[Note: In my view John Claypool is one of the ‘top ten’ contemporary English-speaking preachers. Do a Google search of the JMM site for more brilliant teaching by him. Rowland].

Lenten Noonday Preaching Series Calvary Episcopal Church Memphis, Tennessee March 9, 1999

Compared to What? The Rev. Dr. John R. Claypool Rector, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Birmingham, Alabama

We open our sails into the winds of your spirit. Take us, Dear God, to those places we need to go, where your blessing awaits. Through Christ we pray. Amen

I began my sermon yesterday by acknowledging that surprise is an important factor in memorable truths. When a story takes an unexpected turn, it has a way of awakening our interest. It has a way of making a deepening impression upon us. And, therefore, it is true that familiarity breeds contempt. It is also true that familiarity has a way of breeding dullness and apathy. Jesus knew this quite well, because in so many of his parables, surprise was a constituent element. People thought he was going one way and suddenly, in the turn, they saw things that they’d never seen before, were awakened to things within themselves. Therefore I’ve decided, in the three moments that it is my grace to be with you here at Calvary this year, that I would return to three of the most famous surprise stories of Jesus, and hope that perhaps in revisiting them, the deep magic that came through them to those who first heard them might come again to us this day.

I spoke yesterday about that most surprising parable: where it was a Samaritan, despised, outcast, racial half-breed, that Jesus shockingly suggests was really more Godlike than a priest or a Levite of the temple.

Today I want to talk about this story that began in a very, very familiar pattern. Namely, it is harvest time for the grapes of that particular place, and a vineyard owner realized that he needed to have extra help with the harvest before the grapes spoiled. And so before dawn one morning, he goes to the gathering place in the center of the little village close to where he lived, where traditionally day laborers would come hoping against hope that they could be hired for a day. These were folk who had no regular jobs, they didn’t own property. They were much like the migrant workers in our own culture, absolutely dependent on somebody else for their livelihood for that day. And so just for the sake of understanding it, let’s say that 30 people like that had gathered before dawn, gotten up hoping that they could get something that they could bring home to their families. And the vineyard owner goes and he finds this group of day laborers, and he arbitrarily picks out six of them and says, “Here’s the address of my vineyard. I will pay you a denarius,” which was the traditional pay for a day’s work, about what it took for a peasant family back then to survive. And these six who had been picked out of the entire group, with great joy set out to embrace the opportunity that they had dreamed of when they had gotten up that morning.

Let me pause and point out that in a technical sense, an injustice has been done here. Remember there were 30 potential candidates and only 6 have been chosen. There is no indication that these 6 were better qualified. They simply were — by grace or by good luck, you might say — they were the recipients of this good fortune. And so they go toward their place of work with an extraordinary sense of joy. Let me pause and say that injustice and justice are such subjective realities. When an injustice is done and it falls against us, then we howl in protest. When an injustice falls our way, most of the time, we never do even murmur. I want to ask you poker players, have you ever heard of a man who picked up his hand and found four aces there, calling for a re-deal? Have you ever heard this person say, “Look this isn’t fair, the rest of you let’s put the cards back and reshuffle”? When injustice falls against us, we are incensed. When it comes in our favor, most often times we simply take it for granted. And I want you to note that, because these six persons who were so overjoyed at 6 a.m. in the morning are going to shift their attitudes tremendously just 12 hours later.

When it’s 9 o’clock, the vineyard owner comes back, and now he finds 24 day laborers standing in the marketplace, and he picks 6 more and says, “You go to this vineyard and I’ll pay you what is appropriately honest, what is appropriately just.” And so they go. At 12 o’clock and at 3 o’clock, he comes back and hires 12 more. And at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, just one hour before it is time to quit, he comes back to the center of town, and to his amazement there are 6 day laborers, ll hours after the beginning of the day, still standing there. His first reaction was typical of what we today would think of the unemployed. Namely, they’re just lazy, shiftless, they don’t want to work. And so he says, “Why are you standing here idle?” And they said to him, “Because no one has hired us. We don’t have the power to create employment. Somebody else has to do that.” And it was amazing that for 11 hours, they had stood there hoping against hope that somehow they could find work. So the vineyard owner says, “Well you go to my vineyard and work the rest of the day, and I will pay you what is appropriate.”

