The Reward

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 25, 2011; 15 Pentecost, Proper 21, Year A, Track 1

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 21:23-32) – When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven,' he will say to us, `Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, `Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him."

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“Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

How do we know what is from God – what originates in divine energy – and what is from us – coming out of our energy and our too-self-centered human motivation?  I would like to live a less self-absorbed life, and therefore a less anxious life?   I would like to be more transparent to the energy that comes from God, instead of my own limited reserves.

We’ve got this Gospel story of the two sons.  Maybe we’re like each of them from time to time.  I know I say I want to follow Christ with all my heart and soul and strength.  But I don’t.  And sometimes when I say “no” – I go ahead and do what I need to do. 

Robert J. Wicks says, “If we were honest with ourselves about our relationship with God, I think we could all write a book entitled, ‘God Is Solidly Number TWO in My Life!’  We frequently put so many things and people (especially ourselves) in front of God.” [i]  But our hearts are restless, and life is short.  I think we all do want to give ourselves to something more, something greater.  Robert Wicks puts it this way:  “In a world so filled with greed, anxiety, pressures, money-problems, confusion, and conflict, we do very much want the solace and challenge of the truth.  We do want to gamble with our lives, for the ultimate relationship.  …We do want our dull subtly idolatrous world made new.” [ii]

I like Robert Wicks’ writing.  He tells a story of a man who was driving in a rural area on the way to an important business meeting.  The businessman liked to drive pretty fast on the long, mostly deserted highways, engaging his cruise control and looking out across the countryside. 

At some point he noticed a splotch of color off in the distance to his right.  The light was amazingly brilliant, and as he drove along he hoped his route would pass close enough for him to see what it was.

A few miles later he could tell that the color was coming from a building of some sort.  As he got closer, he thought it looked like a church.  But it was the middle of the day, and it seemed impossible that a window could be so brilliantly lighted from the inside of a church.  It seemed to him as if it must be among the most brilliant stained glass windows in the world, out here in the middle of nowhere.  He was perplexed and awed. 

His car came to a fork in the road.  His destination would take him away from the distant window.  In an impulsive moment, he decided to take the road that appeared to lead closer to the mysterious light.  His anticipation rose and some excitement began to grow as he drove closer.  He could see that it was a church, up on a rise in the land.  As he drove around toward the front, he lost sight of it around a bend in the road as a drifting cloud moved over the sun.

When he finally drove in front of the church he saw, it really wasn’t a church after all.  It was only the shell of an old church building.  Three walls stood, no roof, no doors, and most of the windows were broken.  He walked around to the side of the church where he had seen the brilliant light, and he looked up at the window he had admired from such a distance.  His spirits sank.  He was looking at a quite ordinary old window – not the window from his imagination and memory.  The panes were dusty; the frames chipped.  In a while, he could tell, this glass would be blown out like the other windows.

He felt a bit foolish.  He shrugged and gently scolded himself for being so naïve.  But then as he turned to leave, the cloud moved, and the sun shown brilliantly through the window, almost blinding him with its color.  “All of his skepticism left him; all of his disappointment was bathed clean with the warm colors he could feel covering him.”  Below his thoughts, even below his feelings, he sensed he was in the presence of God. [iii]

Here’s what I want you to do with that story.  Think of yourself as that old church ruin, that stained glass window.  Ordinary.  Dusty.  Incomplete.  Maybe even a bit broken.  But when you are open to the divine light shining through you [and one of the things we call that light is the “Son”] – you can relax, and simply be, just as you are – and God’s brilliance will shine through you in a wonderfully ordinary way.  Actually, we don’t have to do anything special.  God has made us as we are.  We need only be “open to the wonder and awe that surrounds us and is in us.” [iv]

Robert Wicks, who I’ve been quoting, is a clinical psychologist and a professor.  See if what he says connects with you as it connects with me: 

‘For years I would read the Scriptures and quietly pray that I could be more obedient to God, more single-hearted.  For years I would pray that I could be enthusiastic, rather than exhibitionistic, achievement-oriented rather than competitive.  For years, being an impetuous person, I would pray that I would not be swayed by people's reactions -- positive or negative -- or be a victim of my insecurities and needs to be liked, but only be concerned with doing God's will.  And for years the sense I received in prayer was simply: "Just do my will; it is enough."  And to this I would always reply in a very down-to-earth way:  "It's easy for you to say!  I just can't do it.  It's not enough for me.  I need a reward.  If it's not people's good thoughts, if it's not the applause, if it's not my image, then I must have something.

