The Fallacy of the Bootstrap Gospel

Matthew 20:1-16

“That’s not fair!” It’s something cried out in the playground every day.

“That’s not fair.” Something mumbled at the dinner table when brother gets a bigger piece of the much loved lasagna, or when sister gets a smaller piece of the much disliked broccoli.

“That’s not fair” words tumbling out of the mouth of a student who slaved over a paper only to learn that another student got an extension.

“That’s not fair” thrown about in the breakroom when talking about another person’s promotion, perhaps one you felt you deserved.

To quote my father, and I would guess most of your father’s “Life is not fair.”

Only, we expect it to be, don’t we? We expect to get from life what we put into it, and we expect others to be rewarded the same way. That is part of what our American, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, mentality runs on; the premise that if we work hard enough, do the right things, then we can all arrive at the same destination.

And perhaps that’s what makes this morning’s teaching so displeasing, uncomfortable, down right yucky. I have even heard that there are people who avoid coming to church on the Sunday this story comes up in the lectionary. They dislike it that much!

Jesus is teaching, talking really, to his disciples and he again picks up this theme of the kingdom of heaven is like. . .

We’ve heard these phrases, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.

-the kingdom of heaven is like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep.

-the kingdom of heaven is like a woman searching her whole house for one coin.

- the kingdom of heaven is like yeast

- the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field.

Here we get the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning. . .

With all of these kingdom of heaven phrases we have a tendency to take some literal interpretation. God is the landowner, we are the servants. God is the shepherd we are the sheep, God is the woman we are the coin (or perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch)

There is a huge problem reading these passages in this manner. Not one of these parables, in fact not all of the parables put together, actually describe the literal kingdom of heaven. Not one! Not all! Parables are comparisons, they are stories, and they are used to illustrate an idea, a concept that we really have no words to describe.

When we say March came in like a Lion and out like a Lamb, do we literally mean that the beginning of the month of March started with a lion coming down the streets and ended with a lamb walking away? Of course not. We mean the weather was rough at the beginning and calm at the end.

That is what parables do, they explain an idea or concept, not the actual kingdom of God. A picture is worth a thousand words, and parables give us a picture, a glimpse into the upside down, tables turned kingdom of God.

There was a landowner who went out in the morning to hire workers in his fields. And right off we have something that should cause us to pause. Landowners didn’t hire their workers, managers hired the workers. What was this landowner doing out in the marketplace looking for workers himself? That’s odd. His HR person should be holding interviews for him.

He finds workers, agrees to the normal day’s pay for a normal day’s work and sends them on to his fields. He’s a just landowner, he doesn’t try to cheat them; he agrees to pay the daily rate, not more, but certainly not less. The workers agree and go on to their jobs.

Later in the day the landowner goes out again and finds people waiting for work. I don’t know how many of you have experience with this, but growing up in Lubbock, Texas I remember groups of men, usually Latin American men, would gather outside of the local hardware store that my bus drove past on the way to school each morning. Construction foreman would pull up in their company trucks and load as many workers as they needed into the back of the truck, with promises of a day’s pay.

Driving home past that same hardware store there were occasionally still people standing around at 4pm. They looked tired, desperate, some older, some more frail, but still waiting for someone to hire them.

This landowner goes out at 9 am and hires a group of workers and agrees to pay them what is fair, or right, or just. Then he is out again at noon, then three with the same offer. And then at 5 pm he goes and finds people still waiting to be hired and says “Why are you here not working?” And they respond “Well I slept in too late.” “Well I didn’t feel like working this morning.” “Well, my parents didn’t teach me how to fill out the proper paperwork to get a job.” “Well I’m freeloading.”

No; they respond “no one has hired us.” Plain and simple. They have been waiting for a job and none has been provided. And so the landowner sends them on for the last hour of work. He doesn’t even promise them a fair wage, just an hours’ worth of work. But an hours’ worth is better than nothing, and so they go.

An hour later the owner calls to his manager (he has a manager, so why was he hunting down workers) and has him gather the workers to be paid beginning with the last and going to the first.

Everyone who has lined up for kindergarten or concert tickets or Black Friday specials knows that this is NOT how things are done. First come, first served. But that is not the way this landowner chooses to act.

The last shall be first, it didn’t endear him to his workers then, it wouldn’t endear him now.

They workers begin receiving their pay. Those who worked an hour received a day’s wage. The gossip spread to the back of the line. “If they worked and hour and got that much, imagine how much we will get.” They begin to think. And as they received their wages, their faces fell. They received a day’s wage for a day’s work.

It was exactly what had been promised. They had agreed to it in the early hours of the morning. But now it was not enough. Now they felt cheated. Now they felt taken advantage of.

Why? They made a contract and it was honored. Why feel put out, angry, cheated?

The landowner replies “Why are you upset? I paid you what was due. Are you envious because I am generous?”

Yes

Yes, they are envious. And yes we often are as well. It isn’t so much that other people get things from God that we don’t get. It’s not that they got more or better rewards. The problem seems to be that they got the same, and they don’t deserve it.

