September 21, 2008
(Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 20)

Our Daily Bread

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Exodus 16:2-15  •  Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45  •  Philippians 1:21-30  •  Matthew 20:1-16
(From The Lectionary Page)

The Rev. Barbara Beam, a priest of our diocese, writes about a woman recalling her childhood, growing up as the oldest of four children. "My mother was always very fair, she didn't play favorites. We always knew that we could count on her to be fair. But my father -- well, that was another story. The truth is, I grew up secure in the knowledge that I was 'Daddy's favorite.' I was the oldest, after all, and the only girl until my sister came along when I was thirteen. I figured it wasn't hurting anybody; my father loved all his children, and probably they never even knew that I was his favorite. But I knew -- and that was enough for me.

"But then one day, after I was grown and married and a mother myself, I fell into conversation with my brothers and sister, and I was surprised and a little bemused to learn that each of them had also grown up with that same unspoken conviction. Each of us had always felt sure that he or she was 'Daddy's favorite.’” (Sermons That Work, Proper 20, 2002.)

The other side of that coin is feeling that one is not valued as much as another. Such feelings are created in families, in the classroom, in the workplace, in athletics and the arts and wherever competition takes place, and in a host of other settings. When a person senses that she or he is not loved, valued, or appreciated, it can lead to the claim: “It’s not fair.” Some times we speak those actual words, or think that thought, or act out that belief in some fashion. It is true for individuals and groups alike.

Contrast that sense of feeling treated unfairly with the experiences we’ve all had of being treated in generous fashion. Those are blessed times! Occasions that cannot be adequately described. In those times, too, it might be true to say that we are being treated unfairly, but in a beneficial, wonderful way. We are being given more than we deserve.

As a grade school student, I delivered newspapers after school, and every two weeks I had to collect the fees for subscriptions. My route included some businesses around our town square. Mr. Larry of Larry’s Salon always paid his bill and gave me an extra quarter. The first time he did so I handed it back saying he had over-paid me. He smiled and said, “Use it to buy a candy bar, son.” What a treat! A few doors down at the Hi Hat Café I bought a candy bar. I was on top of the world! Some extra. Something unexpected. And he was regularly generous. But every so often, Mr. Larry’s assistant was at the desk on collection day and paid the subscription, and no quarter was placed in my hand. And many of those times, I felt short-changed, I guess because I had come to expect that I would get more than was due me. What happened was that my sense of gratitude disappeared.

If our appreciation for each day of life, if gratitude for whatever we have disappears, we are in need of being challenged. For me, today’s Gospel does precisely that. And so does a portion of the first reading from Exodus, which we might call the manna experience, God’s generous and daily bread from heaven.

Of today’s Gospel the Rev’d Kirk Kubicek writes: The scene in Matthew is becoming more and more familiar. People are waiting for work, waiting to be hired, waiting to earn a day’s wage – a denarius - which in those days was just enough to feed a small family.

Working for a full day’s wage was literally about daily bread, about providing for basic needs for just one day. Just like manna in the Exodus narrative, the Israelites were to gather just one day’s worth. We hear these references about one day of bread being mindful of the prayer we shall say just before receiving Eucharist: Give us this day our daily bread.

In this parable, to be hired late in the day was still devastating. It meant you would get far less than a day’s wages, meaning the entire family was affected. Not to mention what it did to a worker’s sense of self-worth to be overlooked or passed by as the hiring is done. To not be chosen to work created hardship and anxiety.

In this parable Jesus points to an example of extraordinary generosity that meets so many needs, both physical and spiritual. Everyone gets a day’s wage. Everyone goes home and feeds his or her family. Just as it was with manna in the wilderness, everyone got enough, no one got too much, nothing was left over. Jesus told his disciples when you pray include this petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Sermons that Work, Proper 20, 2008)

The parable begins: The kingdom of heaven is like . . .

The religious leaders were scandalized that Jesus told a story claiming that God treats all people the same. Faithful Jews deserved more than unfaithful Jews. Gentiles deserved less, and particular folks like Samaritans deserved eternal punishment.

So in some form or other the religious leaders, even as Jesus taught that God’s love is the same for all, cried out, “It isn’t fair! We were here first. We deserve more because we’ve done more.”

In response, Jesus does not simply say, “Tough. Life isn’t fair.” Instead, he fulfills his own teaching, showing that God loves all and tries to help them, and us, understand what fairness and justice in the kingdom of God is like.

What is just and what is fair are established by God, and not by our standards of merit or qualifications for staking a claim. What is being discussed is God’s kingdom – life lived under the reign of God, a God who is generous to a fault, a God whose generosity at times blesses us, at other times offends and judges us, a divine generosity that never ceases to baffle us. God will be God.

Parables beg for us to insert ourselves into them. Consider this: it is mid-afternoon, and you are still waiting to be hired for work, still waiting for a chance to bring something home to the family table. The stress and anxiety is eating at you. Hope of a meal for the family dries up in the afternoon sun, and is fading completely away as the sun begins its descent.

And just as hopelessness has a stranglehold on your soul, the landowner walks by and sends you to the vineyard, saying, “Go. Like I’ve told the others I’ve hired throughout the day, I’ll pay you whatever right.” At least it will be something - you’ll work one hour. But an hour’s fair wages will not feed your family.

At the end of the day, you stand in line with all the other workers. And you are handed full pay, a denarius. You realize it is a mistake, and though you are tempted to pocket it and run, you return it to your boss and say you worked just an hour. But the landowner says it is yours and moves on.

You are overwhelmed with gratitude, joy, and bless God and the landowner for your fortune. Like a paperboy getting a quarter tip for a candy bar, your burden is lightened for a time. The reality of life has not changed dramatically; you still live day to day. But this night there will be one more meal before tomorrow comes. Nothing more is promised. But tonight there will be enough. Like manna in the wilderness. Give us this day our daily bread.

The lesson of gratitude could itself be the parable’s meaning. But the conclusion of the parable does not focus on the gratitude of the last-to-be-hired of the workers. No mention at all. The focus is on the exchange between the landowner and those hired first who worked for the full day.

This parable entices us to see things from the viewpoint of those who worked the full day, rather than from the viewpoint of those hired at the last minute. And so we run the risk of missing a great truth about God that Jesus wishes us to live with. The parable’s lesson should cause us to get down on our knees and give most humble and hearty thanks for what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “the arduous compassion” of God.

We have a God whose desire for goodness and mercy extends to us, even when we are confused, skeptical, half hearted, or unfathomably wicked. God is Love. God’s faithfulness far outweighs any and every disobedience we can think up, God’s desire for goodness subverts any and every evil we conspire to do, and God’s economy of justice means so much more than we—especially in anxious times—can possibly imagine. (The Rev. Angela V. Askew, Sermons That Work)

Truth is, like the first born daughter who always knew she was her father’s favorite, and who later learned that her sister and brothers each felt that they were their father’s favorite: in the kingdom of God, we are each and all favored, we are all loved completely by our heavenly Father. We earn none of God’s love. It is all freely given.

And no matter what we face each day, and no matter how far we stray, nor how deeply we fail to live as we should, each and every day we get a denarius. Not a literal coin, but a full day’s worth of manna: the bread of heaven which is grace, and love, and life, and one more hour to work in the vineyard. Our daily bread - it is enough.

Let us never lose our sense of gratitude for it.