Creation 3 Year A

Exodus 16:2-15, Matt 20:1-16

I have a confession to make. I love a quiz show. Perhaps my favourite is University Challenge – where if I get even one question correct, I consider it a triumph! However, the quiz show I want tell you about today is one that was on the radio in Australia – the 25-question quiz. Basically, it ran like this – there were (as the name implies) 25 questions. Contestants would ring the radio station and when they got on air, they would continue answering questions until they got one wrong. Then the next caller would come online. The winner was the person who managed to answer the final question. Over time, it was possible to see that regular contestants developed strategies. It was never good tactics to ring in too early – I do not think anybody ever managed to answer 25 correct in a row. Rather, contestants would try to time their run just right. To get on air as late as possible, but not to ring up so late that somebody had already managed to answer the vital 25th question. You had to let others do the hard work first, and then swoop in and take the prize just at the final hour. I remember one night, a certain contestant rang in at a point that seemed far too early and faced the first question. Tension began to build after fifteen correct answers. It was positively gripping when twenty questions had been achieved. Through the early twenties the contestant answered with ease such trivialities as the name of the first Australian Prime Minister (answers afterwards – and no cheating on your Smart phones – I know what you lot are like!). Then when 24 had been answered correctly, the tension was more than palpable. However, at the last hurdle, the contestant failed to answer the vital 25th question. I do not even remember what that next question, but there was a sense of deflation. The next person came on the line, and straightaway gave the right answer and took the prize. That sense of deflation quickly turned to feelings of anger at the seeming injustice. The first person had successfully borne the brunt of the questioning, and this Johnny-come-lately arrived at the last minute possible and took the reward. How could this possibly be fair?
The parable of the Vineyard Workers may evoke similar feelings. Yet there are obvious differences from the quiz-show scenario. The scene that Jesus paints in the parable, is not that of the middle classes entertaining themselves with quiz shows, but it concerns the life and death grind of agrarian peasant workers, seeking day-labour to earn a single denarius in order to sustain themselves and their dependents with meagre nutritional requirements. There were no fixed contracts, no workers’ rights, no sick leave, just the worst of exploitative employment practices. A landowner would go to the market square and select the number of workers needed to complete the tasks of the day. The result was that some days, perhaps during harvest season, there would be work for virtually all and enough money to buy food. While other days, during periods of agricultural downtime there would be almost no work for these journeymen at the bottom of the social pyramid, and consequently both they and their families would go hungry. The image Jesus offered to his first century hearers, was certainly familiar to them, and it illustrates that life in first century Galilee was not the rural idyll that moderns have often imagined.
However, the familiarity of the scene is overturned in Jesus’ parable by the repeated trips of the landowner back to the market square to hire more workers. Was this poor planning, or a lack of training in human resources management? The narrative simply does not tell us. Rather, it moves quickly to a more startling scene, that of payment of the workers. Here was a real opportunity to flex managerial muscle and to give the third, sixth, and eleventh-hour workers a reduced payment, since they had agreed to work for ‘whatever is right’. However, bizarrely, the landowner starting with those who were employed last, gives to all in turn a single denarius. Surely the smart thing to have done would have been to give those employed at the beginning of the day their wage first, then they would not have known what their compatriots received. But here the landowner is not interested in lessening confrontation. Rather, he leans into a provocative and outrageous act. To be quite honest, at least on a first reading, I am inclined to sympathize with the angry workers who did all the hard toil – how can this be fair? Call the payment scheme anything you like, but please, do not call it fair. Surely outrage and grumbling are fully justifiable reactions? How can last minute interlopers receive the same reward?
