All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville
Epiphany 6, 2006

"Is thine eye evil because I am good?."
(St. Matthew 20)
"...Whose service is perfect freedom."

   I met my friend when I was twelve, the year my father was transferred from St. Louis to Savannah.  He lived down the street from our new home, and we went to junior high and senior high together.  In many ways we were joined at the hip.  We played on the football and golf teams throughout our school years, and after graduation we carried on our friendship while we were both at college.

The year we graduated from college, He entered the Episcopal Seminary at Nashotah House.  Three years later I began my time at Virginia Seminary.  We participated in each other's weddings, ordinations and are godparents to each others children.

 Not too long after he became a priest, hedeveloped pancreatitis, and in time became addicted to codeine and other pain-killing drugs.   The addiction hampered him to the point that he lost his job -- but before long he found another one even better than the previous one.  And yet he failed to hold on to it very long before he was back in rehab.  This pattern went on for years until 1998 when his mother called one afternoon to tell me he had died alone in a motel room on the North Carolina coast.  By that time he had become so addicted that the doctors thought the immediate cause of his death could have been caused by a single aspirin.

 Yet during the years between his ordination and his death, he found and lost I don't know how many different jobs, each one in a finer location and with a greater salary than the last.  The year he died he fulfilled a life-long dream by obtaining a captain's license from the Coast Guard.  He had a pretty large fishing boat, spending part of the week on the water -- and then showing of his tan the rest of the week on the golf course.

And the rest of us would wonder how in the world did he ever manage to right himself, after falling off horse after horse -- but ending up better financially and materially every single time.  I was not alone in envying him:  being able to be a priest without any of the responsibility.  The fact that he went through hell between each job was something we never really thought about until later; nor did we often consider his divorce, as well as his oldest child ending up in and out of jail and juvenile homes.  All most of us could think about -- and envy -- was his good fortune of making a proverbial killing of a living, while being so incredibly inept at life itself.  I can even remember a few of us saying we'd love to trade places with him.  Not until his funeral did we sit down and talk about what a tragically wasted life it was, for this really was one very gifted and talented human being.

 When we envy someone (not wanting someone else to enjoy the good which befalls him), we generally don't think about the problems that person suffers beneath the shiny surface.  Whenever I go to the diocesan convention (which the Vestry generously allowed me to forego this year so Kathy and I could attend a school function with Caroline); whenever I go to diocesan convention, part of what makes me loathe the event is my envy -- seeing year after year the young clergy (fresh out of seminary) being elected to the Standing Committee.  I have more active seniority than any other priest in the diocese at the moment, and I'm the only one never elected to this prestigious post -- and I never will be.

And I think why couldn't the diocese give me a chance like Fr. So and So -- or Sister So and So.  They don’t deserve this  -- but I deserve it!  This of course is the price I pay for holding on to the traditional liturgy -- which I continue to do gladly.  But in my weaker moments envy never fails to strike, and I don't always (immediately) think of the fact that that other priest might live in Ty Ty, or that his children have run away from home, or that he has a Vestry which doesn't bother to speak to him or with him outside the context of a Vestry Meeting.

 I give you these examples this morning of my sins in order to place myself in the Second Lesson (hopefully only occasionally) with that group of complaining laborers who went out early into the Vineyard for their penny -- and bore the burden and heat of the day to earn that one penny -- when the latecomers who didn't do anywhere near the work of the others actually took home the same paycheck.

 Certainly a cursory reading of St. Matthew 20 would remind us that God showers the same grace upon each of us, and that no one person is granted a larger share of the Kingdom than anyone else.  God's rain falls upon the just and the unjust.  If someone comes to Christianity late in his life, he is offered everything that the life-long Christian has.  Does this mean that God operates His business along he same lines as the High Command at Enron and Tyco? 

Yes it does, but only if we look at our life in Christ as a business proposition.  The point of this parable however, is that our fellowship with Jesus is about as far from a business proposition as one might ever imagine.

 And unfortunately, when I think about my envy toward my departed friend, or my envy toward the younger inexperienced clergy, I make myself guilty of thinking of Christianity as a legalistic business proposition.  We need to remember that in this parable, Jesus is not simply finding employment for folks.  Rather He is sending them into the Vineyard:  the Kingdom of God.  They are going there to work not for themselves but to work for Jesus and the spread of His Kingdom.   What that means is that they already enjoy the benefits of that Kingdom!  This is what I, along with that early group of laborers forget when we envy:  that is, we are already supposed to be enjoying the fruits of our labor in the Vineyard.

It's unfortunate that in telling this parable, the Church usually leaves off the few verses which precede it.  Our Lord's point becomes clearer if we understand that He tells this parable in answer to Peter's question:  "Lord we have left everything to follow you.  What then shall we have?"  The Greek is more to the point.  "We've left everything to follow you, so what's in it for us?"