At this point in Jesus’ story, all 30 of the day laborers had, at least in part, fulfilled what they got up in the dawn’s early light hoping for. Nobody was going to have to go home completely empty-handed and face wife and children and say, “We have nothing to eat this day.” Up to this point, the story is the kind of thing that could have happened in any Palestinian village. But then comes the shock factor. Then comes an awesome surprise that turns the story into something utterly different than was expected. When it came time to pay the men at the end of the day, those who only worked one hour came up to the desk and to their amazement they were given a whole denarius. (Remember that was what it takes for a peasant family to survive for a single day.) They were given the whole day’s pay, and they were astonished and they were overjoyed. And the 3 o’clock people came in, they too got more than they expected, and the 12 o’clock, and the 9 a.m. But when the 6 a.m. group that had first been chosen and was so pleased that they were the ones who were going to get to have a day’s labor, when they came to the desk, they too were just given a denarius, and literally all hell broke loose. They were incensed. They demanded an audience with the vineyard owner. They said, “This is not fair. We have worked 12 hours. Some of these people have only worked one hour, and here you’re paying us all the same. This is not fair, this is not right.” They were absolutely in anger, and it’s interesting that the vineyard owner only makes two responses. He says, “I have not done anything unjust. I lived up to the agreement that you and I both made at the beginning of the day. I did exactly what I said I was going to do.” And then he asked the telling question, “Or do you begrudge me my generosity?” Now remember that, because it is going to be the key to understanding this astonishing and surprising parable.

I think in the first reading you have to side with the people who were hired at 6 in the morning and who don’t seem here to be treated fairly. It doesn’t look like in this story that Jesus is giving us anything that approximates what we call justice. But I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus through his surprise was getting at something deeper than justice. Something that every one of us desperately needs to get in touch with. And that is the incredibly gracious structure of reality in which all of us are held.

I was helped in understanding what I think is Jesus’ main point in this parable when I heard a later parable. It came from an 18th Century Jewish Rabbi. And when I lay it alongside this story, perhaps it will help you see what I think was the real issue that Jesus was getting at. In this parable, a poor Jewish farmer was awakened one night and was startled to find an angel standing at the foot of his bed. And the angel said, “You have found favor in the eyes of God. He wants to bless you as he did your ancestor Abraham. Therefore, he has sent me to say you can make any three requests that you will of the Almighty, and he will grant them. There is only one condition. Your neighbor will be given a double portion of whatever is bequeathed to you.”

Well the farmer didn’t know what to do. He was startled because the angel disappeared. He woke up his wife — she was far more practical than he — and when he told her what had happened, she said, “Well let’s put it to the test. It wouldn’t be hard to find out if this is just a dream, illusion or reality.” And so because they were poor, it’s not surprising when they dug deep that their first desire was for something material. And so he kneels down and says, “Lord God of the universe, give me a thousand cattle. If I just had that, I could break the cycle of poverty. It would make all the difference in the world.” And no sooner had he said the words, than he heard noises outside. He went and the sun was just beginning to come up, and there in the dawn, he saw a thousand magnificent animals, exactly what he’d asked for.

Well he spent the next 24 hours praising God for his surprising grace and beginning to make provisions for this newfound affluence. And the next afternoon, he was up on a hill trying to decide where to build a barn to help shelter these animals, when for the first time he looked across, and on his neighbor’s field were two thousand magnificent cattle. And for the first time since this wonderful grace had happened to him, his joy evaporated and a sense of resentment filled his heart. He came home that night in a terrible mood, refused to eat or talk to his wife, went to bed early. Every time he shut his eyes, all he could see was his neighbor’s good fortune, and it galled him to the core. But late in the night, he remembered that the angel had said he had three requests. And so he took his focus off the neighbor and [put it] back on his own situation and began to ask, what do I really want? And it soon came clear that some link to the future had always been a great desire of his. Some child that could be his way into the next generation. So he bows and asks God, if possible, to give him an heir. Because of his experience with the cattle, he was not all that surprised a few weeks later when his wife came in and said, “I am bearing in my own body a life not my own.”

Well the next eight months were passed in great delight. He was enjoying the new affluence that the thousand cattle had brought him. He was anticipating parenthood. On Friday, right before Sabbath began, a child was born into that circle of love. He was overjoyed. He went to Synagogue the next morning. When it came time for the prayers of the people, he stood up and said, “God is indeed gracious. Let me tell you that last night a long dream of ours was fulfilled. We now have a child to live on into the future.” And a whole murmur of delight went over the whole little congregation, and he sat down. On the other side of the Synagogue, his neighbor gets up and says, “God is indeed good, because last night twins were born to our house.” And the minute he hears this, the same thing that happened on the hill behind the house once again happened. His joy evaporated; resentment filled his heart. He went home from the Synagogue in a very different mood than he had gone, and these dark feelings did not abate.

