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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
Well, approximately 100 years ago, I did my undergraduate work at Sacramento State University and it was in computer engineering. You may not know about my previous life. It's a secret, but I can tell you about it later. I worked a part-time IT job while taking I think it was like 17 or 18 units a semester. I drove a beater car. I ate and lived on a very tight budget. And I didn't have much of a social life because I was always in the lab doing homework and projects and all kinds of things. This was the shape of my hustle in undergrad. Well, I completed, I graduated, I'm still alive. I made it through somehow. And a few years after that, the federal government changed a law that allowed veterans to give their education benefits to their kids. My dad is a 30-plus year Air Force veteran and I have two younger brothers. So when all of this started rolling down after I had done all this hustle, my younger brothers got free college tuition. Not free, it was paid for by my dad's military service. That was cool, right? I love my brothers very deeply. There's no one who loves my brothers more. But when I found out about what happened after everything I had been through, I did not say, well, praise God for them. Well, good for them. Praise the Lord. Look at that provision. How amazing? I did not say that. You want to guess what I said? What the heck? You got to be kidding me. What? After everything I've been through, where was this kind of provision when I was hustling? That's what I, I'm ashamed to say that that's how it is, but I think you can see how that's kind of reasonable, right? I don't know. I found myself keeping tally of what I got compared to what my brothers got. If you're a sibling, that's familiar, right? And it poisoned my ability to celebrate what they received as a gift, as something that would change their lives, actually. Last Sunday, I said most of us are better accountants than we would like to admit because we keep tally of what others owe us or the value that people can bring to our lives. We're really good at that kind of math. Maybe not at other math, but that kind, yes. Well, this week in this parable, Jesus catches us keeping count again, not this time so much with our neighbor, but with what God gives, our tally with God. I want to restate the parable so it's fresh in our minds as we think about this together. A landowner, he walks into a marketplace at dawn to hire day laborers. This is the corner where men would stand in the morning to hope to get picked up for work, for a job, right? Think of our Latino neighbors standing out at the Home Depot, right? Before ICE agents racially profiled and targeted them cruelly and unjustly. This was not so much a parable. This is something we have actually all seen our neighbors do. Well, these workers were out there in this parable, and they were being offered a denarius, which would have paid for a family's full day of food about. The landowner hires at dawn and at nine and at noon and at five. He finds men at five waiting to be picked up for work and asks them, why are you still here? Did you not get picked up? And they say, no, we just, no one hired us. No one picked us up for work. We're still here at five. They weren't lazy. They just hadn't been picked up. Nobody chose them. And they were likely going to go home to a hungry family who needed them to work. Now, at the end of the day, the parable goes, the landowner pays the five o'clock crew first. He picks them up, he hires them, and he pays them the same wage as the workers who had been there early in the morning, working all day in the sweltering heat. In front of everyone, he pays them. So they're all seeing what they're being paid for the amount of work that they have done or not done. They did exactly, all of them, what they agreed to do in that job, right? And their complaint, I think, is kind of reasonable. I think I would do the same thing. What the heck? Why are they getting paid? The same as me. I've been out here all day. And the landowner asks a question, and our translation, I think, in our NRSV translation, I think it softens a little bit. Question the landowner asks is, are you envious because I'm generous? The Greek is more blunt. Is your eye evil because I am good? In Scripture, when one has an evil eye, it's not a curse that you put on someone else. It's what your eye becomes when you look at your neighbor's good and can only see your loss. Can I say that one more time? An evil eye is what happens when you look at your neighbor's good or benefit, and all you see is your loss. Deuteronomy uses the same phrase for the person who looks at a poor neighbor and then tightens their grip on their wealth. It's this zero-sum mentality, this scarcity imagination. If they have more, I have less. And we're all professionals at this. This is like our natural habitat in a capitalistic society, is it not? Especially in our world where the uber-wealthy, the criminally and immorally wealthy get more and more and more, and we seem to be getting less and less and less. We know this feeling. If they have more, I must have less. The Don crew, they lost nothing, right? They got exactly what they agreed to do. They just could no longer be glad about someone else's benefit. Someone else is good in that moment. Jonah, I think, has a similar eye. There's a funny story we read about. It's not funny. It's dramatic, but there's funny parts to it. He just watched Nineveh repent, these people that Jonah despised. This was the capital of the empire that wiped his people off the map. And God's like, I'm going to reckon with them. And Jonah's like, let's go get them. And then they repent. And God's like, nope, not going to do it. And Jonah's like, what? His anger was understandable, I think. So he prays to God, I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love. This is what Jonah says to the Lord. This is Israel's oldest creed and confession. And Jonah throws it at God like an accusation, like a complaint. We say the same words in Psalm 145, but this time it's a statement of praise, right? Coming out of the Psalmist's mouth. The same words, totally different mouths. Jonah's complaint, God is too kind to the wrong people. The Psalmist's