Proper 20 :: Exodus 16: 2–15 / Psalm 105: 1–6, 37–45 / Philippians 1: 21–30 / Matthew 20: 1–16
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, September 20, 2020.
“VALUES:
GOD’S AND OURS”
(Homily text: Matthew 20: 1–16)
Today’s
Gospel text, which contains the Lord’s Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard,
ought to disturb us, for it turns our normal, everyday way of thinking and
living on its head.
We live our
lives according to bargains and contracts. We enter into agreements to work
under certain terms, we come to agreements to buy things for a certain price.
In all these things, we place values on things, things like the value of our
time, or the value of something we want to take possession of.
In our
Lord’s day, people expected that there would be a contract, a bargain, with
God. The usual expectations went something like this: If I keep the sacred law,
the Law of Moses (Torah) faithfully,
then God will bless me. God’s blessings would usually come my way in the form
of a long life, a healthy life, or perhaps with earthly wealth (or with all
three, if I’ve been especially faithful and righteous).
Such an
attitude can be seen in the encounter between Jesus and the rich young man,
whose text immediately precedes today’s parable. The rich young man comes to
the Lord, and asks what he still lacks in order to obtain eternal life. The
young man’s question discloses that there’s something still missing in his
bargain with God.[1]
The Lord
responds with a test: “Go, sell all that you have, give the proceeds to the
poor, then come and follow me,” He says to the young man.
We can
imagine the young man’s inner thoughts to such a test as he turns and walks
away. Perhaps his thinking went something like this: “You’re asking me to give
up all the benefits and blessings that my faithful behavior has brought my
way.”
Yes,
exactly, that’s the intent in the Lord’s test of this young man.
Be willing
to part with everything, to give it all up, to give up any and all claim that
we might think we have to God’s goodness, that’s the bargain.
To
illustrate this point, Jesus tells the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard,
saying that those who were hired late (or last) in the work day were paid the
same as those who had been hired first. This doesn’t make sense, from our usual
way of assigning values to things.
Our Lord’s
parable drives home the point that it is God’s choice to be generous, not ours
to claim on the basis of our behavior.
The only
thing we can claim and it is a claim we make in Holy Baptism -is the claim that
the only thing we have control over, the only thing we can truly offer God - is
ourselves. Essentially, that’s what the Lord was asking the rich young man to
do: Offer yourself.
In so
doing, we lose it all (or have the potential to), but we gain the truest and
fullest sense of the real meaning of life. The choice is ours to make. AMEN.
[1] The great reformer Marin Luther was troubled by just the same concern.
Luther was concerned that his faithfulness to the Church’s demands in his day
wasn’t enough for him to earn merit with God.
