Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, September 21, 2008
Episcopal Church of the Holy Family, Jasper, Georgia 30143
The Rev. Mary P. Johnson, Rector
Texts: Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16.
One of my colleagues talks about “wheelbarrow sermons.” He says sometimes he has an agenda for a sermon. So he takes his wheelbarrow and wheels the agenda up to each of the lectionary readings, in turn, to see if they can give him any help in carrying the load in his wheelbarrow. He admits that this is not a good method, generally.
But it’s what I’m doing today. I have loaded the parish pledge drive, which begins this weekend, into my wheelbarrow, and I am going to take a little tour of the Bible readings appointed for today. How nice it would be to read in one of those readings that God will reward those who work hard and give generously, so that, as they are increasingly financially successful, they have more to give and share. There are Christians who talk about a Gospel of prosperity. Sometimes it sounds like a tithe to your local church is something like a franchise fee in a scheme to get rich.
But that’s not exactly what I get from today’s readings. Let’s see what we do learn. What we learn is both more complicated than that, and radically simpler.
We wheel the wheelbarrow up to the reading from Exodus. For the Israelites, so recently liberated from their slavery in Egypt, the fun was wearing off. What they thought would be a brief journey back to the land of their fathers was turning out to be something quite different. The food they’d brought with them was giving out. They began to complain to Moses and Aaron. How quickly they’d forgotten their sense of relief, their joy at being liberated. Now they looked back at their time in Egypt and it didn’t seem so bad after all. Like all of us, the Israelites had a very selective memory. They seem to have completely forgotten about the slave labor that had seemed so endless, so heavy, so disheartening. They seem to have forgotten that Pharaoh had commanded that they kill their babies. They’d had virtually no control over their lives. Now, a couple of months later, what they remembered was the bread they would eat at the end of the day, and the pots of stewed meat they could dip it into.
God heard the complaints, and arranged for the Israelites to be fed. By night he sent a flock of quails sufficient to satisfy everybody’s taste for meat. And in the morning he caused a flaky substance to appear as the dew evaporated. It was so strange and weird that they asked: “What’s this??” in Hebrew, “ Ma nah?” and so it got its name, manna.
Listen to the instructions about this bread that God gave them:
Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Gather as much as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.’” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. And Moses sid to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul. …And on the sixth day Moses said, ”tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning. So they put it aside until morning, as Moses commanded them; and it did not become foul, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field.”
What we see here is a sort of divine leveling of the playing field. The weak and the strong collect exactly what they need. Nobody can get ahead by selling extra food at a profit. Nobody can hire somebody else to get their food for them. Everybody gets a rest on the seventh day. There is no rewarding of the ambitious. There is no penalizing the weak, or even the lazy. This is not about efficiency. This is purely and simply sustenance of daily needs by God.
It is the opposite of the society they left behind in Egypt, where the Israelites labored for the benefit of Pharaoh, where they could never work hard enough, where meeting their productivity quotas resulted in the quotas becoming more stringent. In this wilderness, the people have to be totally dependent on God for their every need. And they have to depend on God one day at a time.
Furthermore, even though they are only a day away from hunger, the Israelites still were commanded to rest on the seventh day. It was not a day to get ahead, but a time to rejoice in God’s presence, to share time and food together, to do less in order to rejoice in simply being in the loving care of the Creator, to slow down and look around and be grateful.
From the very beginning, Christians have seen in the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites an analogy. Christians have seen the Church is the New Israel. As we wander in a wilderness that is sometimes hostile, we are able to trust that God will provide what we need, and we know that those provisions come on an as-needed basis. In fact, every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to provide for us, as God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness: bread for the day. And we ask, not “Give ME this day MY daily bread.” We ask, “Give US this day OUR daily bread.” This petition can seem silly in a context where many of us are on diets, not usually from eating too much bread, but from eating too much of much richer, more expensive, and less healthy fare. But we are not praying for ourselves alone. We are praying for ALL of God’s children, many of whom are very hungry. And I don’t think we can pray that prayer without also repenting of greed and of hoarding resources that, like extra manna, turn wormy and stinky.
