It was two Fridays ago. Felicity, my younger daughter and I had just walked Alisabeth, her older sister to the bus stop and had a good 45 minutes before we had to leave to take Felicity to CMO. It was a Friday, my Sabbath day, so I, uniquely, was in no rush. Felicity and I were eating breakfast together at our kitchen counter.
We replicated a conversation we often have. She asked me what day it was. Friday, I told her. Is that my ‘nother day of school? She asked. We talked about her school, and she asked what I was doing today. I told her it was my Sabbath. She, like many, asked again about what a Sabbath was. I explained that on Friday, on my Sabbath, I did not work and I tried to rest, just like God rested after making the world. I began to relate to brief version of Six days of work and on the seventh day, God rested. Felicity said, “yea, God made the world” and she paused. She added with some thought – “it was a lot of work.” We continued eating our breakfasts.
She turned and looks at me and said, “Mommy, did you help God make the world?” I shook my head “no.” I said God made the world all by God’s self. I was prepared to talk about how there were no people, not even Mommy, when God began to create – but she continued… “You should have really helped God”, she said quite disappointed, “because it was a lot of work!”
I learned a lot about my daughter, myself, and God that Friday morning – perfect fodder for a Sabbath morning. I also found myself wondering how often I miss what is offered to me, because I am too rushed, too busy, too unable to stop and smell the proverbial roses, missing the wonder and awe God offers for me to contemplate.
This is our last sermon in the All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Sunday School series as we take on the awe and wonder that contemplating God’s character and actions offers us. Robert Fulgrum suggests that one of the first places children cultivate wonder is from the quintessential Styrofoam cup experiment. Do you know the one? Children plant seeds – often beans or marigolds —in the cup with soil and water it, placing it in the window. They care for it across days, maybe even weeks. And they discover that somehow the roots go down and the leaves grow up. They learn the wonder of God’s creation with questions sprinkled throughout the lesson of how does this work and why does it happen like this? Anyone who has ever taught, raised, or watched children knows the look of wonder that they can produce when something as puzzling as a change of location or as simply as a newly found creation crosses their path.
Awe and wonder might not be the first instincts when we heard the gospel lesson today. We might find ourselves confused, frustrated, and ready to side with the earliest workers wondering about what exactly Jesus is trying to suggest. This parable of the laborers in the vineyard puzzles our sense of fair and confounds our reasonable expectations. First, what if we considered renaming this parable from the Laborers in the Vineyard to The Conscientious Boss or the Debate over a Living Wage or The Complaining Workers or the Surprising Salaries? Changing the name gives us a different contact for considering what the parable is offering to us.
Next, let me offer a bit of context that may give us a bit more fodder for awe. From Isaiah and Jeremiah, we know that often when a prophet begins to speak to people about a vineyard and owner, the conversation will come around to God and Israel – this is a familiar trope. So, naturally, people have made the assumption that this parable speaks first of God. And I think it does. But every revelation about God’s character calls us to new ways for us to be as well.
As Jesus taught earlier, in Matthew’s parable chapter: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household (oikodespotes) who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (13:52). So, “scribes…trained for the kingdom” (i.e., Jesus’ disciples) are expected to be like the “landowners” (i.e., God), who generously provide for all of their “laborers.” In the scope of Jesus’ own teaching, he calls us to act as God acts.
Indeed, there are some curiosities about this landowner, whose title is probably better translated householder. In the ancient world, it was rarely the big boss who went to hire workers for the day – that is usually the work of the manger. And hiring for the day was usually a once and done event. It was a given that the manger or big boss knew how much work there was for the day and could gather all of the help needed in one visit. How unusual that the householder returns multiple times.
It is also curious the way in which the workers are paid. If they would have been paid in the order they were hired, the ones hired in the early morning would have been content with their denarii – the usual day’s wage – already on their way, when the last hired were receiving their wage without this level of conflict. But it is clear that the householder wants to make a point, wants to draw this point to all of the workers’ attention.
The parable ends with the familiar proverb, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Often, scholars have suggested that the proverb is an explanation of the parable. However, I think we could wonder if the parable is not an explanation of the proverb. That is to say, it is possible and I wonder if it is not likely, that God’s ways are not the ways which we have come to expect. So, always turning us right side up again when we didn’t even realize we were upside down.
How often it is that we miss the wonder and awe in the midst of our complaining and recalculating what we think that God should be doing. God’s ways are not our ways and continue to call us and widen our circles of grace and compassion. Instead of seeing the wonder in the new thing that God is doing, which depending on our reading of the parable could be anything from offering living wage for all, to offering salvation to all who come to Jesus, we often find ourselves in the position of cultivating envy instead of awe. Envy, even when not expressed, eats us from the inside and turns our hearts from amazement to callus, from tenderness to detached. Instead of tuning our eyes and hearts to how God is making God’s self known to us in the everyday, we are bitter, self-centered, and convinced that God is not anywhere near our lives.
At VBS, our children took one portion of their day to wonder about who God is and why God does what God does? They asked great questions – I wonder if you have asked some of these as well? How did God decide which animals to make first? Why is there sickness? Does God like to laugh? Will I get to see my pets that went to heaven? And many, many more. In their stopping and wondering, our VBS leaders helped to cultivate wonder about God’s character, actions, and creations that we so often miss.
How can you and I cultivate this awe and wonder of God? We can slow down; we can listen to the wonderings of our children. I found this treasure in our parking lot one Wednesday morning after a rain storm. Can you tell what it is? The rain puddle formed the outline of a duck – how incredible! And, we too can contemplate God’s character. From our epistle lesson, Paul writes, probably from prison, of God’s incredible character. Paul offers us a starting place for such wonderings. Living is Christ, stand firm in the midst in the one Spirit of us all. Paul gives us glimpses of God that Paul has come to know. You and I have also come to know God – what might we wonder?
That Friday morning, two weeks ago, my conversation with Felicity continued. Felicity wanted to talk about all the things God had made. So, we were taking turns naming things – sun, moon, grass, plants, etc. We got into the animals and Felicity was naming a lot of animals (a favorite pastime in our home), when she stopped.
She said God made alligators and hippos, right? I said yes. She said, I don’t like that. Why? I asked. Alligators bite, she said. But you have never been bit by an alligator, have you? I asked her. No, she thought for a moment, but I’m worried God might have been bit when God made the alligators.
Wonder and awe moves us from envy and self-centeredness to compassion and generosity – even towards God. Next week, we will begin our series on our responses, reactions, and responsibilities in awe and wonder of God, but for this week, cultivate God’s presence, awe, and wonder in your life.
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. (HarperCollins: New York, New York, 2014). 199
For example, see Isaiah 5 and Jeremiah 12.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2157