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Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 20:1-16
HUMILITY
"The last will be first and the first will be last" (Matthew 20:16)
I stand before you this morning with a heartfelt sense of humility.
Now when I say humility, it's important that you understand what I mean. The popular notion of humility has a lot to do with diminishing self; making self smaller in some way, but I don't see that as real humility! What we know as false humility has to do with diminishing self; making self smaller. If humility is about diminishing self, then it still is about self; we haven't moved self out of the center; and if self is still at the center, I fail to see how it can be true humility.
For me, humility is something else. Humility has to do with:
- INCREASING THE OTHER!
- FOCUSING ON THE OTHER, and the other's needs and the other's gifts!
- EXALTING THE OTHER!
- LIFTING THE OTHER! That's humility!
Jesus was humble, not so much because he diminished himself, but because he exalted others, especially the most lowly and the most marginal of the community.
I feel humble today, in that sense! I feel humble because I am standing in a place that a very special pastor, Luther Johnson, has stood these past 20 months. Luther is special because he is Luther, and he's one of our Rocky Mountain Synod's most gifted pastors - and to be standing in a place that he has stood as he guided you through the very precarious waters of interim ministry, and doing it with such grace and such excellence - well, I feel humility!
I am also humbled because you have called me to be your pastor. You have called me! Not just any congregation, but you specifically. I sense that this congregation has enormous unrealized potential; that God has some very exciting and challenging things in store for us! And I am humbled to be called by you to be your shepherd, your priest, your prophet as we together travel on such a holy and blessed journey - following the one who has not only called me through you, but also called you to your vocation of Christian service and witness!
Finally, I feel humble because I stand before our great God in awe! More than anything, I want to exalt our God, who through the Holy Spirit has guided and directed yours and my journey, and has brought us together and placed us on the same road, in a new relationship - and new beginning!
I can't adequately describe or put into words, of how from the moment Marcia and I made the weighty decision last January to leave Alaska, without a call, only because we perceived God was calling us to what was then something unknown; how from that moment on, the many and varied pieces of the jig-puzzle have come together in a timely manner to finally form this marvelous picture. The message we heeded last January was only this: "Go, Marcia and Joe, and then you will know!" Take a leap of faith into uncertainty! Trust me!" - said the voice! That was hard because most of the time we say, "When I know then I'll go!" We want to know before we go. We want to know for sure about things before we commit to them: Where we are going? Will it be alright? Can we make it financially? Will we be safe? Can we minimize the risk? But our great God has the knack of always turning our way of thinking upside down/inside out. "Go and then you will know!" God says! It's crazy! It's nuts! But it's the way of our God!
I am humbled by such an awesome God because I have felt God's guiding hand working on our undeserved behalf all these many months. The world would call such a thing nothing more than "luck" and "coincidence." But we in this room know better, don't we? I really have to wonder if "coincidence" should even be in a Christian's vocabulary? "God-incidence" maybe, but not "coincidence." We need to strike that word from a Christian's vocabulary. I feel so humble today as here before you and before our awesome God!
Our Gospel this morning is all about humility, I hope you see that! Let's take one more look at this story-parable that Jesus told..
Let me retell it in a little different way: It's nearing harvest in the vineyard and the vineyard owner, let's call him Frederick, hears the ghastly news that a record freezing cold is imminent within 48 hours! Hearing that, Frederick hustles down to the labor hall and finds as many day workers as he can. But, every other grower has heard the same weather report, and is doing the very same thing. So, Frederick has to sweeten the pot to get the help he needs. $100/day! Pretty generous, but worth it, because what a glorious harvest it's going to be!
A little before 9 am he gets an updated weather report. It says that the cold front is moving faster than expected - coming a day earlier. He now has only ONE day! So down he goes in his rickety old truck, at nine o'clock in the morning and rounds up another crew. His anxiety heightens even more by noon and again at 3, so he drives down to the labor hall again, and rounds up a few more. Each time he succeeds in getting the help he needs, by giving them his now well-oiled pitch that he is the famous top payer of the whole valley! The grapes have got to be harvested!
It's turning out to be, as he predicted, a huge harvest, but with only a hour or so left, Frederick realizes that the harvest won't be completed without even more help. So one last time, he drives the down the road to the village, except the labor hall is now closed - no one is around. His only option is the tavern near the river, a local hang out! So he pulls up, steps around the motorcycles parked outside. He walks in to see a crowd of losers in a haze of smoke; girls in black leather hanging on their no-brain boyfriends; music blasting from the juke box! He swallows hard, walks up to juke box, he pulls the plug, and immediately goes into his spiel! And a few minutes later he and his truck-load of losers are bumping up the road to the vineyard.
And they did it! They got the harvest in! Frederick is on top of the world... ecstatic... overjoyed... thrilled beyond words!