So what do I put in my Stewardship Wheelbarrow here? Perhaps the truth that, ultimately, God is the only source of sustenance. Perhaps we can put into the wheelbarrow a conviction that even the Church of the Holy Family doesn’t need to worry about our future. It’s in God’s hands.
Now: if the lessons of the society of Israelites fed on manna is not problematic enough, let’s drive the wheelbarrow with our parish pledge drive in it down to the Gospel reading. The landowner is paying the customary wage to the folks he hires first thing in the morning. That denarius is about enough to meet the workers’ most basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing. I’ve heard people say all kinds of things about this reading.
§ It’s silly! (What kind of boss isn’t going to know how many people to hire at the beginning of the day? He should have hired enough people right from the start.)
§ It’s not fair! (It’s not fair to the people who worked all day to be paid just like the folks who hung out in the market place.)
§ It’s unrealistic! (That vineyard owner is going to have a really tough time the next day when he heads out to hire employees.)
Remember that whenever we listen to one of Jesus’ parables, we probably have to try on several roles and see how they fit us. These concerns make sense if you cast yourself in the role of the conscientious, hard-working employee who started work at 8 o’clock. They make sense if you cast yourself in the role of the employer. But what if you take the perspective of those workers who showed up at the marketplace at 7 am with all the others, who tried to look employable each time the hiring bosses came by, and who feel like they must have “Failure” written on their foreheads as they’re just about ready to head home and tell their children that there’s no money for food? But at the last minute they DO get to work, and then the most amazing thing happens. The boss pays them as if they’d been in the fields all day!
Of course we all know that the Landowner is God. Of course we know that everything the laborers receive belongs to the Landowner. Of course we know that everything belongs to God. And here is good news! The Good News must be seen from the perspective of the worker hired at the very end of the day. If we know that apart from God we have nothing, then we can see that God is generous! God is the only source of what we need to live. The Israelites in the wilderness also learned that they were utterly dependent on God to provide for their needs.
God is generous! If we seek to live by the values of the Kingdom of Heaven, might it not be fair to say that we, too, are called to be generous? Might it not be fair to say that, if we give generously and sacrificially to the work of God through Holy Family, we should expect our parish budget to reflect those values? Giving to God’s work through Holy Family should support God’s values. Our buildings here are beautiful and inspiring. Are we making them available to serve the needs of the lost and overlooked members of our community? We see needs that we cannot meet directly. Do we make sure that a healthy chunk of the monies that come in go out to alleviate suffering, to make people know they are created by a loving God who has a purpose that they are uniquely created to fulfill?
Finally, we circle the wheelbarrow back to Paul’s letter to the Philippians. We pick up where Paul is saying: “For to me, living is Christ.” This is a perspective that sees our relationship with Jesus Christ as knit in with absolutely every breath we take, every step we take, every word we speak, all that we do.
God has set us free; God provides all that we need; God is generous! These are the truths that are in the wheelbarrow. What does this imply for the number you should write on a pledge card? I guess it depends on whether or not you believe that Holy Family is the place where you can derive strength and receive encouragement to live by the values of the Kingdom of heaven. All that we have belongs to God anyhow. And God will take care of us here at Holy Family as we seek to be conduits of his generosity and love to one another and to the world around us.
Historically, ten percent has been a starting point, the place where the Bible’s stories, examples, and instruction have directed God’s people. That may not be enough for us in this affluent country where we have been blessed with so much. I know, in the bottom of my heart, that God will enable you to be generous as God himself is generous. Please pray for me, for your Vestry, for the finance and steward ministry members, that we may be faithful stewards of what you entrust to God through Holy Family, so that we may be effective and loving agents of the Kingdom of Heaven.
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