Although I follow my ancestors’ spiritual path, I have incredible respect for the varied traditional paths my friends follow…and for those who follow no specific spiritual tradition. This post, which is the text of a sermon I gave on Sunday, does not and should not imply anything beyond my desire to share… and to lift up love where ever we find it.
Merriam-Webster defines a zero sum game as “a situation in which one person or group can win something only by causing another person or group to lose it.” It is human nature, particularly in Western civilization, that we live this way – that we view our work as a competition and resources as limited and finite. The message we get, over and over, is that there is only so much money (or other resources) available, which means we have to fight for our portion of that limited pie.
That’s a zero-sum game – which can also be summed up as “If you win, I lose.”
This idea, the concept of a “zero-sum game”, is everywhere. Because we live in a society of competition and individualism, we have what psychologists call a zero-sum bias… a tendency to view that this idea applies to other things, too. (For example, the idea that if we give women equal rights it will somehow diminish the rights of men.)
Which brings me to today’s gospel reading, Matthew 20:1-16.
I’ll remind you that the chapters and verses in Matthew were added a thousand years ago. The original text was one long story, not divided arbitrarily into chapters and verses, which means it is always important – and often helpful – to look at what precedes and follows any text we are wrestling with.
Three things happen just prior to our gospel text for today
- Jesus blesses the children that the disciples want to send away
- A rich young man wants to know how to get into heaven, and
- Peter wants to know what he is going to get out of being a disciple
Blessing children (who have no power), telling a young man to give away all his money, and reassuring Peter he will get “everything” by having given up everything… that’s what precedes today’s gospel reading. After telling Peter that he will end up with “everything” because he gave up everything Jesus says this, the verse that immediately precedes today’s reading: “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Today’s gospel lesson takes place towards the end of the 2-3 years of Jesus’ ministry. The Romans and Jewish authorities are increasingly worried about what Jesus is preaching. That’s why the text that immediately follows today’s passage is Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection – for the third time.
Today’s gospel text is a parable, and starts as many of them do like this: “The kindom of heaven is like…”
More than anything else, when we decide to follow Christ we are committing to do what we can to bring the kindom of heaven to earth… We actually pray those words every week when we pray the Lord’s Prayer together – so it’s particularly important that we understand what the kindom is like.
In today’s parable the Kindom of Heaven is like a landowner.
He’s a landowner who needs help in the vineyard, so he goes to the market at 6 in the morning and hires some workers. There is discussion about the pay and they all agree that they will be paid 1 denarius, which in today’s dollars would be about $150 dollars for the day, or about $15 per hour for 10 hours of work. (It shouldn’t escape your notice that $15 dollars an hour is twice what our minimum wage is today.)
Three hours later the landowner goes back to hire more people. Did he miscalculate the number of people he needed? Was there more work than he realized? We don’t know. There isn’t a negotiation about the pay this time – he just says “I’ll pay you what’s right.”
Then he goes back again, and again, and again. He makes 5 trips to the market, each about three hours apart. At this point we can assume this isn’t incompetence on his part… There’s some other motive here.
Five sets of workers who worked different lengths of time.
I’m pretty sure that other than the first group these workers expected they would be paid by the hour – that they would receive pay for the hours they worked, which would have been fair.
But that’s not what happened.
At the end of the day, they are paid in reverse order – the last ones hired are the first ones paid. It’s not hard to imagine what they felt when they were paid a full day’s wage for their 1 hour of work, when they realized they would be able to feed their families for several days, that no one would go hungry. We can assume they recognized this as generosity, praised God, and thanked the landowner.
The landowner goes sequentially, paying all the workers in reverse order until he gets to the first group – the ones he hired at 6 in the morning to work all day. And here’s where the zero-sum game kicks in. They are angry. There was a pool of money available for wages that day, a pool that had not been divided the way they thought it should. More specifically, they thought the low hour workers got more than they deserved, which meant they “lost” in this zero-sum game.
Jake Owensby describes the situation like this*
Finally the crew that had worked from sunup to sundown got to the payroll office. And they got the usual daily wage.
They were furious. “We worked all day and got the same thing as those slackers who only worked a fraction of the time. They don’t deserve that! We deserve more!”
The owner in essence says, “Deserving has nothing to do with it. This is about my generosity. I have enough for everybody to have enough. So I give it freely. Are you now dissatisfied with enough?”
The message is stunning, really. Enough will never be enough for me unless I want it for everybody else.
To be a follower of Christ means to love our neighbor with our actions, to deeply understand that justice is love out loud… But how do we actually do that? What practices do we need to embrace if we are serious about working to bring the kindom of God to Earth?
There are some practical lessons we can take from this parable – some of which are not so comfortable.
The workers who had worked all day were mad, but they had at least two other choices for how they could have responded. They could have simply not cared one way or another – they were paid fairly – it didn’t matter what happened to the rest of the workers. Or they could have been happy that their co-workers, their neighbors, people they surely knew, would now be able to go home and feed their family.
The kindom of God is like people who celebrate when those less fortunate are given unearned gifts that allow them to thrive.
The second practical lesson, the one that’s maybe not so comfortable, is about how we are supposed to act if we are the landowner in this story.
But before we go there, let me be clear that this parable is not about social structure or economic theory – as Amy-Jill Levine puts it “Jesus is neither a Marxist nor capitalist, rather he is both an idealist and a pragmatist… his focus is often less directly on good news to the poor than on responsibility of the rich.”
So what does this Parable tell us about the responsibility of the rich, of those who have more resources than others?
Ouch.
This is not an ambiguous message.
We are told that those who have resources should be agathos. That’s the Greek word that is translated as “generous” in Verse 15 of today’s reading: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?
But it turns out that the word agathos means more than just being generous… It’s the most common Greek adjective for “good”, but it means much more than just good behavior. This is a deep, rich word that means “moral or intrinsic goodness, often with a sense of generosity or benefit towards others”. **
Which means verse 15 could be translated: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with my resources? Or are you envious because I am reflecting the true nature of our loving God by being generous towards those who have less than you do?
The kindom of God is like good people who do what they can to share what resources they have with others who have less, and who rejoice when everyone can thrive.
What this means for each of us will be different – Parables don’t come with detailed instructions! But as people with resources – which we all are – this lesson demands that we interrogate not just what we give, but how and why we give it.
This is echoed in today’s reading from second Corinthians as well, this idea of being intrinsically good, of giving to others in need not out of obligation but with true joy: “…for God loves a giver who gives cheerfully. There are no limits to the grace of God who will make sure you will always have enough of everything and even a surplus for good works…”
The kindom of God is not a zero-sum game.
No one has to lose in order for others to win.
The kindom of God is like friends, neighbors, congregations, and countries that finally understand that – Enough will never be enough for me unless I want it for everybody else.
Thy kindom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…
Amen
Sermons are best listened to, rather than read. If you’d like to hear this one, it starts at 24:33 on this recording
*I mistakenly attributed this quote to Suzanne Guthrie in the sermon.
** The only use of AI (Claude) for this sermon.