The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Michael A. Diaz at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, September 21, 2008.
In our gospel reading today, we encounter another parable about the Kingdom
of God. Jesus tells us that a landowner went out early in the morning to hire
laborers. The scene immediately reminds us of the many day laborers who stand
on street corners in cities all across America looking for work. In the
parable, though, it’s harvest time so the day-laborers are in luck. As grapes
are harvested from the fields, the landowner suddenly realizes there’s more
work for people to do. And so, he must return to the marketplace to find more
workers. And as is the usual case, there are people waiting who weren’t picked
in the early morning hours. The landowner goes back at 9am, noon, and 3pm and
agrees to pay the workers a just wage. When the landowner returns to the
market place at 5pm, he is shocked to still find workers available. “Why are
you standing here idle all day?” he asks them. Today we might ask ourselves
the same question but frame it in a clearer manner. We might ask, “What causes
these workers to stand here all day looking for work?”
The context is very similar to today, especially when we find ourselves
with an economy in bad shape and with work hard to find. Homeless people,
laid-off blue-collar workers, and immigrants gather in store parking lots
early in the morning hoping to be picked for construction work or painting or
moving furniture or yard work. While some wait on corners and in parking lots,
others wait at home hoping to get a phone call from a staffing agency with
news of temporary work. Why do day-laborers stand in parking lots and in
marketplaces? Not because they are lazy but because they are looking for work
and no one in hiring (just like we read in our parable). In the parable, when
the landowner hears this, he responds by giving these laborers work in his
vineyard.
But Jesus isn’t finished telling the parable. There is more to the story.
Jewish law required all workers to be paid before sundown. And when the
workers come for their payment, the grumbling begins. The workers who barely
got their hands dirty get paid the exact same wage as the workers with
blisters on their hands who toiled for 10+ hours in the scorching heat. How
can this be? Call the union. Form a picket line. This is unjust. It’s not
right. It’s scandalous. The workers have a right to be upset. I would be
upset. We would all be grumbling and upset and furious! And the workers do
what we would do. They go straight to the landowner to file their complaint.
“Why are you so upset?” the landowner asks them.
And the outraged workers respond, “Why are we so upset? I’ll tell you why
we’re so upset — because you have made them equal to us.”
Friends, Here we learn what a scandalous thing equality can be. Making
people equal with another can ruffle up some feathers and make the blood boil.
Many expected Jesus in his day to take company with the super-religious but
instead he ate with sinners and tax-collectors, prostitutes and lepers. In
Jesus’ eyes everyone was equal and because of that, the grumblers in his day
accused him of being a sinner and a drunk. Jesus was scandalous. And if that
wasn’t enough, he even opposed an oppressive empire not with an army of
soldiers or with violence but by initiating a radical inclusive community he
called the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ followers called him Lord and
Son
of God
, the same titles Roman citizens called Caesar. The message was
clear that Caesar and Rome were no better than Jesus and his followers. This
scandalous Jesus became such a threat that the Roman Empire executed him on a
cross. Equality can be a scandalous thing.
In the Hebrew Bible in the book of Leviticus, we learn of the year of
jubilee. Jubilee was a scandalous principle. In ancient Israel, people
realized that it was inevitable for social inequalities to arise in society.
It was inevitable for entrepreneurs to strike it rich. It was inevitable that
power and wealth might be concentrated in the hands of a few. And so as a way
to combat this injustice, the Israelites proclaimed every 50th year
as a year of jubilee. A trumpet or ram’s horn would sound throughout Israel
and the unthinkable would happen: debts were forgiven, slaves were freed, and
land was restored to its original inhabitants. In essence, income was
redistributed. I can only imagine the grumblings at the time — people saying,
“This isn’t fair. I worked hard and put in all the work. I earned these
assets. This isn’t justice. This is socialism! This is stealing from the rich
and giving to the poor! Those poor people had their chance to work hard and
get lucky in society. They are being made equal to us!”
Friends, the point of jubilee was to remind people that all community
assets belonged to God. Jubilee gave people a new beginning. Jubilee redressed
the imbalances in society. The last were made first and the first were made
last. Jubilee showed the full face of justice — that everyone is equal and is
to be restored to a place of standing in God’s community. Jubilee showed how
God delighted in causing scandal for the sake of justice and equality. Jubilee
is a scandalous biblical principle simply because it calls for making everyone
equal to one another.
What if we opened our hearts to the biblical idea of jubilee today? What
might our world look like then? Where do you think justice and jubilee need to
be manifested today? If you need a clue, take a hint from our parable today
where we heard workers grumbling because “people were made equal to them.” You
can always discern the need for justice and jubilee if you just listen to the
grumblings going on in society. Equality is not without scandal even in our
modern day.
Can you hear the grumblings today? “Don’t give gays and lesbians equal
rights, especially the right to marry. That’ll make them equal to us! Don’t
give immigrants a path to citizenship. That’ll make them equal to us. We can’t
have universal healthcare. That’ll make those without healthcare equal to
those who can already afford expensive healthcare! That’ll make them equal to
us! Don’t tell the prostitutes on Sistrunk Ave that God loves them just as
much as God loves us church folk. That’ll make them equal to us! Don’t affirm
the sacred value and dignity of that agnostic and that questioning skeptic.
That’ll make them equal to us! We can’t include a Taoist reading in our
liturgy; we’re a Christian church. That might make Taoists equal to us.” Can
you hear the grumblings today?
Friends, we have a biblical obligation and a Christian obligation to ensure
equality for everyone. It is not enough to say we stand for justice. We must
stand for a jubilee type of justice. But we must be warned: if we stand for
jubilee, we will be called scandalous for doing so and there will be
grumblings from people. But the good news is that’s okay because God makes the
first last and the last first and that may be the most scandalous thing of
all. Amen.