The group lines up to receive its wages of $100, $75, $50, $25, and $8 respectively. You see they've been talking among themselves and they've got it all calculated out, based on the known pay of the all-day group. It was just a matter of simple arithmetic!
But, Frederick has this crazy, wild, bizarre idea! With his biggest harvest ever on the way to the winery, he feels a sense of reckless abandon... he feels overwhelming generosity and exuberance like never before!
When the first girl in black leather who worked only one hour opens her envelope, she finds a crisp new $100 bill - not the 8 bucks she expected! She looks around cautiously, thinking "this is my lucky day, I'm splitting before Frederick discovers his mistake." But then her mindless boyfriend catches up with her, and in a booming voice loud enough for everyone to hear, says that he got a hundred bucks too! With this announcement the rest of the group, grab for their calculators and begin to recalculate! Why, they are about to become the proud inheritors of 1200, 900, 600, and 300 dollars respectively! The word is out, Frederick is paying a hundred bucks an hour! But as each one opens his envelope, he finds a single, new, crisp $100 bill. And those who worked all day, began to complain, "Look we've been out in this hot sun working our tails off all day to save your precious grapes! It's not fair! Why should they get the same as us? It's a rip off!"
"Look," says Frederick to the complainers, "You agreed on a hundred bucks, and I gave you a hundred bucks! I fulfilled my promise to you! And now you're telling me I can't do what I want with my money? Your nose is out of joint because I had a fun idea! Look, it's my vineyard and I decided in my vineyard to put the last first, and the first last, to show that in THIS VINEYARD there are no INSIDERS and no OUTSIDERS, regardless of what they did or what they didn't do. If you want to pout that's your business. But you have to make a choice. And your choice is this: You can stick around this vineyard, and you can enjoy yourself and enjoy my hospitality for as long as you want, or you can take your calculator and go home and be miserable. That's your choice!"
. . . and all the spiritual book-keepers and score-keepers have been choking on this parable for 2000 years since Jesus first told it! It makes no sense to our sensibilities! We recoil at such a thing that is so outrageously unfair!
But let's think about it for just a moment!
This story doesn't diminish in any way, those who worked hard all day and received the pay they agreed upon - generous pay I might add! What the landowner did was elevate, was exalt, was lift those who were the least; those who had worked for a shorter time. Those who had worked all day were bitter, not because they had been diminished, but because they couldn't find it in their hearts to exalt the least along with the landowner! They couldn't let go of their calculators and score-sheets; in other words, they couldn't accept or stomach humility as an operative principle.
You see in my vineyard, and I suspect in yours, I stubbornly insist that people should get what they deserve, that law be the ruling principle. In my vineyard books and records are impeccably kept. The first are going to remain first, and the last deserve to be last - in my vineyard. In my vineyard everything is neatly ordered and based on what's fair and just!
But you see, in God's vineyard, it's very different. Once again our great God turns everything upside down/inside out! God has no concern for impeccable books and detailed score-cards. If the world could have been saved by book-keeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus! After a thousand or so years of seeing if anybody could pass the test of those Ten Commandments, it became pretty clear that there was "not one righteous, no not one" - "that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Salvation by book-keeping died on the cross with Jesus Christ -- and now God has rewarded us all equally and fully, with lavish, extravagant, outrageous grace!
The thing that you and I must remember and never forget that this vineyard we call Holy Love Lutheran Church is God's vineyard - not ours. Since God in Jesus Christ is the landowner, he makes it pretty clear that we need to pack our calculators and score-pads at the door - that is, at the cross! Now that's hard! That's really hard! We live in a world that has a passion for keeping score; people keeping score on each other in a zillion ways. And unfortunately Christians are not exempt; in fact many Christian seem to be particularly adept at it!
But the Lord Jesus this morning is inviting us into His vineyard of lavish grace. He invites us in to enjoy some wine and eat some bread - staples of the vineyard of God. And I might say again. To this table you cannot bring your calculator. I caution you, it could become an unsettling experience. It could be risky business, for somewhere along the way you will have to let go of your neatly ordered world of just rewards and punishments. You'll need to leave your score-pad and calculator at the foot of his cross. If you do, an incredible wonder will begin to happen in your life, I promise it! . You will begin to look at others with the same eyes of humility with which the Lord looks at you - eyes that looked at you and decided you were worth dying for. You see, in the humility of His death on the cross, Jesus was exalting you, focusing on you, lifting you to new kind of life! "Father, for give them!" he said! Those are words spoken to you!
I hope, and I pray, and I will work to see that the most operative power in this God's vineyard of Holy Love Lutheran Church will be the power humility - that is people exalting people: through encouragement; through compassionate listening; through serving one another; through respect; through understanding; not because the other deserves it or doesn't deserve it, but because this is God's vineyard, and the same grace God has lavished upon each one of us in Jesus Christ, He expects we will lavish upon each other. This is God's vineyard, and in God's vineyard "The last will be first and the first will be last."
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