The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Good morning!  I’m meeting many of you today for the first time, as the Canon for Justice for our diocese, but let me just say that I’m not even joking when I say that I’ve been REALLY into justice since I was a little girl.  When I tried to think of an example that properly demonstrates a full picture of how much I cared about, and the lengths I would go to, enact divine justice on those hurting others, I think of my big brother’s college graduation.

So I was in early elementary school, and I didn’t fully know the whole story of why my mom divorced her first husband, and I won’t get into that now because I would be hearing from her after she and and dad watch this livestream, but what I did know was that he did something that hurt my mom’s feelings, so she divorced him, and later found her happily ever in my dad.  Now, because of this, he was on my naughty list, and in my infinite childhood wisdom that meant he should be punished.  I devised a plan to bring justice to him, and I planned to kick him when I saw him at my brother’s graduation, to teach him a lesson.  Well, unfortunately my sister who I entrusted with this brilliant plan squealed on me, and told my dad.  I got a very stern talking to about how I, “had better not embarrass this family at my brother’s graduation”, and decided my future punishment would not be worth “justice” this time.  So that’s what my parents had to deal with (please, pray for them).

I think many if not all children grow up with a stubborn, indignant sense of justice, and what is fair that they cling to, but I think unlike many people I know who have grown out of a childlike, stubborn sense of justice, I am still that hardheaded little girl today.  

Now, with that background context, you can probably imagine who I identify with most in today’s gospel reading from Matthew.  At the end of the parable that Jesus shares, the laborers who received their day’s wage last, after seeing those who had joined the work late had all been paid the same as them, they said, “‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’”  You have made them equal to us.  They are outraged that the land owner would pay all of them the same wage, even though they toiled away in the sun and heat for different amounts of time.  

That part, maybe like many of us together today, is the most difficult part for me.  But why is that?  Perhaps it’s because we live in a meritocracy in the U.S., and seemingly much of the world today.  Now, I want to hold space for our Indigenous siblings, and those from other countries who preserve different conventional wisdom in this country today, but the dominant culture of America feeds us the narrative that everything everyone has, they have earned.  We are indoctrinated with the idea that we must work hard, toiling in the sun and heat to earn our keep; our homes, our food, our education, our healthcare, and even our rest.  That by pouring time, effort, and energy into working hard and being productive that we will be rewarded proportionally.  Surely, that is how things are always given in our society, right?  Equitably?  Justly?  Fairly?  Hmm, maybe not.  Perhaps the problem arises when life doesn’t perfectly fit into that narrative.

Pastor Mark Davis, in his article, The Politics of Just Wages, writes that this parable often “arouses indignation among those whose needs are already met. Appealing to the “economics of fairness,” we find reasons why the poor are poor, why our own level of comfort is justified, and why we ought to be passionate that “they only get what they deserve.”  The first to work and last to receive their wages are so immersed in their own experience, their own hardship that they have difficulty imagining what hardships and obstacles that those who came later in the day may have had to overcome to be there.  

From Pastor Davis’ translation of the gospel, he interprets the encounter between the landowner and day laborers as the landowner seeing them “standing in the marketplace”.  He removed the word idle, due to its negative connotation in English, and association with laziness.  So, with that reframing, do the later waves of workers seem more deserving?  What if they had worked already for another landowner, but there was not enough work to fill the day?  Even if they had appeared to the marketplace later in the day, can you think of a time when you have been the last to appear somewhere, and were you given grace by those who were already there? Wouldn’t the Creator, the source of goodness and love, give us that same grace?

Separately, to describe the discontentment amongst the earlier hired hands, Deacon Kelly Lauer writes, “Instead of enjoying the wage they agreed to, their own satisfaction has been poisoned”. Let me say that again, their own satisfaction has been poisoned.  Think about that.  Even after agreeing to the day’s wage with the landowner, and being satisfied with the pay, seeing others be the recipients of generosity, of grace, was enough to sour their own feelings of contentment.

While sitting with the readings for today, something that the gospel reading reminded me of was zero-sum thinking.  Have you ever heard of zero-sum thinking before?  It’s the mindset in which people believe that the resources that one person or group gains are matched by corresponding losses to another person or group.  It’s perceived competition despite abundant or even unlimited resources.  Anything that one person gains, automatically means it was taken from another.

Founder and director of Harvard’s Social Economics Lab, Professor Stefanie Stantcheva gives several examples of this mindset in practice.  She writes, 

“If foreign students enrol at American universities, that must mean fewer spots for Americans. If immigrants find work, they must be taking jobs from citizens. If a diversity initiative helps women or a racial minority, someone else must be left out. More and more, debates are shaped by a mindset that sees the world as a fixed pie—where one person’s or one group’s gain is another’s loss.”

Professor Stantcheva also emphasizes that zero-sum thinking shouldn’t be dismissed as a bias or mindset that will easily disappear.  It is shaped by the experiences and economic conditions that people have lived through.  For example, people living in parts of America where slavery was rampant, regardless of who they were descended from, tend to be more zero-sum, and the places many from those areas have migrated to in other parts of America became more zero-sum as a result.  But just as this mindset of scarcity can be promoted, more positive-sum thinking can also be spread in the same way.  One example of this is that immigrants in America have historically done well and contributed positively to their communities, and are much more likely to have a more positive-sum mindset.  Having that more positive view is also contagious, and positively affects those in communities who have more positive-sum people in them.  Public policy also helps shape these mindsets, and expanding opportunity by supporting education, healthcare, financial support for the marginalized, environmental protection, and similar policies has shown to help create the foundation for a more positive-sum society.

Okay, so let’s bring it back to the gospel.  How is this related?  Well, we’ve discussed how we are taught to monetarily value people for their labor.  We talked about how the earlier hires were upset that they were paid the same as those who came later.  We also learned how perceiving the world, and goodness in it with a scarcity, zero-sum mindset can be misleading, and make us feel like there is something being taken from us and given to others, even when it was not.  We also heard about my short-lived career in vigilante justice as a child. What is it that transforms all of these things?  God’s endless and abundant grace.

We hear so often about how limitless God’s love is for us, and how God will always give us grace as imperfect, messy little creations.  Why then, do we treat it as if there is a finite amount?  As if someone else being the recipient of generosity is somehow taking generosity in the world away from us?  As followers of Christ, we need to work on ourselves, to work on processing God’s radical vision of the world, a vision for us, one of abundant blessings, where everyone can be given what is needed to survive and continue another day.  Let’s dream of, and build that better vision of this world, through God’s eyes, together.  Amen.