I am a fairly recent customer of the American Express Blue credit card. This famous credit card company, know for its prestigious membership, is a symbol of American entrepreneurship. And now it has given middle class folks like me the opportunity to carry such a reputable credit card. Now I must admit my real reason for applying for the card was its promotional program of O% interest for 12 months on balance transfers. I saw this as an opportunity to pay off my credit cards with higher interest rates. It wasn’t necessarily about the reputation of having an American Express card, but about saving money in interest rate payments. However, as I read the literature that came with my flashy new card, I discovered an interesting statement. The material read: “As an American Express Card member, you automatically go to the Front of the Line for tickets to some of the most popular events in town. As an American Express Card member, you can take advantage of this exclusive service to purchase the best seats in the house to such shows as Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, The Jonas Brothers, Lord of the Dance and any Cincinnati Reds home game. You deserve the best! You deserve to go to the Front of the Line!” - American Express, Front of the Line.
For the first time I now understood first hand the appeal of an American Express card. As a new customer I really did have privileges not afforded to others. In an odd way, I felt like one of the rich people. In fact, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “The rich are different from you and me.” He was right about that, at least in our country. In 2007 a change in U.S. laws increased the value of assets that a beneficiary may exclude from federal estate taxes - though many states have their own estate taxes. In this change of laws, business owners will be able to pass on qualifying businesses to their heirs. It affects less then one percent of U.S. taxpayers.
“The rich are different from you and me” – no matter where you happen to live. Different from police officers and teachers and people who shop for groceries and buy cars and medicine; because all those people have to wait in line for pay raises and tax cuts that actually mean something. The rich get to go to the front of the line.So how you interpret the prickly little parable in this week’s gospel depends on your perspective. Early one morning, says Jesus, a landowner heads down to the marketplace and stands there in the spot where people looking for steady work hang out. He hires a handful of them to work on his land and agrees to pay them what amounts to a peasant’s day wage. They all agree and go to work; but, by about nine o’clock that morning, it is clear to the man that he needs more workers. So he heads back to the market and hires some more. At noon he does the same thing. At three in the afternoon he does it again. He brings back more workers with him each time and promises to pay them all ‘. . . whatever is right’. And then, at five in the afternoon, with only a few hours daylight left, the man realizes that he still needs more workers. So he goes back to the same spot, finds some other people standing around doing nothing and says, “Haven’t you got anything better to do? Come on back with me. I’ve got work for you to do.”
Then, quitting time rolls around and everybody lines up to collect their day’s pay. And this, as they say, is where things get interesting. The owner calls his field manager to settle things up and says, “Give everybody 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.
Yes, you heard that right. When the last to be hired step forward, the manager presses a whole denarius into each of their hands. So…how much is a denarius. Remember last week, when we talked about denarii? Well, classical historians regularly say that in the early Roman Empire the daily wage for a laborer was one denarius. So by today’s standards just consider how much you make in a day, and consider making that for working just one hour. Well, as you can imagine, these workers were flabbergasted. I mean, they had only been there a few short hours. Barely worked up a sweat. But they’re paid a whole day’s pay! They probably gasped so loud that others in line started to strain to see what was going on. This landowner had turned out to be a very generous man indeed!Now, just try to imagine what the others in line must have been thinking at that point. Scratching their heads and starting to do the math, they must have figured, “Well, if the old coot is going to pay them a whole day’s pay just for cleaning up after the rest of us, imagine what he’s going to pay us!?” You can almost see them rubbing their hands together in gleeful anticipation. But imagine, if you can, the looks on their faces when they all hold out their hands and discover that they had only received the usual daily wage.
One denarius as well. One denarius for everybody whether you came at dawn and slaved all day or showed up at five just in time to punch the clock. Everybody received the same pay - one denarius. And, of course, when those who had been waiting at the front of the line 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.’ Then, when the householder reminds them that he has kept his part of the bargain, that he has paid them exactly what they had bargained for and what business is it of theirs what he has paid the others - after all, it was his money, wasn’t it? – you can imagine their reaction. “You don’t begrudge my generosity, do you?” the owner said to them.
“Oh, no, of course we don’t begrudge what you do with your money!!” Just tell us this: whatever happened to fair? Whatever happened to equal pay for equal work? Whatever happened to rewarding most those who deserve it most? I mean, can you blame them? They were there first! What’s wrong with rewarding those who are there first, who make it to the front of the line!? You can bet your bippy they begrudged what the man did!
Now I am sure that you don’t like this parable any more than I do, do you? It’s not fair, is it? We hear stories like it all the time. The people who work hard all their lives and who are passed over for the promotion while some newcomer gets the corner office and the big, new salary. The family members who put out more than anybody else but never get recognized for their efforts while somebody no one even knows gets mentioned in the will. The parents who do everything they can for their kids and barely have enough to live on in retirement while their children live in the lap of luxury. Life isn’t fair a lot of them time and there’s not much we can do about it. So it rubs just a little raw to hear Jesus say that with God things are no different. You’d think God would be able to see who deserves what! You’d think that if anybody could, God could see who was at the front of the line!
It’s interesting when you stop to consider why we find this parable so disturbing. Apparently, we tend to hear it from the perspective of those who locate ourselves at the front of the line. We are the ones who figure we should have gotten into the show first. We are the ones who feel like we’ve gotten the short end of the stick. We are the ones who feel like we’ve been gypped. We are the ones who got up early, worked hard all day, stayed late. Somehow, somebody messed up and started at the wrong end of the line; and if it happens again, well, maybe we just won’t bother showing up for work at all!Well, I should have warned you about this week’s parable. It’s not only prickly. It’s tricky. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The rich are different from you and me,” but it depends on your perspective, doesn’t it? It depends on how much you think you deserve and how much you think others don’t. But, like it or not, that is where God starts. For reasons we may never know unless we know what it feels like to stand at the end of the line – with nothing to brag about, nothing to bargain with, nothing to prove what we deserve. Even there at the end of the line, it’s darned nigh impossible to understand a love that seems to be so indiscriminate, so embracing, a love that has nothing to do with who we are, a love that has everything to do with who God is.
Well, God’s love is like the law of gravity…no matter whether you deserve it or not, it’s there for you. And if you can really get your bowling ball of a head around that…you’ll score a strike every time in the game we call life! (From Barry J. Robinson’s sermon “The End of the Line” for September 18, 2005 – www.fernstone.org)
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