‘Then one day, when I was praying for something else, I sensed a response not only to this request, but also finally to my original one as well.  The impression I had was this:  "You have asked that you not be concerned with your image or success but only with my will; your prayer will be answered now."  To this I became anxious and was even sorry I had prayed for help at all.  I was concerned that with the gift more would be asked of me.  (My lack of faith and sinfulness continues to astound and almost overwhelm me.)  Yet, this insecurity did not dispel the sense I had of God's presence.  And the impression I had of the Lord's response continued clearly in the following manner:  "If you seek to do my will and focus only on it and not your success or the way people respond, you will find you won't have to worry about whether or not you are accepted and loved by others.  You shall have another reward that will make you secure -- in every lecture, in every therapy hour, in every encounter on the street, when you only concern yourself with doing my will and forget about the reactions or results, you will be in the Presence of the Spirit.  . . . Is that enough?" [v]

How do we know what is from God and what is from human origin?  When we seek to do God’s will and focus only on that, and not whether we succeed or how others might respond, we will find we don’t have to worry whether or not we are accepted and loved by others.  We will have another reward that will make us secure.  In every action, in every moment, in every encounter, when we only concern ourselves with doing God’s will, and forget about the reactions or results, we are in the Presence of the Spirit.  We, in our ordinariness, will shine like sunlight through stained glass.  . . . Is that enough for you?

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[i] Robert J. Wicks, Living Simply in an Anxious World, Paulist, 1988, p. 45

[ii]  Ibid, p. 46

[iii] Ibid, p. 48-49

[iv] Ibid, p. 50

[v] Ibid, p. 54-55

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The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 18, 2011; 14 Pentecost, Proper 20, Year A, Track 1

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 20:1-16) – Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, `You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, `Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, `Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, `You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, `Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, `These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, `Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

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There is a traditional way to interpret the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, often using allegory.  The owner of the vineyard is God; the reward for the laborers, the denarius, is salvation; the first hired are God’s first people, the Jews; the last hired, the Gentiles or recent converts.  A generous God gives to the latecomers the same free, gift of salvation that God gives to the first faithful.  There are several versions of that theme.  And it’s a fine interpretation.  I’ve preached that way.  We hear that interpretation every Easter Vigil when we repeat the famous Easter Eve sermon of St. John Chrysostom. 

But I don’t think that’s the original meaning as Jesus told the parable.  Let’s see if we can reconstruct how his first listeners might have heard this story. [i]  A heads up.  It’s complicated.  And because of that, this will be a longer sermon than I usually preach.  Sorry.

The characters are familiar ones to Jesus’ listeners.  Day laborers were the poorest, most vulnerable strata of society.  Scholars call them the “expendables.”  They hired themselves for agrarian day-work, primarily during planting and harvest time.  Most of the rest of the year they begged, often in the urban centers.  Life expectancy for someone who fell into day labor was short, five to seven years at most.  Their circumstance was worse than slave.  A slave had some protection as an owner’s investment.  Many expendables saw their best option being to join an outlaw band, even though such bands were eventually hunted down and destroyed.  Historical evidence points to growing numbers of outlaw bands and growing numbers of expendables during the decades around Jesus’ life.

Normally expendables were 5 to 10 percent of the population, but in times of high unemployment, the numbers could go up to 15 percent. 

How does someone become an expendable, a day laborer?  Two ways, primarily.   First:  Excess children in peasant households.  Landowning peasants had small plots that would be held together in the family by passing them on intact to the eldest son.  There wasn’t enough production or land to support an expanding family, so excess children were sent off to fend for themselves.  They became expendables.

There is a fascinating word to describe the second way people became expendables – latifundialization.  Latifundialization is the process of land accumulation in the hands of a few wealthy elite to the deprivation of the peasantry.  A wealthy landowner would contract with a peasant landowner for delivery of a set amount of produce.  If crops failed, the patron might arrange for a loan so the farmer could continue.  Through high interest rates and some market manipulation, the peasant would eventually default on the loan, and the land be foreclosed.  The small peasant plots dedicated to food, to grains like barley and wheat, were then combined into large estates and converted into cash crops for export, often vineyards for luxury items like wine.  The peasants who formerly owned their own land, would then become day laborers, expendables.  The decades around Jesus’ life were decades of considerable latifundialization, increasing numbers of day laborers.

The story of day laborers waiting in the market to be hired would be a familiar scenario to Jesus’ listeners.  But here’s the twist in Jesus’ parable, the note of genius in his storytelling.  For his tale, Jesus has the landowner go to the market himself to hire the laborers.  In real life that would never happen.  Only the manager would do the hiring.  These manager-stewards who worked directly with the hired help were an object of hatred and occasional retaliation from the peasants.  By having the owner go to the market, Jesus makes the invisible oppressor visible.  He exposes the collusion between the distant elites and their familiar retainers.  Jesus creates a confrontation that could never happen in real life, between two social classes that were utterly separated.  It’s like a first century political cartoon.

So, let’s look at the situation.  The landowner comes to the market.  He has unilateral and absolute power.  He doesn’t need to bargain.  He can say, “Take it or leave it – a denarius for a day’s work.”  They take it.  Later in the day he goes back.  He’s even more arbitrary, “I will pay you whatever is right,” and he is the one who will say what is right.  The workers have no standing, no leverage.  They go to work.

Note that the market is filled with laborers at all hours – a sign of high unemployment.  Yet the harvest is great.  The owner initially underestimates how many workers he needs, so he returns to the market to find more workers. 