Late that night when Sabbath was over, he knelt beside his bed and made his third and final request. He said, “Lord God of the universe, I beg you gouge out my right eye.” There was this long silence, and then the angel who had started the whole process materialized and said, “Why, oh son of Abraham, have you turned to such dark desiring.” With fire in his eyes, he said, “I will gladly sacrifice half of my vision for the satisfaction of knowing that my neighbor will not be able to look at all on his. I cannot stand the good fortune that has come to him.” A deep silence enveloped the room, and the farmer looked, and there were tears forming in the eyes of the angel, and he said, “Let me say to you that your last request will not be granted, not because God lacks integrity, but because God is full of mercy. But know this, son of Abraham, what you have chosen to do with God’s desire to bless has not only brought sadness to your heart, but it’s brought sadness to the heart of God.”

Now the reason that I like that later parable is that it points up what I think was the basic problem that changed [the feelings of] those first 6 who had been hired from joy to resentment in just 12 hours, and the problem was the side-long glance of envy and jealousy. You see, if in both cases, if the 6 who had been chosen first, if the poor farmer, if they had compared their present fortune with what it was like before anything had happened, they would have had every occasion to be grateful. It was when they begin to compare their fortune to that of other people that their whole joy turned into resentment. If you know anything about the making of moral decisions or interpretation, you know that the criterion that you choose by which to make judgment is absolutely important.

I have an uncle who went to work after he had been on vacation for a month. At the coffee hour on that first day, he said rather ritualistically to his boss, “How is your wife?” And he was shocked when the boss shot back, “Compared to what?” Well now my uncle was not philosophically trained, he was not used to being pushed like that, but it dawned on him, he said, as he thought, that that really was the crucial question. You see, compared to Madonna, you’d answer it one way. Compared to Mother Theresa, you would answer the question in a very different way. “Compared to what” is absolutely crucial when it comes to evaluation. And the truth is that the real problem in these people who were so graciously joyful at 6 a.m. and so angrily resentful at 6 p.m., the problem was they had compared their good fortune to something that made them feel like an injustice had been done. If they had compared their good fortune to what had happened before anything started, they would have had every occasion for joy.

I think Jesus is trying to say to us here: The goodness of God is never seen through the eyes of envy. It is only seen through the eyes of wonder and of gratitude.

This morning I want to give you a sure-fire formula for how to be utterly miserable at the place at which you find yourself today. And that is to compare yourself to other people. Compare the amount of money you have to the amount of money Bill Gates has at this moment. Compare your athletic ability to that of the man that hit 70 home runs. Compare your mental capacity to Einstein. You can always find people out there who have more of everything than you have. And if you’re beginning point is some sense of entitlement that you earned your way in here and deserve it all, then like those six you can raise your fist in the hand of God and say, “It is not fair, it is not right.”

But let me give you a formula that will make for joy no matter what your circumstance. I want you to compare the way it is right now with how it was a year before you were born. I came into this world December 15, 1930. When I think back to December 15, 1929, there was no such thing as John Claypool. I wasn’t even a glint in my father’s eye. I did not exist. I was absolutely nothing. And when I compare the wonder of being alive in this world — with my kind of body and my kind of mind and my kind of resources — with never having gotten to be at all, then the incredible grace of life comes flooding in. It creates a sense of joy and wonder. Life is not fair, because it begins in grace, and you and I have been given a gracious chance to live utterly and completely beyond our deserving. It is forgetting the grace of birth, taking for granted the wonder of aliveness, that is the occasion of so much of our resentment.

There’s a theologian named Geddes MacGregor who, when he was six years old, went with his mother one summer to visit her mother, his grandmother. And the two women were sitting out on the porch as folk do in the leisure of vacation time. And the grandmother said to the mother, “I’m so glad you decided to have little Geddes. He’s been such a joy to all of us.” Well she didn’t know he was anywhere around, but as you parents know, they always are, they always hear a whole lot more than we expect them to. He comes bounding up on the porch and wants to know from the grandmother, “What do you mean, I am so glad you decided to have little Geddes.” At that point he learned something about his beginnings that he had never known before. And that was that his mother was 48 when he’d been conceived. She had read all the literature about the dangers that attend to pregnancy when a woman of that age tries to give birth. There had been all kinds of discussion with the doctors and the family. Should she have a therapeutic abortion or should she go ahead and risk the pregnancy? And at the last moment, she decided on the latter course, which of course was what the grandmother was referring to.

