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The Heavenly Landowner
Sermon by Rev. Sarah Buteux
for Sunday, September 22, 2002
Scripture: (Old Testament) Exodus 16:2-21, (New Testament) Matthew 20:1-16
"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard." . . . "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner." It is an interesting comparison. I would expect Jesus to say something more along the lines of "the Lord of heaven is like a landowner." But he doesn't. The individual person of this landowner is not compared to the individual person of God. This one individual is like the entire kingdom of heaven.
What does that mean? How can the kingdom of heaven be like an individual person? Well, within this story I see three ways in which this one man is like the kingdom of heaven, and I would like to share those with you this morning. But I would also like to take a look at the response of the landowner's unsatisfied workers. Why are some of them so angry? What lies at the heart of their dissatisfaction. And finally, where, within this parable, do we see the workings of our own souls reflected most clearly?
It is a lot to think about. So let's begin with this landowner. Here is a man with a thriving vineyard that requires the labor of many to succeed. He goes out in the early morning hours to find workers, and I would imagine that the men and women crowding into the town square at dawn are serious about their work. They have families to feed and they are responsible individuals who have come out in hopes of earning a full day's wage. They will work a full day, because in working a full day they will make enough, just enough, to support their families for that day. I believe we are meant to see these laborers as good, honest, hardworking people. Our landowner hires them for the day and promises to pay them a fair wage. They accept his offer and get to work.
But the landowner goes back out to the square a few hours later - about nine o'clock - and hires everyone he sees waiting for work then. Now these people are probably lucky to get hired at this point. They aren't the early bird types, and I get the impression they wouldn't be surprised if they had missed out on all the worms for that day. But here comes this landowner and he hires them anyway. These people are getting a good break. They might not make a full day's wage, but they will get something.
Then the parable starts to get a little bit strange. Our man goes out again at noon. Now lets be realistic here. Anyone still waiting around for work at noon probably was out carousing the night before and just woke up, or they look so weak and worthless that nobody else thought they would be worth what you would have to pay them. These people are really lucky to get any work at all. But our landowner hires them, and he doesn't stop there. He goes out again at three and then again at five. Our landowner went to the public square five times in one day in search of workers and each time he went he brought back everyone who needed work. Everyone.
Now we all know that at the end of the parable he pays them all a full day's wage regardless of how many hours they actually worked. So the first thing we can say about our landowner, is that this man is crazy and he will be bankrupt within one year if he continues operating in such an inefficient manner. Okay, maybe that's not the point of the parable.
Jesus is painting a picture for us of a man who obviously isn't hiring people because of what they can do for him, but because of what he can do for them. This guy isn't interested in squeezing as much out of his workers as he possibly can . This is a man with a successful vineyard and he is sharing his wealth with anyone he can find. In going out five times in one day, he is constantly looking for more people to bring into his work, not because of what he is going to get out of them, but because he has so much to give them. And how is this like the kingdom of heaven?
Well, lesson #1, Heaven is of such a nature that it wants all of us to be a part of it. The kingdom of heaven is not opened or closed to anyone on the basis of merit. It is just plain open to all and constantly seeking to grow. The heavenly community that exists now does not want us to become a part of it someday because of what we have to offer, but because it has so much to offer us.
Our landowner isn't hiring people in order to use them, but because he has so much to give them, and he wants to share his wealth - the wealth of his vineyard - with anyone who will come and be a part of its harvest. He truly is a remarkable man, a heavenly man, whose primary motivation is to care and provide for the needs of everyone, not because they deserve it, or for what he can get out of the deal, but simply because he wants to give it. Heaven is of such a nature that it wants all of us to be a part of it. Heaven is just like the landowner, and this is just the first similarity.
We can see the second similarity if we focus next on the wages he pays out to the workers. We have examined his zealous recruitment technique, now lets focus on the fact that, he pays everyone a full days wages, whether they worked a full day or not. Our landowner gives to everyone, not according to what they have done or earned, but according to his good pleasure. He has chosen to provide for each person according to their daily needs as human beings with families to support, rather than in accordance with the yield of their work.
