Matthew 20:1-16
A Subversive
Vision
James Sledge September
24, 2023
Many years ago, I saw a news report about
a local fellow who had filed a lawsuit against some of his coworkers over a
lottery ticket that had won 99 million dollars. It seems that there was a group
of workers who went in together to buy tickets on a regular basis, agreeing to
split the winnings should they ever win.
The fellow who filed the lawsuit was a
member of this group, and he claimed that there was an unwritten agreement that
they covered for each other when someone was out sick as he had been when the
winning ticket was purchased. The person from the group they interviewed for
the news contradicted that, insisting that it was purely a put up your money
and you’re in, don’t and you’re not.
The lawsuit was a hot topic for local
conversation, and the TV reporter interviewed a number of people about their
thoughts on the case. Nearly all of them thought the suit had no merit. He
didn’t put any money in, so he doesn’t deserve any of the winnings. “Fair is
fair,” one of them said.
Most of us have a pretty strong sense
about what is and isn’t fair. It starts when we are very young. Small children
will object when a friend or sibling gets a bigger slice of cake than them,
complaining that it’s not fair.
The people interviewed by that news
reporter seemed to assume that the man who filed suit was trying to get
something he didn’t deserve, but if it could have been proven that there was
indeed an agreement to cover for coworkers out sick, then opinions likely would
have changed. Then the coworkers would be the unfair ones, greedily trying to
hold onto the money that had been promised to another.
I never did hear the outcome of the
lawsuit, but I assume that any jurors would have done what they thought was
fair.
Jesus’ parable today seems to raise issues
of fairness. Is it fair that people who barely broke a sweat get paid as much
as people who worked hard all day? Surely not, but then again, Jesus is not
suggesting how to handle payroll at the workplace. Jesus is telling a parable
that he knows offends our sensibilities in order to get us to think differently
about the world and God’s kingdom.
It may help to realize what prompts Jesus
to tell this parable. In the verses prior to our reading, a wealthy young man
has gone away grieving after Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give the money
to the poor, and come with Jesus. As he goes away, Jesus says, “It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is
rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
This astounds the disciples who, like many of us, think of wealth as a
blessing. But Jesus speaks of it as a curse.
Peter then reminds Jesus that the disciples have left everything to
follow him, asking what sort of reward they will receive. Jesus assures him
that they will be well rewarded, but then he adds, “But many who are
first will be last, and the last will be first.” And then Jesus
tells the parable we heard today.
No doubt Matthew has Jesus address this
parable to his mostly Jewish audience. Matthew’s community is made up of good, law-abiding
Jews who have embraced Jesus as their Jewish Messiah, but Gentiles are
beginning to be drawn to the Jesus movement, people who’ve never followed the
Jewish law like most of the members have all their lives. The parable is in
part a call for Jewish Christian to welcome Gentiles as equals.
But I think there is more to the parable, although
hearing that may require us to expand our understanding of parables. There’s a
tendency to think of Jesus’ parables as a kind of Christian fables, catchy
stories with clear morals or lessons, but they are much more. Unlike fables,
Jesus’ parables often turn the world on its head.
Walter
Brueggemann writes that Jesus’ parables are “revolutionary activities.” They
are “subversive reimaginings of reality.”[1] In
the “realities” created by human societies, there is not enough for everyone.
Scarcity is the norm, and so we must strive and be diligent, lest we find
ourselves without. This reality is so dominant, so unquestioned, that toddlers
have already picked it up and incorporated it into their worldview. And so
young children in homes overflowing with food of every sort, at no risk of ever
going hungry, are troubled when their slice of cake doesn’t measure up to their
sibling’s or friend’s.
Have you ever noticed that questions of
fairness often deal with winners and losers? We are upset if an athletic
competition isn’t fair because all the contestants deserve an equal opportunity
to win. When someone gets the job because they know the right person or because
of nepotism, it seems unfair because other people lost out as a result. When
men are paid more than women for the same work, it is patently unfair because
the women lose income they should have had. And Jesus’ parable about the
workers in the field seems unfair because those who worked all day didn’t come
out ahead of the latecomers. Their extra effort should have put them ahead,
should have made them the winners.
All of this assumes that life is a
competition with winners and losers, and in our culture, money and possessions
are the trophies that go to the winners. Our consumerist society teaches that
fulfillment comes from having more, and this requires relentless striving and
competition. There’s not enough for everyone, and so there will be winners and
losers. And if something games the outcome of this competition, well that’s
just not fair.
But Jesus imagines a world completely at
odds with ours. His term for this new world is the kingdom of God, a phrase
that probably doesn’t work as well in our day as it did in his. Numerous
updates have been suggested, the commonwealth of God, the dream of God, the God
movement, the revolution of God. But whatever you call it, Jesus says it has
come near, and he calls his followers to begin living by its ways now.
In this new world, the competition is
called off. The poor are lifted up and the rich are pulled down. Love rather
than violence is what brings this new day, a day when all neighbors matter as
much as I do, when people trust in God to provide and so do not need to hoard
resources for themselves, when there is enough for all, and no one needs to get
ahead.
Jesus’ reimagining of reality is beyond
radical. There are no winners and losers, and fulfilment doesn’t come from
having more and more. It comes from a life motivated by love, a life that is
not full and complete if a neighbor, even an enemy, is hurting or in need.
Jesus’ vision of a new reality is so
counter-cultural, so radical, that even the church has largely ignored it and
made faith about personal salvation or private spirituality. We have seen
Jesus’ vision as too impractical, too radical, and have made faith about other
things. We have made faith fit easily into cultures of greed, domination,
exploitation and violence.
But the vision is still there. Jesus’
“subversive reimaginings of reality” are still there, jarring in us in parables
like the one we heard this morning, and Jesus invites us to let that vision
reshape our lives. He invites us to be a community that lets his vision bubble
up in our lives, both our individual lives and our life together as community.
Perhaps that feels like tilting at
windmills and naïve foolishness. What impact can we possibly have in the face a
world that looks nothing like Jesus’ vision and has little use for those who
too aggressively challenge the status quo?
Then again, Jesus’ first disciples must
have asked that same question in a world that was even crueler and more violent
and less tolerant of dissent than ours. Yet their witness, their living out the
way of Jesus’ drew in more and more people and began to transform the world.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” an essay in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999.
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