mouth, praise God, you are like this. That's so good. I think though the difference isn't so much the mouth, but the eye. I think this is the point of the parable. To a bitter eye, God's mercy looks like injustice. But to a glad eye, we see God's mercy for what it really is, mercy. If anything, I think this means at times that our eyes need some work, right? Our eyes can deceive us, our eyes can be poisoned. Even our eyes, the way we see and make sense of things in the world needs to repent. We need a new way of seeing things. And this is what Jesus is drawing us into, this new way of seeing this. Other people's success, their kids, their marriages, their careers, their success. Their wealth, their health. All of these things can become poison for our eyes when we are envious. Those things on themselves are wonderful, good for you, but for us can become poison to our eyes. And we ask why God doesn't hook me up like that. I've been hustling. And notice, just so we know, just so we're clear here, this is not a parable about the uber wealthy at the top. We're not complaining about billionaires, right? Jesus has plenty to say about that. Very clear, very stark. That's another sermon. We've all heard that one, right? This is actually about our neighbor. The one who stands in the same vineyard, the same working class, right? One of us, our brothers and sisters. And one of them, maybe our neighbor, receives something that we didn't and it turns them into a rival for us. This is what envy does. No longer loving your neighbor, but now your enemy, your rival. Well, I told you about my brothers. That's kind of one instance in which that's happened in my life. But I hear this all over the place in our world. Immediately what came to mind is how the older generation talks about young people. It was so much harder in my day, right? I had to walk to school uphill against the wind and snow, both ways, right? And our times are different, our worlds are different. I don't want to discount difficulty in everyone's time and generation, but it's actually never so simple as we make it to be. We always make it to be something like a story in which we are the suffering hero, right? But housing costs and wages that don't keep up, all kinds of factors show us this is actually not so simple and it actually wasn't so much easier in our time. A bitter eye refuses to see the good that other people enjoy. And instead turns even that goodness, that benefit into a story that we tell ourselves, that centers ourselves and really imprisons ourselves. It poisons us, gives us this bitter eye, a bitter eye. It trades gratitude to God for anger at our neighbors. That's what this does. It trades the praise that God deserves and makes us, instead of generous, makes us scarce, makes us alone. The opposite of an evil eye is not necessarily a blind one. It's not, don't act like it's not there, don't look at it, just ignore it. It's not that kind of thing. The opposite of an evil eye is a good eye, a good way of seeing things. One that can look at your neighbor's blessing and be glad. Wow, look at that. Good for them. Praise God. Even when I say that right now, it feels better. It does something even to our bodies and we can catch our eye going in bad directions. Our heart will follow. Isn't that the truth? So what is it then when we voluntarily say and see things in a different way that our heart might follow as well? Something like, wow, the Lord is gracious to her. You can feel your heart heading in that direction. You can feel the change. The Lord is full of compassion to him. Wow, praise God. God is good. And all the time. Did it, Scott. Praise, friends, praise that comes out of our mouth. It's a choice, actually. It is a choice. Not only to live the good life with God and to be grateful to God and to have hearts renovated with the goodness of God, with the lightness and the joy of God's generosity. Praise is the choice to receive all that. Yes, praise is also a choice not to be poisoned by envy, by scarcity, by fear. Jesus, beloved, is the vineyard owner. You and I, we are the five o'clock workers in this parable. Jesus is also the one, just even being the vineyard owner with all wealth, Jesus is still the one who took the last place for our sake that we might benefit. Praise God for that. He says, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. That's what he did for us and to give his life as a ransom for many. The difficult truth and the good truth of this is that none of us have earned what God has given us. We didn't even work an hour for it. We, a lot of us have tried. But that's not why we have received the mercy of God. But because the landowner is good, because the Lord is gracious and compassionate, and for no other reason are we now welcome at this table today to receive all of the benefits of our Lord who died for us, shedding his own body and blood for our sake, rising to life again and leading us into freedom and the newness of life filled with the spirit. All of those benefits we did not earn. It is solely and only because God is good that we receive those benefits. This is grace. God's grace and mercy pays us for work we cannot do for ourselves. And it's that same mercy that offers to heal us, to change our eyes, and to see others with grace and with mercy, just like that. So I want to ask you this question this morning, if this is true, and it is, right? I wonder how your eyes might need some healing this morning. Some person or aspect of your life that you look at with bitterness or with frustration, maybe jealousy or judgment, when deep down your heart is really saying, and I wish I had that too. I wonder what sharing that honesty without fixing it, without hiding it. I wonder what sharing that raw confession with God might do because God is trustworthy and good and he cares for us. How might it heal us? How might it set us free? How might it empower us to love our neighbors so much more profoundly? This would set us free, I think. This morning, friends, let us then with all the more gusto and energy and excitement come to this table where the last are fed first and where everyone leaves with enough. And let us follow the son who took the place of the last and was raised from the dead and who with the father and the son, the spirit lives and reigns now and forever. Amen?