Who does this? Well God does this. Think of how he cared for the Israelites in the wilderness, giving them just enough manna and quail for each day. And it wasn't because they were such kind hearted obedient people either. They were, for the most part, ungrateful and complaining. But God loved them, and in bringing them through the wilderness he was teaching them to trust in his love for them, a love that will always provide as much as we need.
Well, the Kingdom of Heaven takes its cue from God. Lesson #2: the kingdom of heaven can and will provide enough for everyone. Heaven is a place where the locus of each person's joy lies, not in what they receive from others, but in what they are able to give to others. As Swedenborg would say, "Heaven consists of a heartfelt desire for the good of others rather than our own good. It is serving others from love to promote their happiness, not for the sake of any selfish hope of reward" (HH 408).
Heaven is a place like this landowner, because in heaven there is no fear or want, anxiety or unmet need. Everyone has what they need, and no one worries about providing for themselves, because in a place where everyone is preoccupied with what they can do for others, you don't have to worry about providing for yourself. You can trust that your needs are going to be met. Our landowner was seeking people throughout the day with every intention of meeting their needs, that is providing a full day's wage for them all. The Lord seeks to create a Heaven from the human race, a place where we, like the landowner can care, love, and provide for one another for no other reason than the pure joy we take in doing so.
The last characteristic I would like to point out about our landowner is his public display of generosity. He very deliberately pays the final workers first, so that everyone can see exactly what he is doing. He is not ashamed or embarrassed by his decision, and when the first workers begin to grumble that his behavior is unfair he asks them straight out "Šare you envious because I am generous?" Our landowner has not cheated anyone. He has merely chosen to be generous and provide a full day's wage for each and every person he hired that day.
No one is going away empty-handed or slighted. In fact, everyone who worked in that vineyard is going home with just enough money to feed their family for that one day. If lesson #1 is that heaven is seeking to include everyone, because - lesson #2, heaven can and will provide for everyone, then lesson # 3 is revealed right here in the discontent of the first workers and it is this: no matter how open and generous the kingdom of heaven is, there will always be people who are uncomfortable with it. There will always be some people who will pull away from heaven just as the workers pulled away from the landowner.
But why? What truth is at work here? It is simply this: the landowner's generosity reveals the lack of generosity in the hearts of the first workers. Now remember, these people are still decent, honest, hardworking individuals who believe that you work a full day for a full day's wage. They came to work hard and expected to be paid what they deserved. And they got it, so why are they unsatisfied? And why are we, and maybe you are not, although I think you are meant to be, at least a little bit uncomfortable with the decision of the landowner?
Answer: because the behavior of the landowner, to those of us here on earth is completely illogical. He may not be cheating those first workers he hired early in the morning, but his behavior is naturally unsettling to us. Technically, he is not being unfair, but he is not exactly playing by the rules we have become used to here on earth. We expect people to deal with us as we deserve, to pay us a full day's wage for a full day's work, to tip a waiter 15-20% if the service is good.
We have certain rules that we play by, and this landowner turns the rules upside down. He gives everyone just what they need whether they earned it or not. And this is unsettling. Like the Israelites we have a tendency to hoard what we have, and like the workers who labored for a full day, we want to be paid in full, and be treated fairly. We don't honestly like to see people get more than they deserve. Parent's go to great lengths to love their children equally. Good teachers try not to favor certain students. A fair boss will treat all of her employees the same. We work very hard in this world to combat injustice and see that people are treated fairly.
What the landowner is doing, in paying everyone a day's wage, whether they did a day's work or not, goes a step beyond our comfort zone and threatens to throw our whole system into chaos. If he went on this way, no one would show up for work before 4:00. Nothing would get done. Progress would cease. We couldn't survive on these terms. The world just doesn't work this way. Maybe it should, but if we are realistic, we have to admit that it doesn't.
