First Friends Meeting
Matthew 20:1-16
‘Are You Envious Because I Am Generous?’
Doug Gwyn

Earlier this summer, Tim and Jay worked on this parable with the kids in the Bible School Workshop. Tim told me that the reaction of the kids was pretty much the same as the reaction of the workers in the parable: “It’s not fair!” By the end of the week, they had reworked the parable in modern-day terms. The vineyard had become a McDonald’s in the video they made for us to watch that Sunday morning. Peasant day-labor had become a Mc-job. Still with the same pay – just about enough to keep you alive, so you can work another day. And the reaction of those who had flipped burgers all day was still the same: “It’s not fair!” Why should these late-comers get paid as much as we have, sweating all day over a deep-fat fryer?

Jesus tells a story here that is bound to provoke. Even now, we might wonder, Well, if he’s telling a story about the kingdom of heaven, he might do better than that. The vineyard could be a cooperative. They could be organized into an autonomous collective, sharing equally in the gains of their labor. That would be my idea of the kingdom of heaven. But these parables of the kingdom are not so much about utopian thinking. Instead, Jesus tries to help us recognize the kingdom in the midst of life as we find it. So he gives us a story set in the world as we know it – and no, it’s not always fair!

But, of course, the owner of the vineyard has been fair. He has paid the all-day workers exactly what they bargained for: the standard wage for a day’s labor: one denarius, about enough to buy a loaf of bread and keep them going for another day. He’s been just with them, at least in terms of the labor relations of that day. The problem is, he’s been generous with the late-comers, giving them the same day-wage. And he set it up so that the all-day workers saw what the late-comers received. This is in-your-face generosity.

From the vineyard-owner’s point of view, this day has been about urgency. Clearly, he’s desperate to get these grapes harvested before the sun hurts them. There’s a privileged moment, an optimal opportunity here. So he goes out several times into the marketplace to gather every worker he can. Even at five o’clock in the afternoon he goes out one more time and gets a few more to come in. These work only one hour before quitting time. And even they receive a full day’s wage. You can imagine their surprise and joy. They didn’t think they and their families were going to eat tonight. They just take the money and run, no questions asked.

So when the all-day crew gets what they bargained for, they grumble to the owner. The owner replies, Friend, this is what we agreed on. “Friend” – that would be an unusual way for a landowner to speak to a day-laborer. It suggests something more like equality, or at least some kind of mutuality. He addresses these hard workers this way because he honors their effort, their endurance. They came through for him in his moment of crisis. But he adds, “are you envious because I am generous?” (Generous toward the others.)

One way to look at this confrontation is to see it as a confrontation between two senses of time. The grumbling workers are naturally conscious of the quantity of time they have worked. It’s the quantity of time they expected to work, for the quantity of wage they bargained for. It only bothers them that some worked a very small quantity of time for the same wage. But the owner has been driven all day by a different sense of time – the quality of this particular day. It’s not like every other day for him. He has to get these grapes in ASAP.

The kingdom of heaven is about the quality of time. This has been Jesus’ theme from day one of his ministry, the day he returned to Nazareth and read in the synagogue from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He rolled up the scroll and told people, that time is now. There was great urgency to his preaching of the kingdom of heaven among us. Those who followed him sensed that moment. They dropped everything, like the fishermen and their nets, to go with Jesus, to go with the moment. The poor and outcast, those with the least investment in the way things were, responded most readily. But those who had been religious all their lives, like those who had worked all day in the scorching heat, were more troubled by Jesus and his message. Like the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, they complained, hey, I’ve been slogging along here steadily and faithfully. So, what am I, chopped liver? And the father, like the vineyard owner, honors and commends that faithfulness, but queries, “are you envious because I’m generous?”

I suppose another way I could express the point of this parable would be to ask, “Would you like one happiness or two?” You might be tempted to say two, just to play it safe. But it makes no sense, really There is no plural form of happiness. There’s no word ‘happinesses’ because happiness is a quality not a quantity. You might be more happy one day than another. You might be downright unhappy some days. But you’re either happy or you’re not. If the one denarius for each worker in the parable can stand for happiness, we can see that this landowner made as many people happy as he could in one day.

So, what do we make of this? If I were a more evangelistic preacher, I might go on to emphasize that the call of conversion can come at any time in our lives, even in the last hour. The person who makes a deathbed conversion inherits eternal life the same as one who has been a devoted Christian all their life. I believe that’s true. After all, eternity is a different quality of time. It’s not just a whole lot of time. It’s available any time, all the time, but it seems to beckon to us at particular times of crisis or urgency, and a time of illness or possible death can be a privileged moment, a powerful portal into that eternal dimension. I hope I would not be envious that God generously accepts someone who found it only at the end of the day.

Or, if I were a more liberal, humanistic preacher, I might emphasize that God loves and accepts all people, regardless of their beliefs. Just as Jesus said, I have other sheep, not of this fold, God has other vineyards and invites other people to be faithful workers there – even if that vineyard is some religion or way of life I don’t understand. I believe that too. I hope that I would not be envious that God generously accepts someone who has found a different door into the same eternal dimension. God is surely a liberal, because liberal literally means ‘generous’.

But the fact is, I am preaching this particular morning to this particular congregation. And I look around the room and I see many different lives of faithfulness. And through an amazing variety of ways, each of us finds himself or herself worshipping here this morning. Some have been in this vineyard for many decades, others have come more recently, perhaps from other vineyards. We gain from the long-term faithfulness and perspective of some, and the fresh perspective and new inspiration of others. And we call one another ‘Friends’. We do so because we have a mutual respect, because we depend upon one another to be faithful each in their own way. We do so because Christ has called us his friends, because we have felt deeply bonded together in the stillness, those silent times when Christ’s Spirit flows so richly among us.

In two weeks, on Friend Day, I hope you will bring a visitor with you. A friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, a member of your extended family perhaps. It may be someone who is ready to find a Church home. Or simply someone you would like to experience First Friends as something important in your life. First Friends Meeting is many things. It’s a vineyard of sorts – there’s a lot of work to be done here. We always need more workers. But that’s quantity. More importantly, First Friends is a portal into that eternal dimension, that quality of time. We enter that portal from our different angles – differences in belief, differences in gifts and forms of service. But it’s the same Spirit, the portal, the same eternal dimension.