Year A
Matthew 20:1-16
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
The Invitation
You have heard the term “late-bloomers.” Late-bloomers are people who sometimes don’t know what they want to do or what their call from God is until later in life. I consider myself a late-bloomer. I was nearly 40 years old when I began to discern my call to ordained ministry and it was 10 years later as an ordained Deacon that I left to go to seminary in Austin. I was 54, when I was ordained a priest. I wish I had known my calling earlier in life but I’m not alone, history has known many famous late-bloomers. For example, Saint Augustine, one of the finest Christian minds and greatest saints who ever lived, he was a late-bloomer. Augustine wandered about for thirty years trying to find himself. He tried different religions, including paganism and the religion of the holy man Mani, known today as Manichaeism. He fathered a child out of wedlock. Eventually, through the prayers of his mother Monica, he was converted to Christianity.
Augustine’s response to his conversion is found in a famous line from his autobiography, The Confessions, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!” Augustine became a bishop and was a great scholar; he is a famous Church Father. Sometimes we don’t know what we want until later in life. Each of us has received a call or invitation from God which can manifest itself in many ways but usually begins as a restlessness that grips us. God often moves in us through a discontent with things as they are. We can allow ourselves to realize the Spirit moving in us or we can say no. And we see this discontent in all the texts today as they aim right for the target: life in God, the deepest yearning of the human heart.
We don’t know for sure that Jonah was a late-bloomer but he certainly is displeased with his divine commission, his call. He runs away from God, lives through an amazing experience in the belly of a fish, then rejoices and thanks God for God’s deliverance but eventually he decides to walk away angry because he knows God will deliver his enemies. “He asks God to take his life, for it is better for him to die than to live.” And God puts his anger in perspective, asking twice: “Is it right for you to be angry?” You are so concerned about the bush you did not work to raise.” “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city?” The story of Jonah shows us that God is merciful, slow to anger and ready to pour out God’s generous grace, God’s steadfast love, onto all to bring life.
Today’s familiar Gospel parable of the laborers in the vineyard speaks of God’s generous grace, steadfast love, and God’s invitation which may come early or late. In the parable, the owner of the vineyard approaches people, making an agreement with them. Some workers are sent into the vineyard in the morning; others about mid-day. Some workers are sent later in the afternoon and still others are not sent until toward the end of the day. The laborers work in the vineyard for various amounts of time. At the end of the day, the manager pays wages, beginning with the last and finishing with the first. They assume the owner will be fair. Yet, their pay is all the same. This causes some to grumble because the owner is generous to the late-bloomers giving them as much as the early workers agreed to work for.
Our natural reaction, influenced by our world, is like those in the parable; confusion or even anger. “It’s not fair,” we say, “equal work for equal pay.” Although this is normal for our day, it misses the point of the story. This parable is essentially about the generosity of God. It is not about an economic exchange, but rather a bestowing of grace and mercy to all, no matter what time they have put in or how deserving or underserving they may think they are. It’s not always easy to understand God’s generosity and call on our lives because God’s generosity often turns upside down our sense of how things should be. And Jesus wants us to know that this generous God’s invitation to join him in the vineyard is always available; it is never too late to say yes and accept the invitation.
It wasn’t too late for Paul who heard God’s call through Christ later in his life after persecuting many Christians. For him to hear God’s call on his life God had to literally blind him with a light from heaven while on the road to Damascus. In today’s text, he is writing to the Church in Philippi while in jail. His circumstances are dire. He is ready to die into Christ’s presence, but for the sake of the faithful Philippians he prays to live, to be present with them-to return to them, to rejoice with them-so that together, apostle and people, they may boast in Christ. What they will boast of are the gifts that God has given them-generosity, steadfastness in the face of persecution and loving unity with one another.
Paul and the people of Philippi, they could have given up and experienced defeat and death, or proclaim like Job that even in the deepest despair, our Savior lives and we shall experience God’s goodness and generosity in the midst of it all. There is no need to abandon hope; rather, we may embrace it and live. That is God’s invitation to us, just as it was to Paul. He chose life in Christ and he encouraged the Philippians to live a life worthy of the gospel. For the promise of the gospel means the privilege of believing in Christ, even in their suffering. Just as Jesus immersed himself in our humanity to the point of suffering capital punishment, his followers, receivers of the promise, are called by grace into the world to live that promise.
The promise is not that those who work harder and longer will get more pay. That’s the world’s promise. The promise of the gospel is freedom to be people of promise out there where the world really lives and dies. The promise is that Jesus is so rich he has enough struggle and suffering to share. The promise is that God’s grace, God’s generosity, transcends justice to include all no matter if they come early or late because God is a lousy bookkeeper. Which makes God’s generosity at times unbelievable, and scripture challenges us to accept God’s generous invitation, which takes many forms and ways. Today and every day the invitation of the Lord is given. Maybe the invitation is to renew our personal relationship with God through prayer, ministry, service and acts of generosity. Possibly God is calling us to enter the vineyard, whether it be the morning, afternoon, or twilight of our lives. It is never too late with God. Let us, as Paul suggests in his letter to the Philippians, “live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ” by accepting God’s invitation and returning to the Lord, the source of all that is good.