We can't live and give like the landowner here on earth unless everyone else decides to do likewise all at the same time. And people will never agree to live this way. So this guys behavior is upsetting. But there is even more to it than this. If you probe a little more you will find that the landowner taps into a fear that lies even deeper than our faith in the rules we have established. Deep down, there is a part in each of us that is expecting people to cheat us, that lives in fear that there might not be enough. We are taught to believe that survival belongs to the fittest and we mean to survive.
The landowner's behavior runs contrary to our natural in born tendency to love ourselves first and foremost. To take what we can get, when we can get it. But, make no mistake, this is the standard of love that rules in hell. This is the love that maintains the status quo. This is the love that looks at the generosity of the landowner and feels somehow cheated, although in reality it still has everything it needs. This is a love we need be wary of, because this is the kind of love that can look heaven and all it has to offer full in the face and then turn and walk away grumbling.
Swedenborg says that hellish people -that is, people whose souls are dominated by love for themselves- will not be comfortable in heaven, and this parable is a good example of just how uncomfortable selfish people feel in the midst of a heavenly community. When you are motivated primarily by a need to provide for yourself, you don't have the freedom to share with others unless you already have what you need.
And it is an unfortunate fact of our human nature that we never seem to be completely satisfied with what we have. Like the Israelites, we worry about tomorrow and want to hoard up our manna just in case God doesn't come through. Apart from God, that is if we don't trust that the Lord is providing for us, we are filled with an anxiety that drives us to provide for ourselves no matter what the cost to others.
A person who, in this life, has continually chosen to provide for themselves first and foremost, eventually becomes incapable of putting others before themselves. They are so used to caring for their own needs at the expense of others because they don't trust others and because they fear a future when they might not have enough. Johnny Carson tells a story about the time when, as the host of the Tonight Show, he made a joke about there being a toilet paper shortage in the city.
The next day there really was a shortage because all the viewers who had watched his show ran out afterward and bought up extra toilet paper just in case. There was no trust in the fact that people, if they chose to work together, could ration out the toilet paper to make sure there would be enough for everyone. People panicked and grabbed not what they needed, but more than they needed, leaving others with nothing at all. When people allow their lives to be directed by this kind of fear and self-love, then they find out when they die and finally have the opportunity to enter into a heavenly community, that it is not really what they want at all.
They shrink back. You see, you need to have a great deal of trust in God and the goodness of others in order to buy into the concept of heaven, and these people don't. They can't anymore, because they have learned here on earth that you take what you can get when you can get it, because if you don't, no one else is going to look out for you. Heaven to these people is a very unsettling place.
Our landowner is like the kingdom of heaven because he seeks to include everyone, he gives freely to everyone so that they each have as much as they need, and he holds up a mirror to the deepest part of our being that asks the question, "are we okay with that?"
Listen again to the words of Emanuel Swedenborg:
"I have conversed with spirits who supposed heaven and heavenly joy to consist in being the greatest. But they were told that in heaven he is greatest who is least, because he who would be the least has the greatest happiness, and consequently is the greatest, for what is it to be the greatest except to be the most happy? It is this that the powerful seek by power, and the rich by riches. They were told, further, that heaven does not consist in desiring to be the least in order to be the greatest, for in that case the person is really aspiring and wishing to be the greatest; but that heaven consists in this, that from the heart we wish better for others than for ourselves, and desire to be of service to others in order to promote their happiness, and this for no selfish end, but from love." (Arcana Coelestia 452)
The ways of our world are not the ways of heaven. It is hard to believe that this landowner would ever make it in our society. But if we find ourselves dismissing his generosity - like those workers - we are turning our backs on heaven -the heaven we long to be part of someday, but even more importantly the heaven we are called to help create here on earth. Let us pray together then, for guidance, for courage, and for strength that we might somehow bring our vision of the New Jerusalem into being, after all.
Dear Lord - You have so much to teach us and we have so much to learn. Help us Lord, not to be threatened by the love you offer, but inspired by it. Immerse us in your giving spirit. Help us to see the needs of those around us and act, trusting that you know our every need and will provide.
Amen
Copyright 2002 by Rev. Sarah Buteux
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