Matthew 20:1-16
September 18, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I was growing up in Boston, my parents, my teachers and I believed that I was good in math. That’s what Chinese Americans kids do well. But when I got to Junior High school, they had this course called, New Math. There were new symbols like “U’s” and “V’s.” About all that I can remember from New Math is the Venn diagram of three overlapping circles. And the only reason I remembered the Venn diagram is because I use this illustration to describe how the Trinity is three in one when I teach the Inquirers class.
Math, any kind of math, new or not; geometry, algebra, calculus, trigonometry are all Greek to me. I am so glad that we have a Finance Committee with people like John Tom, Marian Hom, and Jackie Chou. Now these people know math! A week ago when we were working on the 2006 Proposed Budget, I sat next to Jackie and she had this “accountant-looking scientific calculator” with many, many buttons. I came to the meeting with my simple free calculator from the church ordering paper from Viking Office Supplies! They know math; I only know addition!
I was only half kidding about not knowing math. I know enough to balance my check book!
But when we look in the gospel, there is a special kind of math that the world doesn’t understand. Jesus taught a math course that made the mathematicians turn on their heads! Jesus taught us that a shepherd would risk leaving 99 sheep in the wilderness in order to look for that one lost sheep. What kind of math is that? You leave 99 sheep alone, vulnerable in the wilderness. When you get back, if you are successful at finding that one lost sheep, you’re going to return to far fewer sheep!
How about when Jesus allowed that woman who took nearly a quart of fine perfume, costing over a year’s salary, and poured it on Jesus’ feet. On his feet! Not on the back of his ear or on his face—on his feet! When was the last time you guys bought your wife some perfume? Perfume comes in these tiny little bottles. Each holding a couple of ounces, and yet they cost a fortune. Can you imagine how many of those little bottles it would take to fill a jar to make feet smelling nice?
This woman wastefully pours that perfume all over Jesus, and Jesus praises her. What kind of math is that?
How about the time when Jesus was watching all of these wealthy people dropping large bags of money into the temple treasury and prancing around to make sure the bystanders noticed? A bag of money is a lot of money. But when Jesus saw a poor widow come in and drop one single little penny into the temple offering. Jesus claimed that she had given more than all the others put together.
Get out your calculators and figure that out. The world hasn’t seen this kind of math before.
Unfair Wages
So we come to today’s Scripture lesson. Jesus told about a farmer who hired people to go to work in his vineyard. These are the kind of guys who wait in the parking lot of Home Depot. Some arrived at work just as the day was dawning, others came mid-morning, others at mid-day, some in the afternoon, and some real slackers showed up just one hour before quitting time. The farmer hires all of these people. At the end of the day, this farmer called all his workers together, paying the last ones hired first, and paying everybody the same wage. There was grumbling and unrest.
When I had some guys work on our house, I paid each worker according to the hours he worked by the hourly wage he agreed. If I tried to pay every guy the same amount, they would walk off the job!
How do you figure that one hour’s work is worth the same daily wage as 12 hours of work? This doesn’t compute!
In our math, one plus one equals two—always one plus one equals two. But in Jesus’ math, one may be equal in value to 99, depending on who’s doing the counting. And one little coin is said to be worth more than a big bag of money, depending on who’s keeping the books.
If we were keeping the books, most of us would identify with the workers who worked at the vineyard all day. No wonder they grumbled, we think to ourselves, we worked all day and got the same wages as those who worked only one hour. We say it’s unfair!
In less than a month from now, we will be celebrating our 125th anniversary. And we realize that there are some of you here who have been in the vineyard so to speak for a long time. You may be those who can still remember when things used to be a certain way. You may be the ones who will be listed in the anniversary journal that had the oldest date when you joined the church. We are the ones who have been here at FCBC all our lives, or certainly most of our lives.
But then to be told that somebody shows up in the vineyard just one hour before quitting time and gets the same as those who have labored here all day, no wonder there was grumbling! The church members who joined the church in 2005 or in 2004 will get the same banquet meal as those of you who joined the church in the 1940s!
