The 14th Sunday after Pentecost - Complaining and Receiving!

The readings today were: (1) from Exodus when the Israelites in the desert complained about starving and received manna from God, and (2) from a parable in the Gospel of Matthew about vineyard workers who received the same pay, despite working different lengths of time.  The ones who worked the longest hours complained to the vineyard owner.

What gives someone the right to complain?  Not enough to eat—without hope for finding or growing any food?  How about getting the same pay as someone who worked very little in comparison to how long and hard you worked?

Place most of us in the desert with the Israelites—or set us in the world of the parable about the laborers in the vineyard—and we would be complaining as loudly as anyone!  Poor planning and clearly unfair treatment: neither of these will win a leader any loyalty or decent approval ratings.  In fact, I wonder which of the day workers would go with the vineyard owner early the following day?  And how many would wait until later in the day? 

What does the complaining by the Israelites or grumbling by workers hired early signify? A mind-set, I think, of entitlement: when we behave in a proper way we will merit good things happening to us.  Taken to the extreme, preachers of the prosperity gospel—rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ—suggest that giving to God's work through their ministry will result in the giver's getting a better job or a better car or perhaps an unexpected financial gain.  A softer version of this attitude says that following the rules and keeping out of trouble merits God's love and God's blessing.  There is the connection between how we act and what we get from God, according to this point of view. 

Do we truly merit the good we receive in our lives?  Do we recognize how often our comfort often depends on another's toil?  And this toil may occur in very unpleasant, even unfair, circumstances.

Because this is Sea Sunday, we are asked to pray for those folks who work on merchant ships in conditions that I dare say all of us would complain about.  Their wages are low, given the long hours they work.  Many of these seafarers have signed a nine-month contract to sail without returning home. During those months they miss many events—the birth of a child, family weddings, funerals, birthdays, holiday celebrations. Yet we benefit from their work by eating the food and using the products their ships bring.  Every time we drive north on I 495, we can see the docks where what they bring us is off-loaded.  Do we think about how we benefit from the seafarers' toil?

When we say the Lord's Prayer and use these words: “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are not asking for what we deserve or what we merit.  We are praying these words, because we need to receive what God provides for us.  God provides our daily bread through the talents God gave us and through the talents God has given others.  This makes all we receive a gift.  Our prayerbook offers these words in Prayer 34, For Towns and Rural Areas: “. . . grant that all people of our nation may give thanks to you for food and drink and all other bodily necessities of life, respect those who labor to produce them, and honor the land and the water from which these good things come.”

So we can see the provision of manna by God as such an unmerited gift.  Seminary professor Theodore Wardlaw calls manna, “an extraordinary ordinary thing” that God gave in abundance.  He noted this description of how manna occurs:  “In the Sinai Peninsula, 'a type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from this juice, a yellowish-white flake or ball. During the warmth of the day it disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold.  It has a sweet taste.  Rich in carbohydrates and sugar, it is still gathered by natives, who bake it into a kind of bread.'” Then he draws an important conclusion: “ . . . for people hungry enough to notice, this ordinary food—given to them day by day as a completely unearned gift—is linked to the miraculous generosity of God.”

Perhaps this miraculous generosity is what St. Matthew wanted to call our attention to when he reported Jesus' teaching about the capricious vineyard owner's way of compensating his day workers—and Jesus' statement that brackets this parable, “And the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Yes, the workers who had been in the vineyard all day grumbled. But for those who had waited all day without being chosen—in the same scorching heat as the ones chosen first—and who perhaps had resigned themselves to being hungry another day—for them the vineyard owner’s act of paying everyone a day’s wage must have seemed as “miraculous generosity” indeed.

So the question today's gospel reading confronts us with is this: “Where do you place yourself in this parable?”  Are you among those workers chosen early who believe your hard work merits what you have received—and probably even more?  Or are you among the last chosen who knew they did not really deserve the wages they were given?  This is not an economic question.  This is a spiritual question.  And I don't believe it is an easy question to answer.  Admitting our vulnerability before God, our unworthiness because of sin, and our (sometimes) uncertain faith can make us most uncomfortable.  Yes, in this parable Jesus was warning us against getting cocky about our relationship with God. But Jesus was also assuring us that God can show miraculous generosity when we are in need.  Exercising as much humility as we can muster, can we look for evidence of God's “extraordinary ordinary” generosity in our lives—and in the life of our community here at St. Nicholas'?  Could there be manna here we have never noticed before?