What Is Right
July 28, 2024 - Matthew 20: 1-16
Half a century or more before Ghandi would lead his people to freedom from British rule, Queen Victoria declared herself the Empress of India. Although she was forbidden to travel there by her advisers,[1] who feared her assassination, the British queen was obsessed with all things India. In 1887, at the celebration to mark Victoria’s 50 years on the throne she was presented with a ceremonial gold coin, borne on a pillow by two Indian servants dressed in regal red outfits complete with turbans.
Their job for the rest of the celebration was to stand behind Victoria at table as grand Indian decoration befitting of an Empress. Throughout the day though the Queen and the servants struck up a conversation and one became her fast favorite when he quoted the Quran to her on the value of service. In the movie “Victoria and Abdul,” Victoria is played by Dame Judi Dench, who remarks in surprise that the Indian servant is not Hindu.
“I am a Muslim, your majesty,” he replies, “I learned the Quran from my father. He's my munshi.”
“Munshi?” the Queen asks.
“Yes, munshi,” he responds, “my teacher.”
“Well, we would like you to be the queen's munshi,” Victoria declares.
On the spot she makes 24 year old Abdul Karim her teacher and a member of her royal court. The rest of the white-skinned, blue-blooded, royal court despises Abdul. Despite the queen’s instructions, he is met with a hostile reception from the court members on the basis of his religion, his race, his humble birth, and his, therefore, inappropriate closeness with the queen. Though the queen is able to protect him during her life and he gains a significant amount of notoriety in his own right, within hours of the queen’s funeral the munshi’s home is raided by order of the new monarch, King Edward VII. All of Victoria’s letters to Abdul are taken out into the street and burned in an enormous bonfire.
When interviewed about the hostility his character faced, Ali Fazal, the Muslim Bollywood actor who plays Abdul said, “You know, the moment you get insecure, you start to look at the other person and find these faults, ...and say, ...you're lesser, and you're not qualified for this job because you're from that side of the world.” Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote about how insecurity turns into hostility and even violence. He wrote, “the root of war is fear.”
In our scripture text for today the ones who worked all day in the vineyard grow hostile too. They grumble to the landowner however, instead of the other workers. And honestly, they have good reason to be upset, right? If I had worked all day in the hot sun of the vineyard and found that someone who came along at the end of the day got paid just the same as me, I might be pretty upset too.
The landowner asks, “Are you envious, because I am generous?” Of course they are! Why does Jesus tell this story anyway?
If you open your Bible to Matthew chapter 19, you’ll see that the story we read today is fairly neatly sandwiched in between two stories that touch on the natural human desire to gain and maintain status.
In chapter 19, we meet the rich young man who wants to gain eternal life and in the verses of chapter 20 that shortly follow today’s story we find the mother of James and John negotiating for her sons’ status in the coming kingdom. In between, Jesus foretells of his death and resurrection a third time and he tells them this odd vineyard parable.
In each of these stories Jesus teaches that the ways of power, status, and honor they have known in the kingdoms and societies of the world are not the ways of God’s kingdom. Rather, he teaches, “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
When my son Noam had just learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, his new skill resulted in new speed. It also resulted in the sound of his voice calling out sing-song to the walking adults behind him “last one there is a rotten egg.” In that I heard my ploys at getting my children to the bathtub at night coming back to me, and I heard too a natural human tendency to vie for our place in line, even as a child’s game.
Comparing ourselves to each other seems to be a common human past-time that has taken on a new pervasiveness in our time but existed long before the age of social media. Because judging our insides by others’ outsides doesn’t happen just on Facebook or Instagram, it happens on the street, in the office, and even in the church. It seems a common human condition to believe that if we can be first, have the most of something, or be the best of anything, then we can feel safe and secure.
Jesus rips that false sense of security right out of our hands. All that striving to be first, most, and best cannot make us safe in the kingdom of God if “the first will be last and the last will be first.” The workers in the field thought working all day would see them paid best but instead they are paid just the same as those who worked very little.
Even all their work did not put them ahead of the others. Is that fair? Is that just? Is that right? That is what the landowner says he will pay the ones who come later after all. He says to the ones he hires at 9 o’clock, “you also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.”