Jesus said, “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Grace
There is something that offends our basic sense of justice and fair play about this story. We often have a deep feeling of outrage when we see people getting what they don’t deserve. We get upset when people take advantage of the welfare system. We are mad when some well-kept prisoners are sent to country-club prisons. It really burns us up when we see that somebody is getting something for nothing. So after we think that we have worked all day under the scorching noon-day sun and when it was time at the end of the day to get paid, we are upset that everybody gets the same, and the amount and quality of work is ignored. It is not fair; it’s not fair, we shout!
Before this parable, we see that the disciples question about what they would get because they have left everything and followed Jesus. They had forsaken everything and followed him at the beginning. But then to be told that even if they will receive a hundredth fold and inherit eternal life, that many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. It’s unfair!
The bottom line is that we can’t accept God’s new math. We don’t necessarily want to learn the math that Jesus is teaching us. We are not accustomed to calculating in our minds and hearts that God is more generous than we are.
God’s math has this exponential extravagance that we can’t or won’t understand. Peter came to Jesus wondering how often he should forgive someone who had wronged him. Seven times? Those numbers seem reasonable, even more than reasonable. It is hard enough to forgive someone one time, much less seven times. You remember what Jesus told him? We are to forgive 70 times seven times! That’s a big number however you look at it.
It seems that, at the centrality of the gospel is this new math of extravagant grace and generosity that refuses to be calculated. It’s like when you push those little buttons on your calculator and you get this number that goes on and on indefinitely. Jesus said on one occasion, God makes the sun to shine on the good and the bad and his rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
We want to live in a world where if we do this we will get that. One plus one equals two. And yet, it does appear that God has created a world in such a way that there is room for God to be gracious. There is room for people who have nothing to be given everything. There is lots of space available for those whose lives don’t add up to much of anything to have everything.
I think about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. They have nothing except the shirts on their backs. But when we give generously holding nothing back, not setting up any conditions and stipulations, we are becoming like the farmer who graciously gave the same daily wage to all the workers.
It’s grace. The half a million hurricane survivors don’t deserve all those freebies. They haven’t worked for them. Why should they have debit cards with $3000 on them? Our response is not based on our human math calculations of whether they deserved it. None of us deserved God’s grace and love. But God gave it to us when he gave his only Son, Jesus Christ to die for us on the cross to take away our sins so that we may have everlasting life. We are gracious because we know that God’s has been merciful and gracious to us.
Social Status
Small insignificant numbers like one sheep, or one insignificant-looking person, become very large in God’s math. And God takes those things with which the world is impressed and renders them to nothing.
Because I am a minister, some people consider me to have a certain degree of status. Maybe it’s when I wear my black robe and my colorful stoles. But I remember when I was in the hospital a few years ago and I had one of those gowns that tie up in the back. I was out in the hall waiting with about ten other patients on wheel chairs for various tests and operation procedures. They all wore the same kind of silly gown that I did. I sat with a blanket on my lap trying to maintain modesty and decency and noticing how everyone else was doing the same.
While the medical staff treated us with compassion and respect, I had an overwhelming sense of our common human identity: we were all frail creatures of dust, our bodies vulnerable and broken. Whatever status was usually ours in our neighborhood or family or on the job or at this church, it was not in anyway apparent to someone passing us in the hall.
In God’s math, the impressive numbers of the rich, the well-heeled, and the big shots, are seen as nothing. A little widow’s one coin is seen as bigger than all of that. In God’s sight, we are all his children, no social status is better than anyone else’s. God is free to be generous with every one of us whenever he chooses.
As the prophet says, God’s ways are not our ways. God’s measurements are not our measurements. God takes people who add up to nothing and makes them into someone.
The Lord’s Supper
When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we give you this little bit of bread, hardly enough to fill a big appetite. We give you just a sip of wine, not enough to quench a big thirst. And our hungers are so deep and our thirst is so unquenchable. And yet when we come to God’s math; this new math of good news that adds up to Jesus Christ, we believe it’s enough. Just that little bite; just that little sip is enough to feed you forever, to preserve your soul, not just through your daily life, but into eternal life.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, inasmuch as you are gracious to everyone regardless of race, color, class or status, teach us to be merciful and generous like you. Give us the faith to believe in the impossible and to trust in your will that when we add up all of our blessings, we are filled with abundance overflowing. Thank you, Lord, for giving us your only Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ who have redeemed all the world. Amen.