That’s the issue these workers have. They did the work, so they deserve the day’s wage. The other’s didn’t do as much, as hard, as good what have you work and therefore shouldn’t get the same things.

It’s not that they have been cheated, they got exactly what they had originally expected. It’s that others got the same amount. “You have made them equal to us.” Is their response.

Dr. Ira Brent Driggers, an Associate Professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary puts it this way “Even the workers hired early in the morning . . . roll out of bed unemployed. But the owner finds them and gives them work. I imagine they were, no less than the nine o’clock hires ‘standing idle in the marketplace.’ Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t working. There was no real livelihood prior to the owner seeking them out. But by the end of the day they seem to have forgotten this. Or maybe they never really understood. What is clear is that, come payment time, they are thinking only in terms of just reward. Pay must be commensurate with the hours worked – as if the work itself was not the real ‘reward.’”[i]

The workers do not recognize the gift of grace they have received in order to have work in the first place. They have become convinced that they are being treated unfairly because other’s received the same amount. And so the landowner asks “Are you envious because I am generous.”

Rev. Doctor Emerson Powery says the landowner’s question, “Are you envious because I am generous?” (verse 15), is the translation of a Greek idiom which literally translates as “Is your eye evil because I am good?” An “evil eye” (ophthalmos poneros) suggested a deeper problem than meets the eye. As Jesus taught earlier, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy (ophthalmos poneros; so, if you have the “evil eye”), your whole body will be full of darkness” (cf. 6:22-23). In this account, the “evil eye” was the opposite of generosity (e.g., jealousy, greed, stinginess, etc.).[ii]

Viewing someone else’s good fortune as our demotion is ridiculous at best, and evil at worst. We have not earned our place as children of God, we can’t do that. It is grace, a gift, unmerited favor. Yet there are those who would act as if they somehow deserve their standing with God. I think that Matthew shares this parable to remind us that whether we are 7^th generation Christian, or just walked in off the street to hear the Gospel for the first time, our status is the same, laborer for God, child of the king, beloved.

Who do you identify with in the parable? The laborers who worked all day, received enough to feed their families, and yet feel cheated? The workers who were only there an hour and yet were blessed with enough to feed their families?

How we see this parable tells us a lot about how we see our role in the kingdom of God. “Faced with God's boundless love for the world, especially when it is lavished upon others, we reveal whether we view our own labor as a gift from God or as benefit to God, as the joyful fulfillment of our created purpose or as the mere endurance of scorching heat.”[iii]

The Gospel Truth is that we are all equal recipients of God’s gifts. The truth in our hearts is that sometimes we are jealous when such gifts are shared with others in equal measure.

To quote the great theologian Louis CK,
“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”

The kingdom of heaven, my friends, is like a generous landowner, who went out every hour seeking to give people a job, a calling, a vocation; and never stopped seeking even when there was little time left to work. And then gave them all enough to feed themselves and their families.  Let us not be evil eyed toward the gifts other’s receive. Let us rejoice that they too have their daily bread.

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[i] Ira Brent Driggers Working Preacher September 21, 2008

[ii] The Reverend Doctor Emerson Powery, Working Preacher September 21, 2014

[iii] Ira Brent Driggers Working Preacher September 21, 2008

Forgiveness, can you imagine?

Matthew 18:21-35

I can see it on your faces: Here we go again, another scripture about conflict. Another word on forgiveness. What is it your trying to tell us pastor?

Let me say that, to my knowledge, there is no big brewing beneath the surface conflict in our church. If there is, someone needs to let me or the session know so that it can be handled and not fester.

To plan and aid in the planning of our worship services year-round we use a tool called the lectionary.

The Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year cycle of weekly lections used to varying degrees by the majority of mainline Protestant churches in Canada and the United States. The RCL is built around the seasons of the Church Year, and includes four lections for each Sunday, as well as additional readings for major feast days. During most of the year, the lections are: a reading from the Hebrew Bible, a Psalm, a reading from the Epistles, and a Gospel reading. During the season of Easter, the Hebrew Bible lection is usually replaced with one from the Acts of the Apostles. It runs in three-year cycles, year A, B and C. We are in year A, for those of you who are curious.

This tool helps pastors, teachers and churches cover a larger scope of scripture than when relying upon individual presences.

Often themes will emerge in the selected lectionary passages, just as they emerge in the scriptures themselves. Right now, we are in the book of Matthew, where Jesus is teaching about community. As a community, you will deal with conflict and forgiveness.

Today’s passage from Matthew is right after last week’s section, where we heard that there can be a lot of steps necessary to bring conflicted persons together in the body of Christ.

After hearing such an honestly labor-intensive conflict resolution model, Peter asks “How many times do we have to do this? Seven?” Seven is a good biblical number, a number of completeness. It is a generous number. In our society, we often use the phrase, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Forgiving a third time might be seen as the charm. But forgiving the same person 7 times, that is beyond generous.

However, Jesus says “Nope, not seven Peter, seventy times seven, or seven times seven, or seventy-seven- depending on the translation.” No matter which of those numbers you go with, that’s a lot of forgiving going on for the same person sinning against you.

