HELLO!

For those who missed our funeral service for Ernie Nauffts, here it is: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ4ovRJZt65CSKSBVHLs1VvnlssQmJCfKXM7 The most moving part for me was Dodie and Jerry’s duet, “One Day at a Time”. This morning Dodie heard her brother Harold, who lives in Ottawa, had died. Please keep Dodie and Karen in your prayers.

Sunday’s service will focus on Matthew 20:1-16, the parable about the wages offered to the workers in the vineyard. In summary, the landowner pays each of the workers the same wage in total, despite the fact that some workers labourered more hours than others. The defence of the landowner? The offer of the wage was honoured, the worker received what they were promised. But the grievance remains, why would one worker labour many hours, another only one hour, and be paid the same?

How many people are bothered by this parable? Our sense of fairness is disturbed. Even though those who worked from the early morning got exactly what they were promised, what they agreed to, which was a good wage. The context of this reading, what we haven’t heard just before it, was Jesus and the rich young man, who kept all the commandments and was doing everything right, and he asked Jesus what else he had to do. And Jesus tells him to “sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” And the young man goes away grieving, because he had many possessions.

What we “have” is important to us, and important to Jesus’ disciples. Peter gets worked up and says, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus reassures him when the time comes, they will be taken care of. But he can tell they are missing the point. So we get the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. Michael Green in his commentary on this parable puts it like this, “The landowner goes out repeatedly to seek labourers. They are hungry, unemployed, and as the day wears on, increasingly hopeless. He cares about them. He wants to give them a job to work and a reward.” Then we get the payment. Everyone who works gets the same thing, a day’s wages. The order in which people are paid is a zinger, paying the last first, so that the early arrivers see what they are given. Part of why our sense of fairness is put off here is that we instantly identify with the laborers who have been out in the vineyard the longest. Here is Michael Green again: “Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fisherman and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God.”

Luke compares God to a shepherd who abandons a flock of ninety-nine sheep in order to find one lost sheep. God’s grace, God’s justice, is not about “fairness” as we demand or are hard-wired to accept. All God cares about is every last person in the marketplace finds a spot in the vineyard — the early bird and the latecomer, the able-bodied and the infirm, the young and the old, the popular and the forgotten. When the workday is over, what concerns the landowner is not who deserves what. All he cares about is that every worker ends the day with the dignity and security of a living wage. “Are you envious because I am generous?” asks God.

Amazing grace. Peace, Kevin