Complaining, or grumbling appears to be common at the moment. However, it is not a new phenomenon. The first verb in our reading from Exodus is “complaining.” We are told all of the Exodus generation were complaining, or maybe better “grumbling” against Moses and his brother Aaron. They had just escaped slavery in Egypt by walking on a dry seabed with towering walls of water on either side, and yet now as their stomachs rumble, they grumble, preferring to return to a life of servitude. At the moment when God was doing something new, yet challenging with them, all they do is wish for their former ways. At this point, our Exodus story describes the Lord intervening before Moses can answer. God promises bread from heaven. Later in the chapter we are told that this bread-like substance was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers with honey (Exod 16.31). This is the famous manna, which was only the morning provision. In the evening the people received their necessary protein with a blanket of quail covering the camp. But please, listen to the reason given for this provision. It is not so the people are satisfied, or even that their grumblings might be quieted. Rather, in both vv. 6 and 12, the provision of heavenly food is given in order that the people might know that the Lord is their God, and was the one who led them from their former life of slavery. After announcing this forthcoming miraculous provision, when it actually occurs, in response to the mass confusion, Moses explains that the substance that has come down from heaven is the bread which the Lord has given.
I do not know how long most of you have been coming to the Cathedral, many longer than me. Yet currently there is something that feels noticeably different in society. There is a lot of grumbling and complaining. One of the most frequent complaints is that people who arrive in this land are treated just the same as those who have been here for many years. – They receive the same treatment as residents who have paid taxes all their lives. I wonder, do we stop to listen to ourselves. Are we not fortunate to live in a still well-order society, do we not know the implied social contract of paying tax to support those less fortunate? In the same way that the landowner challenges his disgruntled employees, are we envious simply because others share in a generous provision, which we think only we are entitled to receive?
Yet, in the face of that negativity and complaining in wider society, I think God by the work of the Spirit is doing new things in this very place. Every Sunday, when I look out at the congregation, I see new faces. We are a community of both those who have joined recently and those of you who have been here half-a-century or longer. Yet, in this place, all are equally welcome. When there is so much resentment and rejection of the newcomer in society, this place must stand apart and signal God’s values of inclusion and welcome. The truth is, by God’s gracious love we are all newcomers here, as day-by-day and week-by-week we come to this place to be re-created in the image of Christ. Every time we enter, we hear God’s word and we are remade. We are, recreated every week, and all of us together are equally new creatures, the handiwork of our constant, loving Creator.
So, we must be open to new things happening in this place. Things will change here, they will not remain static. For those of you who watch Youtube, there is a recording of Evensong from our cathedral from the 1960s. It fills me with a wonderful sense of nostalgia of my first memories of church. But goodness, I am glad things are not the same now. While it fills me with memories, it feels a little wooden and staid and for me, it serves to deromanticize the past. I believe at the moment, as the people of God in this place, we are in a phase of new beginnings and fresh transformations. Some things will change, including ourselves. This will be an exciting journey. So really my final question to you, that vital 25th question is not who was the first Prime Minister of Australia. Rather, I want to ask you this question, will you be part of this new exciting journey. People often say to me, I wish there were more people here on a Sunday – so do I. So let me ask you, when did you last invite somebody to come along with you to this place. Being an open and invitational community, strangely might actually mean – wait for it – inviting people to be with us. Elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “the harvest is great but the workers are few.” Whether you came many years ago, or have come at the last hour, we are all called to the same task – to bring in that harvest of people seeking the love of God. And while much might change, much will remain the same. The same God will hear our prayers, the same God will continue to pardon and provide, the same God will put our pasts behind us and take us into a new and blessed future. In this place the bread of heaven, which is the body of Christ, will continue to be shared equally with those who came many years ago, and those who joined in the last hour.
So as new members and longer-term attendees gathered here, as young and old together, as the certain and as the searchers seeking for God in this place, in Christ, through the indwelling of the Spirit, God calls to all of us with equal love and the same welcome – saying, this is your home. Shortly, together, we will gather as one body, some will come forward, while others might find that too difficult – that is perfectly fine. However, the same bread of heaven, which is Christ’s body for all, is present here and offered for all. And in that breaking of bread our own fragmentation ceases and we become one body, and in the pouring out of wine, our individual praises flow together in unity. As we gather, we give thanks to the generous God who rewards those who come at the last hour, equally alongside those who have spent a little longer on that journey of faith. And without grumbling, we praise God for that constant and equal mercy to all. So may the creator-God, through the outpouring of the Spirit, remake each of us this day in the divine image, so that at our first hour and at our last hour, we might receive the bread of heaven and the abundance life offered equally and without distinction to all, this day and always, Amen.