Standing Under the Scriptures
September 28, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Philippians 2.1-13: Paul, writing from prison, expresses his deepest desires for the members of his community.

Matthew 21.23-27: Jesus, in the Temple after entering Jerusalem, turns back the challenge of the chief priests and elders to his authority.

Before continuing I need to let you know that I will be away on the Sundays of October 26 and November 2 and 9, for my annual visit to the UK. I have spoken to a couple of our members already about carrying on the class over the interval. Any contributions that others would like to make would I am sure be welcome.

As for our readings last Sunday, we saw both of them as revolving around a common theme. God’s grace is free, unconstrained by any human expectations or preconceptions. We began our discussion of Jonah 3.10-4.11 by considering the genre to which the whole book belongs. Although it is placed among the Minor Prophets, it is essentially a short story interspersed with a psalm--a moving one. And on that account it accords better with the third of the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Prophets, and Writings. The elements of the story are the Lord’s call to Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, Jonah’s attempt to evade the call by fleeing to Tarshish, the foiling of his attempt leading to his being spat up on Nineveh’s shore by a “great fish,” his reluctant preaching to Nineveh, Nineveh’s repentance, the Lord’s relenting from Nineveh’s planned punishment, and the Lord’s dialogue with Jonah concerning this outcome. We also did a bit of source criticism, as biblical scholars term it. This means inferring the likely origin of a book or section thereof from its observable features. The fact the Nineveh, the capital of Assyria which had inflicted such terrible destruction on Israel in the 8th century B.C., is considered a candidate for repentance points to a date for the book’s composition after the return from the Exile, when the memory of this history had faded. Similarly, the mission to a Gentile people as well as the holding out of the prospect of forgiveness suggests a reaction against Jewish particularism and legalism such as may have come to the fore amid the deep stresses of the post-Exilic period.

Be these things as they may, the thrust of the conclusion of the book, which was our reading, is clear enough. Despite the success of his preaching in Nineveh Jonah remains unreconciled, the point of wishing to die. He seems even to hold it against the Lord that it succeeded. Perhaps he could be characterized as the grumpy prophet; no other exhibited such grumpiness. Overruling his objections, the Lord in his sovereignty persists in relenting; it is not for Jonah to judge his actions. At the same time he shows concern for Jonah, citing to him the grounds for his persistence. These are not only the repentance of Nineveh but also the presence in it of many innocent children. In this we saw a foreshadowing of New Testament grace.

Then in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, our Gospel reading (Matthew 20.1-16), we found a similar affirmation of God’s free sovereignty. Before we proceeded to our analysis, I ventured my notion of a feature of Jesus’ parables, namely that they bear the imprint of the daily life, economic, social, and political, of the time. In this respect they are rather like a photographic negative. Thus if a “positive” were to be developed from them, they would yield a considerable picture of the daily life of the ancients. Nor is this just an antiquarian curiosity. Rather it evidences the sacramental quality of daily life, theirs and ours, how it can illuminate the content of revelation when brought appropriately into contact with it.

We saw the meaning of this parable summed up in its final verse: “So the last will be first [or at least equal to the first] and the first last.” But then came the question, who are these first and these last? Answers emerged as we proceeded. The parable begins normally enough. A householder goes out early in the morning to hire casual laborers for his vineyard, agreeing with them on the regular wage, a denarius, for a day’s work. The same procedure occurs often enough today. But then it starts to diverge from normal. At noon and at mid-afternoon the householder, finding more laborers in the marketplace, hires them too, telling them that he will pay them rightly. And late in the afternoon, at the “eleventh hour,” he hires still others, this time without any discussion of wages. At the end of the day the last hired are the first paid. Despite having worked only one hour they each receive a denarius, as do also those hired earlier. And those hired at the outset, who had borne “the burden and heat of the day,” complain, believing that they are entitled to more than those who worked only one hour. The response of the householder is that they agreed on the amount which they have been paid and that, further, he is free to do what he desires with regard to the others.

The householder obviously represents the Lord, who as on Nineveh and Jonah bestows his grace in sovereign freedom---otherwise it would not be grace. But for the later hires, especially those at the eleventh hour, there are various possibilities. They could be Gentiles now being given a place in the church alongside Jews. They might be recent converts among members of long standing. Or they might be those who because of the recency of the sin of which they have repented or their general sense of unworthiness doubt their inclusion. For them the parable, in declaring their full eligibility, would be a special comfort.

But the question of fairness remains---much the same question which the parable of the prodigal raised and which the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin implied. Are the late comers and recent repenters really to be rewarded equally with those serving faithfully all along? Like the story of Jonah, the parable of the laborers responds to this question too, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly. When the householder asks his eleventh-hour hires why they have stood idle all day, the word he uses could be translated also as useless. This adds to the pathos of their reply: “Because no one has hired us.” And their sense of uselessness would have been a burden even heavier that that of those who were actually working. There is a further point to be made here---which I can make only because a class member spotted it. This is that whereas the original hires had the promise of a specific wage, the second and third hires had only the assurance of being paid, “what is right.” And regarding wages, the eleventh-hour hires were told nothing at all. Thus it was their trust in the householder that they were going by, bespeaking their readiness to trust him. Correspondingly, those who have the least materially are generally the most ready to put their trust in the Lord. That this is the case can be seen in the Global South today.

But what about the original hires, the old standbys with whom most of us would probably identify? They received their denarius to be sure, but does not its ordinariness leave them, and us, rather high and dry? This question was raised for me in the coffee hour by someone acknowledging his underlying sympathy for them. But our denarius, the reward we receive, although it may seem so is in fact not ordinary. It comes from the Lord, which gives it special, even infinite value. And thus we can rejoice in it without limitation.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted