Sermon: Our Love is All God's Money

Our Love is All God’s Money

by Katrina Ross Zezza, September 24, 2023, First Presbyterian Church of Beacon, NY 

Reading: Matthew 20:1-16 

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Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, a mystic and a theologian who wrote more than 50 books over the course of his life. In one of his writings, he describes being in a bustling shopping district in Louisville, Kentucky one day, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut. When suddenly he had a life-changing experience in which he realized that he loved everyone there. He says it was like waking from a dream of separateness and self-isolation, and that even though they were complete strangers, they were his and he was theirs. It was such a relief, he says, such a joy that he almost laughed aloud. And he wrote, “I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” Then he writes that it was as if he looked into their hearts and saw the person that each of them is in God’s eyes. If only we could see ourselves as we really are, and see each other that way, Thomas Merton says: there would be no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. That would be great, wouldn't it?

On another note... you know, Jesus never said we have to go to church. Really, he said a lot about healing and feeding each other, but not one thing about going to church on Sunday. In fact, he had real issues with the religious institutions of his time. So if you struggle at all with organized religion, just know that Jesus did too. 

I love the story of him flipping the tables in the temple. Don’t you wish you could have been there? But we sometimes lose sight of how radical that actually was. Remember when he drove out the money changers and the people selling doves? When I was kid, I always wondered what the heck is a money changer? And what was Jesus so mad about? I kind of thought it meant we shouldn’t sell things in church- like we weren’t allowed to have a bake sale or a craft fair. Am I the only one who thought that? But the full meaning of that story comes to light in the story of his death and resurrection. 

The statement “Jesus is the sacrifice for sin” only fully makes sense in the context of the temple sacrificial system, and it would have sounded really different to people living in that context. 

In the first century, in the temple in Jerusalem, in the holy of holies, in a chamber where only the priests could fully enter is where God was believed to live, and to even enter the outer part of the temple and be in the vicinity of God, you often needed to have your sins forgiven first with an animal sacrifice. Because of this, animals were bought and sold at the temple. The wealthy could buy sheep or goats, while the poorest people could only buy doves - which really weren’t as good in terms of a sacrifice. There were folks profiting off that transaction, and the priests and religious authorities had sort of a monopoly on God’s forgiveness. Jesus was mad because he thought they were more concerned with maintaining their own power than bringing people into connection with God. And after his death, when people started saying, “Jesus is the sacrifice for sin” it meant that Jesus had already provided the sacrifice you require for whatever you- or anyone else thinks- is separating you from God. You have already been forgiven and you get to have access without needing to buy anything or go through any priests or religious authorities. (Borg 94) God is with you and for you already. Looking at that context helps us to see how truly radical the gospel is - and also why the early followers of the way ended up getting in so much trouble.

Today we read the Parable of Laborers in the Vineyard, from the book of Matthew, in which Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God is like a vineyard where all the workers get paid the same amount of money no matter how long they’ve worked. If we’re being honest it made us a little mad, right? There’s no one who thinks that if you worked a full day you shouldn’t get paid more than someone who only worked for an hour. But as usual Jesus is flipping everything around.

We have to remember that the parables are metaphorical stories, not so much about humans but about what God is like. God’s unearned grace breaks down our human system of counting- of keeping score, figuring out who deserves what. No amount of work can give you any more or any less grace. It’s constant like the sun. It’s hard for us as humans to compute this though. I think mostly because of our sense of justice. If everyone gets the same grace, then why be good? Why work hard? If someone who’s lazy is going to be paid anyway, then maybe I shouldn’t work either. 

We’re mad about this parable, and it isn’t trivial or petty anger. It hits us deeply, because it's important. Justice is important. But we always have to hold God’s justice together with God’s love. As humans, we’re often comforted to think that some people are going to be punished. We think good, they’ll get what they deserve. But God’s justice is about making things right, it’s about healing and restoration, not punishment, or spite, or domination, but love - ultimately to restore our community, not to kick those people out, so that only the “good" people will be left. 

Richard Rohr says, “Goodness is contagious- you only know how to be good because someone has been good to you.” Goodness spreads when we’re good to each other. And even though each of us can probably relate to having our hard work overlooked, we can’t assume that we are the laborers who started earlier. If our systems of counting are so different from God’s, how would we know if we are the ones who worked the longest? I think Jesus is challenging us to imagine that actually, in a way, we are all the late day workers. The ones who got hired last. 

All of the people that the vineyard owner hired were in need of work. It says in the text that they were “standing around the marketplace doing nothing.” Another translation says, “They were standing around idle.” This language conjures an unsympathetic image for most of us. Maybe we’re imagining the vineyard owner shaking his head and saying, “Ugh no one wants to work anymore.” But the marketplace is where they would have been waiting to be hired, similar to how some day laborers are hired today. They weren’t just loafing about. They needed to work. The people listening to Jesus would have known this about the marketplace. And because most people living in the Roman Empire were poor, they knew what it was like to not have enough to eat- and the utter terror of being unemployed. For a lot of people and families, if you didn’t work that day you didn’t eat that night. To explain these conditions, just like today, they would have been used to a narrative that said certain “kinds” of people don’t deserve what they need just to survive- you know the foreigners, the peasants, the immigrants. But in the kingdom of God, as opposed to the kingdom of Caesar, everyone has what they need.

So why is the concept of unearned and undeserved grace so important? Because it tells us that nothing can separate us from God and when we know that, we are freed to have genuine love and compassion for ourselves and others. The goodness can spread. We don’t need to follow religious rules or assent to certain beliefs to receive God’s favor, it’s a gift. All we have to do is open our hearts and accept it.  Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done. And we end up hiding instead. It’s especially hard to accept a gift when you fundamentally believe that you don’t deserve it. A lot of us stop at the undeserving part of grace. God is great, I am scum. But what if the concept of being undeserving is just a step on the way to the real point? 

The real point, which is at the very heart of the gospel itself, is that you are inherently, completely and utterly worthy of God’s love. To fully hold that truth, we have to first understand that we didn’t need to do anything to get that way. God adores you. You are seen by our creator for who you truly are, even if you make mistakes, and you are called to love the world in the way only you can. 

So no, Jesus never said we have to go to church, but when we gather as a community to worship, it’s a joyful response to the grace we’ve been given, not a payment in order to receive it. And when we extend radical welcome and grace to others without any conditions we are doing the work that Jesus set out to do when he flipped those tables, as well as when he died for our sins- ultimately to break down any kind of gate keeping of the divine.

Thomas Merton also wrote that “grace is God's own life, shared by us.” And he said that “at the center of our being is a point of pure truth, a spark which belongs entirely to God. It’s like a diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It’s in everybody, and if we could see it we would see billions of points of light coming together in the blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.” What an incredible image. I love thinking of God this way, as billions of points of light coming together in a blaze of sun, that it is a gift that lives within us. And the gateway to where God lives is everywhere. What if we could feel the warmth of that blaze? 

References:

Borg, Marcus J. The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith. Harper One. 2003.

Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Image Books. 1968.