Jesus says essentially- there is no limit on forgiveness. Then he tells a story, a parable. This parable, called the unmerciful servant points out the contrast between forgiveness received and forgiveness given. There is a lot going on in this story and honestly, it’s never been my favorite. But this week I’ve found a lot of sustaining life-giving content in its words.

There is a king who is looking at his books, so it must be around April because no one does their taxes before then. He notices that there is one particular servant who owes him ten thousand talents. A word on exchange rates. A talent was roughly 130lbs of silver, which would take about fifteen years for a laborer to earn. Just one talent. SO, this servant owes 150, 000 years’ worth of wages to the king.

He would never ever be able to repay this debt. So, the king orders him, and his wife, and his children and all his possessions, sold to pay the debt. The servant begs for this not to happen, and the king relents. He forgives the unpayable debt, out of pity, not because he must, but because he wants to do so.

That is an amazing level of forgiveness. Even with most of our student loans, house payments, car loans etc., none of us can imagine having that debt repaid. This man has just had 150,000 years wages forgiven. And he walks out of the place and bumps into an old friend.

This old friend owes him 100 denarii, or roughly 100 days wages. He grabs the guy by the throat and says in his best mob voice” pay up or else.” The man can’t pay and so, he has the man arrested and thrown in jail for the debt.

Others who witnessed this event were distraught and brought it to the kings’ attention. This was a violent act, and your behavior reflects upon the one you call Lord.

The king’s anger is stoked and he orders the man to be tortured until his original debt is repaid. Until he can literally get his pound of flesh.

Th e Jesus adds an ominous “SO my father will do to each of you who does not forgive from your heart.”

This is a difficult passage to say the least. Difficult to hear, and difficult to follow. I think far too often it has been looked at as prescriptive- forgive everything and if you do then you won’t be tortured in hell. Most of my life I have heard it used to keep people who have been hurt from standing up for themselves. It has been used to say quietly turn the other cheek. It has been used by people who would harm and abuse “You’re a Christian, you’re supposed to forgive.” People have said to me as they intentionally caused harm.

But I don’t think that’s the point of this passage at all. I see two things in this passage that jump out as lifegiving, life affirming, that the unmerciful servant misses.

One, the servant is forgiven an immense debt, more than any of us can imagine. Then he goes out and grabs another debtor by the throat. It’s not just that he won’t forgive his friend, that’s bad enough, but here he has received an amazing gift, grace, unmerited favor- and he seems untouched by it at all. He has no sense of any gratitude. As David Lose says “his whole life changed . . . and he didn’t even notice.”

“As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it occurs to me that Martin Luther’s great insight was simply realizing that righteousness was not God’s expectation but instead God’s gift. It wasn’t his responsibility to be “right with God,” but God’s responsibility to put him right. And once he realized that some of God’s favorite things to do are to forgive those who seem unforgivable, love those who feel unlovable, and make right those things that seem so persistently in the wrong, Luther was not only freed from his fear of punishment, but also freed to love and forgive and care for those around him. So also, I think, with forgiveness – when we realize that forgiveness is not primarily God’s expectation but rather God’s gift, we sink into that mercy and grace and find ourselves more able to turn in mercy and grace toward others.”1

We rejoice together in the forgiveness we have received. Let us also rejoice in the forgiveness we have given.

Forgiveness allows us to begin to heal, even those things that are painful, those times when someone doesn’t want to own up to hurting you, those times that seem to hurt you even more each time you remember; those words or actions that scar you so deeply; even these things can begin to heal once forgiveness is applied.

A great example of forgiveness to heal is Nelson Mandela, the man on our bulletin this morning, who spent 27 years in prison for trying to end white minority rule by violence in South Africa. 20 years after his release from prison, he invited one of his jailers to the celebratory dinner. The two developed a friendship. He invited another former guard to his inauguration. He ate with people who had tried to have him killed. “When a deep injury is done to us, we never heal until we forgive.”

As part of a community, people are aware of our actions. We watch one another, good and bad. In the story Jesus tells the community sees the behavior of the unmerciful servant. The community comes to the throne of the king and says, “this man is dealing poorly with his neighbor.”

As the community of faith, we are to hold one another accountable. We are not to watch so that we may punish, or criticize, after all Romans tells us not to judge. But we watch so that we can remind one another of the grace received. So that we might help one another to reach out with grace, even when it is easier to reach with a clenched fist.

In our country, in our state, in our city, in our church- whenever it is that we see fellow Christians reaching towards vengeance instead of grace- we need to be ready to call attention to it. By prayer and by confrontation, as described in last Sundays’ text.

Every one of us has been given mercy, offered help, grace, and forgiveness. Not one of us could come before God if it was not for the saving death of Jesus Christ. We have been ransomed, redeemed and reconciled only because of God’s grace. None of us can take any credit for these things.

And that is why we should extend grace and mercy, not because of fear of punishment, but out of joy at the forgiveness already in hand.

Forgiveness is a gift, one we cannot afford to keep to ourselves. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus offered forgiveness from the cross. Let us rejoice, celebrate, live lives so filled with the acknowledgement of this act of grace that we must be grace-filled with or brothers and sisters.