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The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost E. Bevan Stanley
September 24, 2017
Proper 20, Year A, RCL
“Are you envious because I am generous?” In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This Gospel lesson teaches us that God is not fair. At least not the way we think about fairness. Jesus says that God is like a landowner who pays his workers all the same amount even though some worked twelve times longer than the others. His lack of fairness is not that he treated anyone badly. He paid those who worked all day a fair wage. But then his overwhelming generosity broke all the norms of good personnel management. At first I am shocked at this. The story makes me uncomfortable. Why is that? It only makes me uncomfortable when I put myself in the place of those who worked all day. But it only takes a minute of reflection to realize that I am not one of those who has performed up to standard for the whole day. In my labor to serve all people in Christ, to love my neighbor, and to advance the Kingdom of Heaven wherever I may have some influence, I have taken some very long coffee breaks. I have cut corners. And I didn’t start at the beginning of the day. I came sometime in the middle. If God were fair, I would be receiving far less than I am. The fact of the matter is that it is very good news that God is not fair.
The Children of Israel do not think that Moses and Aaron are fair either. There they are out in the middle of the desert. They have run out of food and water. They are frightened, and they do not see the end coming anytime soon. “Why didn’t you leave us alone in Egypt? At least we weren’t starving.” How soon they have forgotten the beatings, the hard labor. The crushed limbs, the hopeless endlessness of heavy toil. The genocide. And they do not know where they are going. It has been four hundred years since any of them have been in the land of Canaan or seen the hill country of Seir. Four hundred years since anyone waded in the Jordan or saw the green fields of Gilead. The Promised Land was just an idea, a piece of rhetoric held out by their leaders, a dream of past glory. Furthermore, they had forgotten who was in charge of this journey. The people complained against Moses and Aaron, but they rightly reminded them that it is God who is in charge. It was God who called Moses and Aaron. It was God who saved them at the Red Sea. It is God who is leading them now in the pillar of flame and smoke.
We, too, are embarked on a journey. With the passing of Christendom, God has called us to journey toward a new country where Christianity has no privilege. We do not know the terrain. We do not know what challenges will confront us. We do not know how this experience will change us.
We can be pretty sure of a few things. There will be times when we remember the past with great fondness. We remember when churches were full, there were lots of kids, and many churches had a second priest. Unlike the Israelites we are not oppressed or mistreated. Nevertheless we cannot stay where you are. That may seem unfair.
There will be times when we will not be able to find the forms of nourishment we were accustomed to. We will feel hungry or empty, longing for something we used to take for granted. There will be times when we get scared, not knowing how much change there will be. Will this still be a church we recognize? Will we lose something precious in all this newness and change? Will we forget who we are and where we came from? It is not fair.
Here is the good news. God is not fair; God is far more generous than any of us deserve. God will feed us. He will feed us in two ways. First. there is the Manna. The word “manna” is simply the Hebrew for “What’s this?” This miraculous food that feel every evening was so strange and new that the Israelites simply ended up calling it “Whatsis.” This food from God is always enough, but we cannot save it. It comes day by day, but we can never save it for future emergencies. We simply have to eat today’s portion and trust that God will send more tomorrow. It is the daily bread for which Jesus taught us to pray. This is how God works. This is how life in the Spirit is. Sufficient to the day are the blessings thereof. Tomorrow there will be more. This manna came everyday for forty years until the day they crossed the Jordan River and finally entered the Promised Land.
The second kind of food was more normal, although its provision was just as surprising. God made a whole load of quail fall near them. This did not continue, but it made for a great barbecue to cheer them up for the moment. God knows we need the special times of festival and celebration as well as our daily bread. However faithful we may be, however much we may gather and give thanks for the daily blessings that God showers on is constantly, we need those special events that stand out. Then, when the days get long, the burdens heavy, or the winds bleak, we can say to each other, “Remember when God sent us those quail? I remember our family gathered up fifteen of those birds and roasted them on a spit. After all that manna it was real treat, I tell you.” Then someone will reply, that reminds me that just the other day, we were traveling and sudden I couldn’t find little Joshua anywhere. I feared he had stepped into one of those canyons or got bitten by a snake. I was out of my mind with worry, but he turned up in a couple of hours. I sang God’s praises loud that night.” And then a small voice of girl will chime in and say, “Did you notice how beautiful it was this morning when the sky turned from that gray to gold and orange and then to brightest blue? I know it happens most days, but I never get tired of watching it.” The special times help us notice all the blessing of the ordinary times.
So here we go. Walking the road to that place to which God is calling us. We did not choose this journey. It came upon us. Or God brought us to it. It is not fair. We do not deserve it. We do not know the destination or the way. We just follow the cloud and the flame. Sometimes it’s one; sometimes the other. We don’t have enough food, but God gives us what we need everyday. We can’t save it; only eat it. And then when we are out of hope, out of patience, out of gratitude, out of energy, unable to continue another step, unable to face another day, the quails come. Unexpected, unearned, and very unfair.
Thank God for the divine injustice.