Another Day, Another Dollar?

By Gusti Linnea Newquist

Exodus 16:1-15
Matthew 20:1-16

Every day is a gift from God, the ancient Israelites sing, as Moses assures them God will feed their hunger and quench their thirst. Every day is a gift from God, we have joined them in singing when we, too, gather around the bread of life, as the manna from heaven falls, as the heavens “rain bread,” which is how the Hebrew is so beautifully translated. Every day is a gift from God, we celebrate with them, soaking up the raining bread in the wilderness of Sin—just like we have been soaking up the raining rain this weekend—in a land that is so barren of life in the eyes of the ancient Israelites that even Egypt, with its whips and chains of slavery, seems like a welcome—and lush—alternative.

But every day is a gift from God, the ancient Israelites start singing, when the raining bread starts to fall and the quail crop up from the cracked and parched earth. And they have enough to eat, and it is enough for everyone, no matter how rich or poor or young or old. No matter how able-bodied. It is not a luxury, of course. It is not fried chicken and apple pie. But they have their daily bread. And so do we. Because in the middle of a dry and weary land, when even Egypt seems like a better alternative, Moses thunders, “God. Will. Provide!” And God does!

It is a question that is ever before us, is it not? Will God really provide? Jobs? Security? Peace? Rain for a drought-ridden state? These economic times—and this literal drought—have forced us all to reconsider our basic assumptions about money and savings and grace and providence. The truth is, if we are really honest, we would be hard-pressed to find anyone among us who is not wandering in the wilderness when it comes to money. It is a symbol of our ego, our security, our emotional rootedness. Plain talk about money is in many ways more threatening to us than plain talk about sexuality. The truth is, if we are really honest, we might rather believe God will just make it all better for us if we complain loudly enough, like the Israelites did with Moses. That bread really will rain from heaven or money really will grow on trees so we don’t have to think about it anymore.

But according to the Bible, God’s provision for daily bread extends well beyond the miraculous manna in the wilderness. God’s provision for daily bread also includes an emphatic set of teachings for the community to live by once they have settled into the Land of Promise and Plenty. The Law, we call these teachings in English; Torah in Hebrew. And in the teachings of Torah, once the people have settled into abundant life across the Jordan, each tribal family is assigned sufficient land holdings to meet their basic needs for generations to come. Enough for everyone—rich, poor, young, old—to receive their daily bread from the abundance of the land they have been assigned. Not so different from the miracle of manna in the wilderness, actually. Only this time, the miracle comes from human sharing of God’s abundance. Which is, given the human propensity for hoarding, perhaps the greater miracle.

Torah maintains a special concern for the most vulnerable among us: the widow and the orphan, to be precise in biblical language, but really anyone who has fallen into perpetual poverty. According to Torah, the wealth of the land should be redistributed every fifty years so that those who have fallen behind can start fresh with a level playing field where debts are canceled, where indentured servants are set free, where God’s wilderness promise of enough for everyone becomes the literal law of the land. It is Basic Biblical Economics: 1) God has given us abundance; 2) We are required to share it; 3) Inequities must be reconciled over time. (see Leviticus 25. Yes. Leviticus!)

We pray for these biblical economic principles every Sunday in our Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread,” we ask. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” we pray. We call forth, as Jesus did, the core of the teachings of Torah, the core of the tradition through which God has ensured God’s faithful provision for all of humanity, the core of the tradition Jesus comes to fulfill by his very presence among us.

Because by the time we get to first century Judea, where that itinerant preacher named Jesus consolidates the core of Torah into what we call The Lord’s Prayer and starts sharing the core of Torah with his disciples through parables about the kingdom of heaven, just about everyone has forgotten the law of the land. The Romans have taken over. The tribes have all been scattered. Landowning elites now own great estates producing luxury crops of wine and oil. Oikodespotes, these landowners are called in Greek: oiko, meaning “household,” and despotes meaning—well—let’s just say this is where we get the English word despot. They foreclosed on loans, they took over peasant farms, they drove the little guy out of business, and they drove up food prices. Intentionally. Without mercy. The peasant farmers, themselves, often had no choice but to start working for the very same landowner who had taken their land!

By the time we get to first-century Judea, where an itinerant preacher named Jesus starts sharing parables with his disciples about the kingdom of heaven, the Land does not seem so full of Promise and Plenty anymore. It has become far easier to believe manna will fall again from the sky than to believe a landowner will actually live by the teachings of Torah. I suppose we could say the same thing today.

Jesus says it can be different. Jesus demands it to be different! “The kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 20, verses 1-16, “is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.” And already we who are disciples are stunned. This is a landowner unlike any other “household despot” that comes to mind when you hear about the 1^st century equivalent to an “overpaid CEO of a multinational corporation.”

Unlike his peers who would normally never associate with the day laborers at the lowest pay grade in his company, this guy actually takes the time to go hire them himself. He seeks them out early in the morning, while most of us are still sipping our morning coffee and reading the paper. A landowner wants to talk to a day laborer. A CEO wants to talk with a mail clerk. And this, in itself, really could be something like the reign of God.

But the story goes on: “When [the landowner] went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go to the vineyard.’”

And of course there is no explanation for why all the laborers did not receive work that morning or why the landowner did not just hire them all in the first place. But if the situation in Tucson of day laborers who gather at churches to wait for work is any indication, there simply were not have enough jobs for everyone. At least not according to secular economic principles. And many of the laborers, themselves, have a code of ethics to follow. “Maria has a sick child and can’t pay the doctor,” they might say. “She should go first in line.” Or “Joey hasn’t worked in a week. He really needs the money.” Watching their own chances fade as they day wears on, hoping against hope something else will come along. And it does, in the kingdom of heaven! God really does find a way to provide: through a landowner who has finally figured out how to talk to the people who work the land, through a landowner who realizes he really does have enough to share, through a household despot who converts to the basics of biblical economics: 1) God has given us abundance, he realizes; 2) We are required to share it, he decides; 3) Inequities must be reconciled over time. And now is always the time.

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the managers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong’ did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first and the first will be last.” And that is the final teaching of Basic Biblical Economics.

The traditional interpretation of this parable is, of course, that God is the landowner, and we are the laborers. That God wants to give us abundant life by God’s good grace, and we who are human want to believe we can earn it. And we can’t. Because it is a gift. Always and forever, a gift.

God wants everyone to have our daily bread. Period. And God knows this will not happen unless we all do our part—landowner and day laborer, alike—to trust God has truly given us enough, to trust we can share it well, to trust we can find a way to reconcile inequalities.

We at Madison Square have a small but significant way to practice the basic biblical economics of our Scripture lessons today. God has given us the stewardship of this small vineyard, here on the corner of Camden and Lexington, to cultivate for the glory of God to practice biblical economics. We are a community of faith that gathers from across the city to call this place home every Sunday of every week, that gathers around the table for our own manna from heaven every month. We are a community of children that seeks wholeness and hope in the Child Development Center every Monday through Friday. We are a community of recovering alcoholics who find this church to be the one place they can relinquish their lives to a higher power. We are a set of buildings to maintain—or tear down—and a mission of justice and peace to proclaim beyond our walls.

You probably were not expecting a Stewardship sermon this Sunday, but here it is: God has given us everything we need to provide well for each of these ministries. In fact, God has given us so much that we could probably double our provision for the ministry that is before us. We just have to decide we want to do it, following the lead of that converted household despot landowner who took the time to know the people, who figured out he had a lot more to offer than he thought he did. And we do, too.

Amen.