"Will we get nothing more than those who take it easy and enjoy life -- and who don’t come regularly to Sunday School or to church and sit at home and watch TV?  Is there nothing more for me than for them -- who might because of some last minute religious panic -- finally convert and begin to take you seriously?" "I've given up all for you; now what's in it for me?"  Do you see the problem?

 That is, when we surrender ourselves to Jesus, that submission is not a means to an end.  Rather that submission is -- or ought to be -- the end in itself, and that end is called salvation.  And when we genuinely make this surrender, our life really does cease to be that sort of drudgery which seems to do nothing but bear the burden and heat of the day.  Indeed it is in that surrender in which we find our true freedom -- "in Whose service is our perfect freedom".

Unfortunately until we really get to know Jesus and allow Him to know us, our life in Christ can and will seem like work.  Not until we know His heart and mind, not until we know His wisdom and compassion does our employment by Him in His Vineyard become a happy and blessed proposition.  Only then can our life begin to acquire something resembling direction, and order, and meaning.  Then, even the burden and heat of the day will begin to seem welcome and even satisfying.

 The German theologian Helmut Thielike in his book The Waiting Father makes a telling point:  
"Anybody who has ever gone through something hard with Jesus holding his hand; anybody who has had Him as the companion of his anguish when he went through the bitterness of a prison camp; when he was driven from house and home; when he was dragged from the smoking ruins of a bombed cellar -- that person would not for all the world have missed these experiences.  He does not say -- 'Because of all the hardships I have had to undergo, God must surely give me a higher place in Heaven.'

"What he does say is this:  'Not until I went down into the depths of hunger, fear, and loneliness did I experience the nearness of the Lord.  There in the darkness is where I first learned who Jesus is and how He can save, and comfort, and sustain me.  I had to be sent into that burden and into that heat in order that I might see that God really does know the way.  I had to go through the valley of the shadow in order to experience and to really know the Shepherd.'"

 Perhaps now when we hear Peter say, 'We've left all for you, what's in it for me?', we can realize how far off base he is, and accept the fact that those of us who ask similar questions don't have much of an understanding of what faith and love are all about in the first place.

Perhaps we ought to think in some sene about how our entrance into the Vineyard with Jesus is like going down into a dark shadow.  After all there really is Scriptural warrant for thinking so.  There is for instance that wonderful scene in John's gospel on Easter morning of Peter and John running to the tomb at Mary Magdalene's news that the Tomb is empty.  John outruns Peter, beating him to the spot.  In John's gospel -- as well as within the tradition of the Church, John represents love, and Peter represents faith.  And in our own spiritual lives, love precedes faith.  John beats Peter to the Tomb.

Upon arriving at the Tomb however, Peter goes in first, followed by John.  That is, love follows faith into the darkness, but it is in that darkness that love is able to see and finally, to comprehend.  The gospel says that that Beloved Disciple "saw  -- and believed".

 If this parable is about anything, it is against any and all religion of a legalistic nature.  If our life in Christ really was a business proposition, then the ones who had been out all day long really would have a legitimate gripe.  But that is not the case.  Their griping shows that in reality they've been working on the basis of fear -- and fear always always is the progenitor of envy:  resenting another person's good.  Their griping shows they consider themselves to be slaves in the Vineyard, rather than as sons and daughters of God -- co-workers with Him

The parable also reminds us that we should never view the goodness of God with a jealous eye.  "Is thine eye evil because I am good?"  Would I ever begin to trade places with my friend, or with the younger clergy in the diocese?  Not on your life.  First, I never know what others problems they have to deal with.  But even if their lives were perfect, and if I really did want to swap with them  I would be espousing the legalistic type of religion which Jesus today is condemning in no uncertain terms -- an eye for an eye. 

Remember what I said last month about Pelagianism -- which is essentially a legalistic religion (that I can transact my way to salvation):  The legalistic Pelagian is always trying to make things right for himself -- just like the ones complaining about having worked all day in the Vineyard.   The Pelagian is always trying to make things right for himself.  The Christian is interested in what God will do to make him right for the situation.  Again, the Christian is interested in what God will do to make him right for the situation.

 One final thing.  Perhaps we're not always as much a part of that early group as we like to think.  Perhaps one day toward the end of our lives, we find ourselves in a certain spiritual situation which looks like this.  That is, how many of us have stood for untold minutes at the end of a long check-out line at Publix, and suddenly another clerk opens up the register next to you:  she looks directly at you and waves you through before any of the others who have been waiting far longer than you.  It happened to me this week.  On those occasions I really do feel a little guilty, but rarely if ever do I say to the clerk "No thank you m'am."

 It doesn't always make sense -- and it's certainly not fair.  But neither is salvation itself fair because salvation is a gift -- and there's nothing fair about the theology of giving or the theology of receiving a gift:  for you, or me, or even God.

Salvation is not a business.  Salvation is God's offer (God's gift) to us -- to labor in His Vineyard, whose service (whose genuine, and devoted, and unwavering service) is our perfect freedom.