Selfless Gain
A sermon on Jesus’ riddle of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16).
We have been desensitized to most of Jesus’ parables/riddles — but one still manages to piss us off.
There are so many fascinating aspects to this story — when some laborers go to work in the mid-morning, they’re told they’d be paid “what is right.”
At the end of the day, the ones who came last — with an hour to go — are paid first. This means that everyone there gets to see it. If the first ones at work were paid first, they’d go home and never see that the last ones were paid the same amount. This is on purpose.
Some call this riddle “the Sermon on the Mount, revisited,” since Jesus says back then that “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” This story gives that general saying some teeth. And it’s totally unfair. And offensive.
Especially to those who feel entitled to everything. They see others getting the same treatment as them, and they lose their shit.
White people who have been coddled, given everything — and told we “earned” it — freak TF out when others assert their own rights. As is often said, equality feels like oppression when you’ve been privileged your entire existence.
So then, some of these people who were first (and are now last) freak out on the landowner. She says “friend,” which is a unique Greek word. It’s “friend,” but soaked in sarcasm. It’s someone who isn’t a friend at all, but only looking for their own self-gain.
And the landowner isn’t having it. She smirks and lays it on thick.
Here’s how Robert Farrar Capon imagines the scene.
The radical grace of God is offensive — because it takes our ideas of self-gain, and says, “selfless gain is the only way.” When one of us hurts, we all hurt. We are all connected. As Dr. King put it, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
We see this throughout the Bible.
When Daniel and friends refuse to stand at attention to the National Anthem of Babylon, they’re thrown in a fiery furnace. God shows up.
We are called as Christians to have the same sense of selfless gain, and recognize that when one of us hurts, we all hurt.
Instead of bemoaning “violent” Baltimore, we’re called to recognize the systemic sin of redlining that looted wealth from black neighborhoods.
When neoNazis and white supremacists march in the street, we’re called to remember the history of what that means.
There’s another story in the Bible that illustrates this radical selfless gain.
It’s the story of One who was God enfleshed among us, being born specifically on the margins. Living among the poor and under oppression.
One who said that whatever happens to the least of these — not the greatest — happens to God herself.
One who literally gave himself away as bread for the hungry, for thousands of people, multiple times.
One who walked on water to remind his followers that they were never alone.
One who walked among the shit-on in this world, who stood in solidarity with those who struggled to just get by.
One who refused to bow down to military might, and instead preached a radical nonviolent third way.
One who was full of righteous anger against those who pilfer and hold all the power without any semblance of compassion.
One who was falsely arrested, a victim of police brutality, railroaded by the courts.
One who was tortured and publicly executed as a terrorist as a way for the State to strike fear into the hearts of its subjects.
One who, even then, came back to life as a way to remind God’s people that there was nowhere Godforsaken anymore.
It’s a fantastic story. Do you know the one I’m talking about?
