September 21 2008
Pr. Robert Goldstein
A Vision For Church and City

What a vision! What an incredible vision Jesus has for humankind! In God's community, in God's city, everyone is truly equal. Everyone is truly valued as a human being -as a wondrous gift of God. There are no exceptions. No one wants exceptions. No one sees exceptions. No one is interested in exceptions. In the City of God love and respect abound. Can you behold such a vision of complete equality? It's hard to imagine and that's why Jesus uses this parable. It's hard to imagine because we do not live in that kind of City of God. We live here in the cities of our own world. So how can the vision of this parable be real? It seems so idealistic -so unrealistic. Yet the parable applies to us in many ways, but chiefly as the parable of the true nature of the church in the world, as a foretaste of the city of God in this city of San Francisco.

The biblical context before this parable is of a young man asking Jesus what is necessary to achieve eternal life. Jesus responds to this man and to the disciples that we cannot achieve eternal life. For it is not an achievement. Everything is turned upside down in God's city -even the first shall be last. Then this parable: A vineyard owner goes early in the morning to contract for day laborers. The usual daily rate of pay is a denarius, a small Roman coin. Such a wage could barely provide a subsistence livelihood. Nonetheless, in a land where economic hardship is "normal," such is the daily wage. An unspecified number of workers agree to the landowner's terms and go to work. Throughout the day, the owner of the vineyard contracts additional laborers with the amount of pay left undetermined, except by the word of the one hiring that, "I will pay you whatever is right". At the end of the day all are paid exactly the same no matter how long they worked. Is this right?

Our response to this parable is multi-faceted but we are always nurtured by Jesus' basic point to this parable, you cannot work or achieve your way to God. You cannot achieve salvation. The parable builds up the expectation that those working through the heat of the day obviously earn much more. Jesus uses this ordinary expectation to shock us into realizing, even if dimly, that God is so different. Jesus uses this parable to provoke a vision in us that, with everyone being paid equally, our common humanity is revealed -this is a gracious gift of God: we all share a common humanity. And what a shock that can be! We are all in the same boat, so to speak, on this planet. Let's start thinking and valuing life from this vision. And that is what the church exists for: to nurture this profound moral vision through Word and Sacrament in life. God loves all equally -not only Lutherans, not only Christians, not only religious, but all people. That vision, accepted as a gift from God, as grace in our flesh and mind, will affect how we live.

True, our behavior can and will contradict this vision. The vision is so hard to remember because the complicated realities of the human city are so demanding, that we forget. That's why we gather hungrily to hear the words, "Do this in remembrance of me." If we take the parable just in humanly ethical terms, we are offended by the unfairness of the landowner. This parable hints of a systemic economic oppression, which perpetually keeps people and their families entangled in poverty. The workers' frustration and the landowner's discretion in payments are yet another sign of exploitation, not a mark of the in-breaking presence of God. Those who have much can afford to play with the lives of those who depend on them in order to survive. The action of the vineyard owner ultimately pits laborers against each other and destroys human relationships.

Even worse, I would not be surprised that this parable was used many a time to justify management having the sole divine right to determine workers' wages. But when you drive along Cesar Chavez or around Oak and Divisadero and see the day laborers, shall we forget these day laborers who share our humanity? Whatever separates us culturally from these day laborers is not, in Jesus' vision for the world, cause for us to forget our common humanity -reminding us once again of Jesus' magnificent purpose of giving this parable. As a people of God, as citizens of God's city, we are to lend our voice to the plight of these day laborers and others who are homeless or on the edge of homelessness -those who are trapped in SRO's paying more daily than a monthly rent would cost them.

Our parable this morning opens up our minds to all kinds of human issues and injustices. Nevertheless, I believe that the specific purpose of this parable was not to be heard in those ways, but to show us, even shock us, into the vision Jesus has for the world. The parable comes from this man of God who was wrestling with the injustices in society, with envy and its family of vices that infect us all.

Yesterday's horrific destruction of a hotel in Pakistan is motivated by people who also want to change the world. They have a vision, a simple vision, a violent vision -the vision of zealots. Simon the zealot was attracted to Jesus -probably because of Jesus' words about a new world. But zealots, in their genuine frustration at poverty and injustice, seek violent solutions, which only draw out the worst from those who respond in kind.

Jesus lived among these tensions and ideologies. He was not immune as if he were just a gentle shepherd for gentle people. But with great strength and clarity he brings another way to thoroughly change the world, by thoroughly changing the heart, mind and vision of each person -one at a time. This change is slower, like a mustard seed. It rejects that human instinct to call to arms to fight for control, for the fighting never ends until someone is hatefully vanquished. Jesus' call to arms involves the call to each one of us to be changed by the embrace of God's arms which, in turn, moves us to the embrace of our arms around others -not in violence but in compassion, and our will to see the City of God. Whether you want to change the world or whether you have given up on it, and even as our national economic structures wobble, Jesus' parable says, I have a new vision -a vision that we cannot achieve a better world on our own, but, in confessing our own complicity in its brokenness, we receive a vision of the city of God as truly and solely a gift from God, God's Spirit graciously guides us for living out this vision in the unpredictable and sometimes frustrating and violent city of humankind. This parable's a shocker, but what a vision! What a vision! Amen