As the children pointed out, what is right is not necessarily being treated the same. Debbie Irving, the author of the book Waking Up White, talks about the two interlocking ideas she calls “evil.” The first is that the United States is a level playing field for all. The second is that there is a natural order and some people are more worthy than others.
“If I think the playing field is level and I am repeatedly exposed to images of white men at the top of organizational hierarchy,” Irving once told a TedX audience,[2] “that sends a powerful message that white men are superior that’s why they’re in charge.” Of course, as Debbie goes on to enumerate in her talk, the playing field in the United States is not level and it has never been so. From the writing of the Constitution some people under the laws of this land have not been considered fully human.
The GI bill, from which Debbie’s father gained significant wealth in terms of a house and an ivy league education that then translated into generational wealth he could pass on to his children and grandchildren all of that was largely unavailable by law to people of color. Could it be said then that Debbie’s father gained that wealth on his own by the merits of his own hard work alone? Could it be said that the reason he ended up in the high place of status that he did was because he was naturally superior and the people who did not end up with that status were naturally inferior?
Would that be right?
What is right?
Is it right for the laborers who worked all day to receive the same wage as those hired near the end of the day?
Let me ask it this way, do the families of those who worked all day need to eat more or less than those hired at the end of the day? Do the families of those who worked all day need access to healthcare more or less than those hired at the end of the day? Do the families of those who worked all day need safe, stable, affordable housing more or less than those hired at the end of the day?
What is fair? What is equitable? What is just? What is right?
“At the root of all war is fear,” Thomas Merton wrote, then he went on, “Not so much the fear [people] have of each other but as the fear we have of everything.” Because so often we are afraid that we are not enough. Because we will never be first, the most, the best. There is always someone faster, better, and smarter. Therefore, Merton writes, “we must exaggerate the wrongs of others in order to feel better about ourselves,” which breeds hostility and violence. “We rationalize by destroying the other, we will free ourselves from our self-hatred.”[3] Maybe the workers in the vineyard who worked all day need to get paid more in an economy that monetizes our time and that only grants access to healthcare with a pricetag.
But is that right? Or is right for everyone to be given what they need?
“Are you envious because I am generous?” the landowner asks. Should we be envious when others get as much as we do? Should we be envious when the first become last and the last become first? “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard,” so Jesus begins this story.
If that’s true, then I believe the kingdom of heaven is generous and equitable. The kingdom of heaven is a place where the first become last so they can learn what it means to serve. The kingdom of heaven is a place where the last become first so they will have their needs met, centered, and cared for. The kingdom of heaven is a place where it doesn’t matter who is first and who is last because we know we are all loved.
We are all enough.
The kingdom of heaven is a place where it doesn’t matter who is first and who is last because we have all had our needs met. Yes, we live in a world where all do not get what we need. We live in a limited world of time and resources. The kingdom of heaven is not that kind of world and it is not the kind of world we can know fully in this life but it is the kind of world that Jesus called us to embrace and to work toward and to witness for so that we may taste of it in this life and slip into it fully in the life that is to come.
For the love of God is the one resource to which there is no limit. The love of God will be granted to the laborers who toil all day and the ones who come late. The love of God will be granted to the first and the last and everyone in between. The love of God will be granted to the just and the unjust. The love of God will be available to queens and servants. The love of God will be granted to the saber rattlers and the peaceniks. The love of God will be granted to the documented and the undocumented. There is no getting ahead or falling behind in the kingdom of God. Because the unbelievably generous love of God has been, is, and will be available to every part of creation and beyond.
We need not be envious because God is generous. No, all we need do is slip into the generous love of God that wipes away all our fears and insecurities and opens our eyes to what is right, just, whole, peaceful, healthy, equitable, and just like a taste of the kingdom of heaven.
May it be so. Amen.
[1] http://upr.org/post/victoria-abdul-explores-colonialism-and-islamophobia-during-queens-reign
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5Ox5XNEpg
[3] http://www.peacecouple.com/2012/05/08/merton-the-root-of-war-is-fear/