This was a brand-new piece of news to this little 6- year-old boy. He had no idea that all this discussion had taken place prior to his being born. And so, he said, he went off by himself to assimilate this new information. He had a very vivid imagination. And he said as he sat there, there came into his mind this vision, this image. He said, “I was in a line moving step by step up to this great portal, over which was simply written the word, ‘birth.’ And as I made my way, suddenly a hand reached, pulled me from the line, and said, ‘You have been disqualified; you can’t be born.'” And for the first time in his life it dawned on him that he might never have gotten to be, that there was nothing necessary or self-caused about his existence. It was a horrible, horrible revelation. But then that image dissolved. The same fantasy image returned. Again, he’s in a line moving step by step up to the door. Only this time, he was allowed to go through. Geddes MacGregor said he has never from that moment forward ever taken his life for granted. Because realizing how close he came to not getting to be has added an incredible luster to the wonder of his aliveness.

This morning I want to suggest that if you and I have had one single day in this world, we have won the Irish Sweepstakes. We have gotten something of more immeasurable value than all of these things we tend to prize so much. There is a wonder to simply getting to be that is absolutely astonishing. And I think the reason Jesus told this parable was to remind us of that great grace that attends the very first thing that ever happened to us and invites us to find joy in that above all things.

As I said yesterday, the particular hand you have been dealt is secondary to the fact that you are in the game at all. That 18th Century parable reminds us that comparison is always, always going to get us in trouble, unless we compare our lot to what it was like a year before we were born. If you would compare to that, you have every reason to be grateful. If you compare yourself to other people, you will have every occasion to be miserable.

There’s another, even later parable, this one in the 20th Century, that helps me understand the vineyard owner, who is, I think, here the image of God. I said that the question he asks — “Do you begrudge me my generosity?” — is the key. You see, when he came to the end of the day, and he looked at those 30 day laborers, having no means of support save what they can get day by day, he stopped thinking about justice –how much have they done and therefore how can I be equivalent. There was something about their situation that laid hold of the deep generosity of his spirit. And he said, “Look, I’ve got more than I need. They have families to feed.” He gave each person a day’s wage because he wanted to give them something out of the goodness of his heart. And that is God’s motivation. We don’t understand why God gives. What God gives. But I believe that he is light and in him is no darkness at all, and deep generosity and also great wisdom is behind the particular generosity of which each of us is beneficent.

The parable I talked about is about a farmer, another Jewish farmer, who had two boys. As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields. He gently taught them everything he knew about growing crops and raising animals. He taught them how to work together beautifully. When he got too old to work, the two brothers took over the farm. And when the father died, they found such joy in their joint partnership that, instead of dividing the inheritance, they simply stayed in partnership, each contributing what he was best at. And at the end of every harvest, each would take half of what they had produced. The older brother never married and stayed an old bachelor. The younger brother married and had eight wonderful children born to him.

Years went by, and during a particularly bountiful harvest season, the bachelor brother was thinking one night: You know I only have one mouth to feed, and my brother over there has 10 mouths he’s responsible for. He really needs more of this harvest than I do. But I know, he’s far too fair to renegotiate. I know what I’ll do. In the dead of the night while he and his family are asleep, I’ll take some of what I’ve already put in my barn and I’ll go over and I’ll slip it into his barn, so he’ll have more to feed his family. And at the very time the old bachelor was thinking those thoughts, the younger brother was saying to himself: “You know God has granted me these wonderful children. They’ll care for me when I’m old. My older brother hasn’t had that good fortune. He really needs more of this harvest to prepare for the future, but I know he’s too fair to renegotiate. I know what I’ll do, in the depths of the night, I’ll take some of what I’ve harvested and put it in his barn, so he’ll have more for his old age.”

So as you may have already anticipated, one night when the moon was full, those two brothers came face to face, each on missions of generosity. And the old Rabbi said, “Although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall.” Do you know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point. That there is enough, always has been and always will be. And living in self-absorption is the way to misery. Living in compassion and awareness and generosity to others, that is the secret of joy, because it is the very essence of God likeness. That’s why the vineyard owner did what he did at the end of the day. He had other concerns than justice. He was concerned with the generosity that is the first cousin of incredible grace.

Now interestingly enough, both of these parables that I have laid alongside this surprising story of Jesus, both of these parables end with God having tears in God’s eyes. And my sense is that right this minute, in relation to your attitude toward your life and what you’re doing, at this very moment, God is weeping over you. Now the question is: Is he weeping in sadness because you have let resentment crowd out all kinds of joy or is He weeping for joy because you have gotten the point? You heard it this morning. The way to joy is gratitude for our birth and generosity for all the rest of creation. Joy can be yours this day. I bid you see. I bid you do.

Please stand for the benediction.

Oh God your grace is beyond all measuring. The wonder of your love is immeasurable. Let us this day never take for granted the wonder of our birth, and may we as best we can give what we can to those we love. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

Copyright 1999 The Rev. Dr. John R. Claypool