Matthew 20:1-16
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Today is Church Action on Poverty Sunday. The statistics on poverty in the UK are alarming. The latest figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that over 30% of children are growing up in poverty, and that has serious implications for their health and education, impacting not just their present wellbeing but also their future opportunities. And the number of people on benefits in poverty has increased sharply over the past ten years, showing that the social security net is failing to provide even a basic level of support. Against this background, Church Action on Poverty are “building a movement to reclaim dignity, agency and power”, for example through mutual aid groups and poverty truth commissions, enabling people to share their gifts and tell their stories.
The passage we have just heard was the first that came to mind when I thought about responding to the crisis of poverty we are facing. So much of the problem is that people are underemployed or underpaid, and this story of a landowner who keeps creating jobs and paying everyone a living wage seems to speak powerfully into that, offering a model of the economy of the kingdom that we could bring into the economy of the world. In preparing for this morning I discovered that I last preached on this passage for a Fairtrade service three years ago. I said then that “it was not the work that the owner of the vineyard valued but the people, and he valued them all equally [because] that is what fairness looks like in the economy of God’s kingdom [and] so in God’s fair trade, everyone gets enough to live on, no ifs or buts or maybes”. How wonderful if we could say likewise that we value people more than their labour, and there is no question that everyone will have enough to live on.
When I wrote that sermon up for the church blog, I added this note at the bottom. “We didn't touch on this on Sunday, but here is something for you to ponder. The interpretation I have given above says that all people are valued equally and therefore all people have the right to a living wage, but should we take it further than that? Does the fact that the workers were all paid the same mean that we should be campaigning for an equal wage for all, or at least a universal basic income and wage caps to bring us nearer to equality? How radical does this parable call us to be?” So that’s the question I want to put to you this morning. How radical does this parable call us to be? It’s not a question with a quick and easy answer, but I do wonder if we might be bold enough to envision and campaign for a very different economic system based not on the fairness of the world but on the fairness of the kingdom, pushing beyond the fair trade that empowers our global siblings to fair wages that will transform life nearer to home. I leave that wondering with you for the moment, but perhaps this is something we might return to.
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Holy Trinity, you give dignity to all
Remind us that we all are treasured by you
Loving God, you lift up the lowly
Remind us of those whose value is not seen
Jesus Christ, you bring good news to the poor
Remind us to reach out for justice for all
Holy Spirit, you free the captives, you challenge and inspire us
Empower us to build a society where everyone belongs. Amen.
Matthew 22:1-14
The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are invited, but few are chosen.
February has been LGBT+ History Month, and it has been pretty rough for the communities that make up that acronym, but particularly for transgender people. The long promised ban on conversion therapy in the UK has yet to come into effect, and continues to meet with resistance from ministers and churches who wish to be able to pray for a person’s sexuality or gender identity to change. Reform of the Gender Recognition Act continues to be delayed, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission stands accused of having an anti-trans stance. And in the last few days, the governor of Texas has announced that parents who support their children through gender affirming treatment will be prosecuted as child abusers. These are complex issues, but the simple fact is that LGBT+ people are hurting, and we would be poor allies if we didn’t recognise that and speak against it. We need to be saying clearly “we’re sorry for the hurt, God loves you and so do we”.
But what does that have to do with the parable of the feast? I’ll be honest, that was not the passage I originally intended for us to hear. I did want the parable of the feast, but I forgot there were two very distinct versions, and didn’t check which one I had chosen. The version I first had in mind was Luke’s, where the invited guests make their excuses and so others are invited in from the city streets and the country lanes in a wonderful picture of generosity and inclusion. This version is a lot spikier, but I thought it would be dishonest to switch the readings out having already shared them, and so I figured I had to be brave and handle it, spikes and all.
Reading what others have said about the passage, it helped me to see that the story is really quite absurd. No one would kill a king’s servant because they didn't want to go to a party, no king would torch a city in revenge for such a slight, and no party host would tie a guest up and throw them to eternal torment because they were wearing the wrong clothes to a party they’d just been pulled in off the street for. It is all so ridiculous that we must surely conclude that this parable is to be taken seriously but not literally, and so we do not have to read it as a threat of hellfire and brimstone style damnation for those who do not believe. It was also helpful to be reminded that it is not really about Jews and Christians either. It is easy to cast Jews as the guests who snub the invitation and Christians as the ones who are invited to take their place, but at the time the gospels were written Christianity was not yet a fully-fledged religion of its own, and it is thought that this gospel in particular was written primarily to Jewish followers of Christ. There is tension here between those who accept and those who don’t, but it reflects an intra-Jewish dispute which could easily map onto contemporary intra-Christian disputes, and it shouldn’t be used as criticism or rejection of the Jewish people.
So if that is what the story is not, then what is it? If we don’t read it as a strict allegory then we can perhaps be less concerned with the details and look at the broader strokes, and in simplest terms it is about if and how we want to show up to the feast that is the kingdom of heaven. The guests who are invited first decide not to show up at all, and the guest who arrives without his wedding clothes shows up half-heartedly. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham noted that “wearing festal garments indicated one’s full participation in the joy of the feast”, and theologian Karl Barth commented that “in the last resort, it all boils down to the fact that the invitation is to a feast, and that he who does not obey and come accordingly, and therefore festively, declines and spurns the invitation no less than those who are unwilling to obey and appear at all”. We are invited to a party and God wants us to be there fully and enthusiastically.
In preaching on this story, Episcopal priest Michael K Marsh, said that “The key to our life in God is to just show up, to be present [but] to be present is difficult work. It means establishing the other person as our priority...seeing them for who they are and not who we want them to be or think they should be...opening ourselves to receive their life into our own. It means the vulnerability of entrusting and giving our life to the other...really listening to what they say and not just what we hear or want to hear...letting go of our own agendas and fears and prejudices...bringing and offering all that we are and all that we have.” It’s a great picture of what it means to be present to God, but isn’t it also a picture of what it means to be present to one another, as fellow guests at the party?
This is where I think the story begins to say something particular for LGBT+ History Month, because God invites their LGBT+ children to the party too, and so the rest of us must be present to them by seeing them as our priority and recognising them for who they are and opening ourselves to them. We must be vulnerable enough to create mutual trust and truly listen to their stories and let go of our preconceptions and offer ourselves to them. (Of course this goes not just for LGBT+ folk but for all, because God's invitation is for everyone who will accept it. The parable may end by saying many are invited but few are chosen, but the story suggests that it is the guests who do the choosing. However sometimes we must turn our attention to particular groups who have been excluded from or shunned at the party, and this morning it seems right to focus on LGBT+ people.) As we accept the invitation and all it means, showing up wholeheartedly and making ourselves fully present to God and to one another, we will experience the true joy of the feast.
There’s one last point I want to make, because I don’t think we can entirely resist the temptation to read this story allegorically. My first instinct was to see LGBT+ people as among the guests, but what if there are other layers to uncover? What if they are also the servants going out with the invitation? What if they are beckoning us to join them at a better party by calling us into a fresher and deeper understanding of God and ourselves? I believe there is much the church has to learn from LGBT+ communities, about chosen families and what it means to be embodied and the expansiveness of God. If you are on Twitter, I highly recommend following local poet Jay Hulme, who is trans and a Christian and who I am absolutely certain is a prophet. But however any of us identify and wherever any of us are to be found within this story, may we remember that heaven is a party and may we show up fully and joyfully in our finest party clothes.
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