Scripture Passage: Matthew 20:1-16
When I was 11, my family welcomed a new addition to our holiday table. Helen and her husband moved to our small town after very active lives of service, and her husband promptly died. They never had children and were members of our church. So, on that first Thanksgiving after her husband’s death and at every holiday thereafter until her death when I was 15, Helen joined us for turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Elegant and intelligent, kind and generous, Helen always arrived at our house with small gifts for each member of our family. I remember my dad saying, “Helen is a very special person,” and I remember how pleased my parents were every time she joined us for holidays. As a young person, I think I missed something, something adults didn’t tell me about Helen, about how she contributed to our community. I do recall one day when my dad and I went to visit her at her house. At our church, we were in the midst of installing a beautiful mosaic just inside the main doors, and as I sat at Helen’s kitchen table listening to her and my dad’s conversation, I suddenly realized she was the anonymous person who had gifted it to the church. As my dad and I drove home, he told me she was responsible for funding a number of important efforts around town, the mosaic just a small, beautiful offering for the church among larger efforts related to our public library, our local schools, and hunger in our community.
When I consider who taught me to be generous, I think about Helen.
I also think about Kermit and Hazel. In addition to being members of our church, they were our next door neighbors with tidy flower and vegetable gardens and an impeccable lawn. Without fail, they purchased my and my sister’s Campfire Girl cookies, snowblowed our driveway, walked over plates of cookies and vases of flowers, and even sometimes mowed our lawn—you know, when they were doing theirs. One day, my sister and I accidentally locked ourselves out of our house when both our parents were working late, and we knocked on Kermit and Hazel’s door as the sun set. They appeared delighted to provide shelter for us and fed us snacks.
When I consider who taught me to be generous, I think about Kermit and Hazel. Our question of the day is: who taught you to be generous?
See the Facebook feed from worship for people’s reflections on this question.
Here at Grace, the list is long of generous people, people who quietly go about tasks that need to be done, tasks that benefit the whole community, people who give financially or materially in significant ways, people who use their best skills in service to this community and the community at large, people who help others just because they want to help.
And because we are a generous people, perhaps we hear Jesus’ parable today with open hearts. For Jesus tells a parable about a generous God. Jesus begins: The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hires workers for the day guaranteeing them the usual daily wage. Later at 9:00, then at noon, then at 3:00, and finally at 5:00, the landowner goes out to recruit more workers promising to pay each of them “whatever is right.” At the end of the day, the landowner instructs his manager to pay the workers starting with those hired at 5:00. And the workers hired early in the day grumble because, instead of the manager paying those who worked only one hour a portion of the usual daily wage, the manager pays these workers the full daily wage. Seeing this, those hired early in the day believe they should be paid more—though they were promised and agreed to the usual daily wage. When the landowner hears their grumbling, he asks: Are you envious because I am generous?
Even though we are a generous people, the first thing we might exclaim upon hearing this parable is: It’s not fair! Right? Those who work only one hour should not be compensated in the same manner as those who work all day. As people immersed in a free market society, we declare the actions of the landowner unfair. But pay equity and labor policies are not the point of the parable. I do not think Jesus is suggesting we implement such a pay structure in our businesses or even our churches. Rather, Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven, a realm where promises are kept and the one who may freely give gives generously.
Maybe two months ago, one among us emailed me a question about generosity and boundaries. I honestly don’t recall the details, but someone in her family had asked her for money to help make ends meet. This wasn’t the first time they had asked, and in the past, sharing financial resources had not gone well as it accelerated the rate of asking. And this dear, generous person who genuinely wanted to help her family but worried—for good reason—that they would take advantage of her, asked for my insight. As I thought and prayed about how to answer, it occurred to me via the Holy Spirit: true generosity cannot be manipulated. Because generosity is not a transaction. Because generosity is not an obligation. Because generosity can be but does not have to be reciprocal. Because to give generously means releasing our control over the gift. There are many other types of financial exchanges, wages paid for work, fees for services, prices for goods, maybe even clearly negotiated and boundaried monetary exchanges between family members. But Jesus’ parable does not address these free market exchanges. Instead, Jesus’ parables describes the generosity of God that upends our free market expectations.
Generosity, especially the generosity of God, cannot be manipulated. We don’t make deals with God, vying for God’s generous provision of employment or housing. We don’t bargain for forgiveness or healing. We don’t promise God our allegiance in order to win the lottery. I mean, we can try, and people of faith, including our own Martin Luther, have bargained with God. But God doesn’t respond to our attempts at bargaining. Jesus’ parable describes a God whose generosity flies in the face of logic and market sense. Indeed, generosity does not make “sense.” I invited to consider who taught us to be generous, and most likely, those who taught us generosity were people who astounded us, whose motivations we couldn’t figure out, whose benefit from being generous didn’t square with the world. Of course it didn’t. Today, Jesus tells us about the kingdom of heaven, a realm mixed up with this temporal realm, a kingdom we glimpse in fits and starts, a realm that surprises us when it shows up in all its humbling glory.
As a child, I couldn’t figure out why the brilliant, world-traveling Helen spent the last years of her life giving away her considerable wealth to address needs and inequities in the small town of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. I couldn’t figure out why our neighbor Kermit would snowblow our driveway and mow our lawn, tedious tasks we never asked him to do. They weren’t accumulating God’s favor. They weren’t scoring points with the neighbors or the church. As life-long people of faith, they knew the generosity of God, and having received the grace of God, they freely extended it to others. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who gives for the sake of giving, like a neighbor who helps without being asked. Thanks be to God! Amen.