The "kingdom of heaven" (or the "kingdom of God") is a dicey deal to understand. The Gospels use these terms frequently, yet never are they defined. Most often Jesus used the words to describe the way God orders life that is alternative to the structures of this world.
While not defining or explaining the kingdom of heaven, Jesus told stories to illustrate this alternative framework for life, this radically different God-consciousness. So the Gospels are full of stories that Jesus begins, "The kingdom of heaven is like . . ." Taken together, they construct for us a portrait of "God's kingdom" -- the way life is ordered around and structured upon God -- which helps us to see the vast difference between the way peoples order life (in societies, cultures, governments, etc.) and the design God has for the world.
For several years now I've been drawn to the story of the landowner and the workers in the vineyard as the prototypical parable that sets this contrast before us. In the parable there are persons utterly confused, bewildered because ultimately life is not ordered according to the systems and frameworks to which they have slavishly given themselves. To me, it is a parable that sheds a lot of light on why people -- even religious, Christian people -- resist God and God's shaping in their lives with such defiance.
The parable was the daily reading a couple of days ago, so I've had opportunity this week to sit with it again and listen to it.
Matthew 20:1 - 16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his supervisor, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
I'll not walk through the entire parable. There were a few things I noticed this week as I listened to Jesus' story.
1. The parable challenges our ability to receive and to celebrate with others who receive. The word "receive" is used four times in verses 9 - 11.
Sometimes when I'm talking about this passage in a sermon or with a study group, after I read the text I'll ask people to speak out their first response to the story. "What immediately rumbles up inside you when you hear this story?" Very often I hear, "It's not fair" or "The all-day workers deserved more." Many of us tend to hear the story in terms of "fairness" and what we "deserve."
But a few times lately when I've asked the question, I've heard things from the audience things like, "It gives me hope!" or "I'm grateful" or "Woo-hoo!"
I wonder if those who feel uncomfortable with the story because it feels unfair are some -- myself included -- who have been busy working hard "all day" and keeping the rules and showing ourselves diligent. We want to receive our due.
And I wonder if those who hear in the story cause for celebration are those for whom life has been difficult, those who have been ignored, those who have been accustomed to being on the underside of life. For those who live outside a culture of deserving, this is not just "good news" . . . it's "GREAT NEWS!!"
Somehow, my capacity to be open and receive is wrapped up in all that.
2. The all-day workers "expected to receive more." Another translation says, "They thought they would receive more."
In the story, the persons who worked the length of the day were trapped in their expectations, in their "thought" about the situation vis a vis the workers who labored only a part of the day. They were locked into a way of thinking about life, fairness, and reward/punishment that was the filter through which they saw all of life. They thought -- or expected -- to receive more than the other workers, but when reality did not match their thinking -- or expectations -- they got angry and grumbled.
As I prayed with this part of the story, I saw a couple of ways my own life is trapped in my thinking and expectation, in my own perception of how I think life is -- or should be -- ordered.
The landowner, who in the story is the God-figure, demonstrated that he was operating out of a different system or reality or framework, and some of the workers could not handle the alternative structure.
In some way, our thinking and expectation about life has to be de-constructed, with the re-construction work taking place around the ways of this alternative God-reality. Such is the kingdom of God, and such is the challenge for me of "entering" the kingdom of God.
3. "You have made them equal to us." The all-day workers were accustomed to a system of merit and deserving, but were not used to everyone getting a different kind of mercy. "Deserving" is out of the question. It is not a category in this landowner's lexicon.
In this kingdom, the systems of the world to which we are accustomed are thrown out. We are invited into a new reality, a God-reality. So the ways that human systems label and classify and categorize do not apply in God's kingdom. For people who think they have more of this or more of that (money or education or status or importance or whatever) than others, it can be totally distasteful to be made "equal" to everyone around you.
"You have made them equal to us," sounds elitist, and it is . . . and we all -- no matter who we are -- have some egocentric elitism in us.
In this kingdom of heaven, there are radically different structures and systems at work. The kingdom is not built on merit and deserving. It is built on mercy and generosity, and the parable demonstrates that while we all think we want mercy and generosity, we may not want it for everyone. At some subconscious level, we want a system of merit and deserving, not a system of grace and compassion. It's one of the main reasons God's kingdom is so difficult to enter . . . there is so much of ourselves that clings to the old systems because they are all we know.
Lately I've considered again the words Paul Simon wrote in his song, "Graceland." The song is only about Elvis and his Memphis home in a superficial way, it seems to me, but more about this way of being in the world we call "generosity" or "mercy" or "grace" . . . because in the tag line of the chorus Simon sings:
I have reason to believe
we all will be received
in Graceland.
No comments:
Post a Comment