Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne
Readings – Philippians 1.21-30; Matthew 20.1-16
“…he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’”
What does tombola have to do with eternal life… well, we’ll come to that folx.
Yesterday, it was the Michaelmas Fayre in the Devizes Corn Exchange organised by the charity linked to St John’s Church, Omnes ad Unum. I was manning the tombola stall, and took in a healthy amount of cash, so felt very pleased with myself. At the end of the day’s trading, I wandered around bragging rather insufferably. Now, I didn’t give any of the prizes, except for a can of chickpeas and a can of chopped tomatoes, both from the highly-regarded Lidl own brand range. Somehow I don’t think those were exactly what pulled the punters in! My success was entirely dependent on the generosity and kindness of people who had given the prizes, and those who had organised the event.
Indeed, ultimately, whatever success I may have had depended entirely on God.
The parable of the workers in the vineyard is so familiar that we can sort of surf through it in our minds when it’s being read in church. Yet sometimes there are little details we notice for the first time. When I read it to prepare for preaching this morning, it hit me that none of these workers had any other work. Four times after the start of the working day, the land-owner sees men standing idle in the marketplace because nobody has hired them. Presumably all these men had families to feed.
So, this isn’t just a matter of whether the people who worked all day have been treated fairly. The land-owner’s decision to pay a full day’s wage to those who have worked for only a short time has more profound implications for them, and their loved ones, than we perhaps noticed. It might even be a matter of life or death for some of them.
The Parable of the Labourers in the Vinyeard (1880) by Lawrence Ladd. Now hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
This is the last parable Jesus tells in Matthew’s Gospel before he begins his final journey to Jerusalem, so it must be one of great significance. That journey will be a matter of life and death for Him, and for us who share the Christian faith, it is a matter of eternal life and the destruction of death itself. Like the land-owner, Jesus Christ offers the same wage for those who work for him, whether they do so for their whole lives or just for a short time – and that is eternal life.
The land-owner doesn’t short change anyone – he gives some of his workers a fair days wage for a fair day’s work, and some of them the full days wage they need to survive, even though they have only been able to find an hour of work. This is something he does out of his own generosity. So it is with God – He offers us eternal life, not as a reward for good behaviour, but because He loves us.
This has two significant implications for our lives. Firstly, while the ideal human societies – the sort of societies we might create if we had perfect systems of government and economics – would treat everyone fairly, and give everyone what they deserve, God offers us more than any of us deserves. The world to come, into which we have faith that we will be received, is governed by standards of generosity that are beyond even the most perfect human standard of fairness. Christ offers us more than any earthly employer, or cause,can.
The second implication is that all that we have, and all that we are, in this world and the next, are gifts of God out of his generosity. The landowner asks, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” All of creation, including we human beings, belong rightly to God. The greatest gifts we could ever be given, that of our lives in this world and our place in heaven, are gifts and not rewards. So the games of comparison and competition that drive so much of our working lives, and our social lives, and even our lives in the Church are pointless. We should try to stop them, although I doubt any of us ever succeeds completely.
St Paul, in this morning’s epistle, his letter to the Philippians, also reminds us that God has given us gifts beyond any possible earthly reward. Here’s the lovely way he puts it — “to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.”
Living in Christ is rather a double-edged sword, because Christ’s earthly life ended in a brutal execution – and those of us who follow Jesus Christ do not seem to be spared many of the crucifixions of this life that afflict the rest of the human race. Living in Christ isn’t a transactional thing – following Christ doesn’t guarantee us the rewards of worldly success or wealth. Instead, it gives us the knowledge that if we follow Christ to the Cross, our journey will not end there but continue with Him through the barrier of death to Resurrection and eternal life. That knowledge should transform how we live our lives now. It should enable us to embrace the joys and successes of this life as the free gifts of God they are, sitting more lightly to them, being more grateful for them, and seeing them as means of being awestruck by the wonders of our universe and of humanity. That knowledge should also allow us to see the pains of this world in their proper perspective, passing things whose agonising and perplexing mystery will make sense to us when we see God face-to-face in heaven, as we shall if we follow Christ.
Even believing in Christ is not something we have achieved for ourselves. St Paul rightly reminds us it too is a privilege graciously granted to us by God.
I know very little about the circumstances from which any of you have come to church this morning. If your life has been anything like mine, it will have had times of great contentment or success – as well of times of doubt, failure, and struggles with physical or mental health. Even in the times when we have few worries about ourselves, we’re often worried about those we love. Often life seems to consist of a bedrock of worry and doubt and pain just sometimes broken through by moments of transcendent joy and peace.
I have had such moments in this church. Once, for example on a bright winter afternoon, after walking down the lanes of Whistley and Hartmoor with the mist dancing above the frost, then up the hill to St. Mary’s, which was poking just above the fog, I saw that lovely West window illuminated by the bright orange of a winter afternoon sun. It was something entirely different in characterfrom the good-feelings I got at the tombola table.
These moments of transcendence seem to be two contradictory things at once –very much different from and greater than that of the rest of our lives, yet also moments when we understand who we truly are, and the true nature of the world. That sense of transcendence isn’t a product of the chemicals in our bodies and brains interacting in a lucky way for a brief moment. These are moments when heaven breaks through into the mundane, moments when we are not taken out of ourselves but when we understand the depths of ourselves.
Heaven can only briefly break into our world yet, when it does, we know that we have encountered our true home. These brief moments are foretastes of the gift the great cosmic land-owner will give us, whether we have toiled for him for a short time or for our whole lives, after we have passed from this world to his nearer presence, in the arms that His son, Jesus Christ, stretched out for us on the cross.
And now to that God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.
