all treated equally. Now sometimes we can feel quite comfortable with that. We can feel its alright if God treats everyone the same.
I am happy to enjoy the benefits of the Kingdom along with others no matter who they are. But then one day, we discover that God has freely forgiven someone who has hurt us or someone close to us, that God has accepted someone we find completely unacceptable.
Then suddenly we protest. We consider ourselves better than them. We consider we deserve more than them. We can become angry with God when we discover he loves the unlovely, he forgives the unforgivable. That’s when we discover we find it hard to accept the standards of the Kingdom.
Its easy to read this parable and be critical of those workers who worked during the heat of the day until the day comes when we believe we are the ones who did the hard work, when we are the ones who endured the heat of the day, and then discover, these others are being treated as generously as us, that they are loved as we have been, that they are forgiven as we have been forgiven, and we conclude its not fair. We become envious because God is generous. And its then we discover just how hard love can be, just how hard forgiveness can be and we don’t want to love like that or forgive like that.
But this is the quality of the coming Kingdom, this is the power of the Kingdom, this Kingdom turns the world upside down. The natural order will be the reverse, the first will be last, and the last will be first. Rulers will be brought down and the humble lifted up.
The hungry will be filled with good things but the rich will be sent away empty. The weak will come before the powerful. The wise will look foolish and the simple will be blessed. We need to understand the coming Kingdom because it doesn’t work the way the world works. Its all back to front. We need to be prepared for it. We need to have these Kingdom values as our values.
We need to love like God loves, to forgive as God forgives, and in doing that we too will share in all the blessings of the Kingdom, knowing the riches of God, and the forgiveness of God and ultimately the love of God.