It was a common strategy of Roman landowners to hire only for a day at a time.  The Roman statesman Cato said, “[One] must not hire the same day labourer or servant or caretaker for longer than a day.” [ii]  It was a strategy to keep the workers less empowered.

The landowner promises the first-hired the wage of a denarius.  It is hard to know with confidence how much a denarius represented, but the best educated guess is that it was a subsistence wage.  A denarius could buy a day’s food.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus prayed.  That was a poignant prayer.  No wage, no food that day.

At the end of the day the laborers are paid.  In Jesus parable the last is paid first.  That’s not the common practice.  In fact, such a method of payment would have been a deliberate act of shaming.  Paying the first-hired last, and giving him an equal wage, communicated a message – “You mean no more to me than the one-hour workers.”  The employer shames their daylong work in the hot sun.  Employers often sought ways to degrade workers, to keep them humiliated and under thumb, to feed their helplessness and even their self-hatred, so they would feel dependent and unempowered.

It was a deliberate provocation.  If all you have is your physical labor, and if the employer acts as though that is worthless, paying you as he paid the others for nearly nothing.  He is saying you are nothing.  Sometimes, though, when a person’s subsistence and honor is threatened, it does provoke a reaction. 

Here’s where Jesus’ genius shows.  Those workers who have borne the heat of the sun working all day long confront not the manager who pays them, but the landowner, the elite.  In Jesus’ story they can accuse one who is normally invisible, the power behind and above their oppression.

Jesus then shows how the powerful know how to use power.  The landowner picks out the leader to make an example of him.  He will punish the whistleblower.  That will intimidate the rest of them.

“Friend,” he addresses the complainer.  The term he uses is not a friendly term.  In Greek, it is a condescending address, serving to emphasize the social gulf between them, the power difference.  “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.”  [“Friend, I am not cheating you.  I am not defrauding you.”]  “Did you not agree with me for a denarius?”  As if they could agree?  How could any of these laborers agree?  They have no bargaining power, no leverage to negotiate.

The owner continues his speech in the elite language of the honor code.  “Take what belongs to you and go.”  That word “go” means the complainant is dismissed, banned, shunned, blacklisted.  He will find no more work in that community.  The owner is not saying, “Go in peace.”  The owner is giving him a fatal dismissal.

But there is a bit more insult left.  “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.”  The owner sheds the pretense of paying the laborers for what they have truly earned by the sweat of their honest work.  “I choose,” he says.  “It is my gift to you.”  Like charity.  He robs the worker of his sense of honor.

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”  Imagine.  What if this land actually used to belong to some of these very laborers.  That’s not unlikely.  If it is so, he is rubbing salt into open wounds.

And when the landowner says he can do what he chooses with “what belongs to me,” he speaks blasphemy.  For the Torah declares that the land belongs to God.  In the Bible the Torah provided for a jubilee year every fifty years to redistribute the land to its original equal distribution.  The Torah provided for the cancellation of debts every seven years during the sabbatical year, to reduce economic inequality. 

The Bible declares that God owns the land, and entrusts it to the people in order that it might be a blessing to them and might provide an abundance for all.  The blessings from the land are an extension of the story we heard in our first lesson, the story of God feeding the people in the wilderness with Manna and Quail.  The promised land would be a land flowing with milk and honey, abundance for all.  God will continue to feed God’s people.

But this landowner in his hubris and pride, in his religious arrogance and blasphemy, has dispossessed the peasants from their land, paid them a less-than-subsistence wage, and made a mockery of the Torah.  He is a living symbol of covetous greed.

Jesus brings home the point with the landowner’s final pronouncement, “Or are you envious because I am generous.”  In that word, the greedy oppressor inverts the Biblical values with a classic misstatement that has the effect of blaming the victim.

How do you blame a victim?  First, identify a social problem.  Then study those affected by the problem and discover how they are different from the rest of us as a consequence of their deprivation and injustice.  Then define the differences as the cause of the social problem itself.  So the greedy landowner victimizes the powerless laborers who complain, telling them they are covetous and envy-ridden. 

Jesus has openly dramatized a true story of the exploiter and the exploited.  He sets up an impossible confrontation, the meeting between the elite and the expendable, and he openly reveals how the powerful exploit them.  He shines a light on their greed and blasphemy.  It is the kind of story that made him enemies among the powerful.

Let me close with two statistics, and a question.

In the economy of Jesus’ day, the top two percent of the population controlled between 50 and 67 percent of the annual wealth. 

In the United States today, the net worth of the Forbes 400 is greater than the net worth of the bottom 60 percent of American households.  Four hundred people have more wealth than 100 million households.

A question: 

I wonder what parable Jesus might speak to us today?

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[i] this interpretation draws from William R. Herzog, II, Parables as Subversive Speech, Wesminster/John Knox Press, 1994, especially his study of this parable in chapter 5.

[ii] Herzog, p. 86, quoting from Luise Shottroff, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1984. Homan Solidarity and the Goodness of God, p. 129-47

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate

God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and its life and mission, please contact us at

P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org

Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org