September 22 , 2002 Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Proper 20 Commentary by Russell Pregeant

See also: [2008] [2005]

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

The Israelites grumble (NIV; RSV complain; KJV murmur) against Moses and Aaron in Exodus, and the all-day workers grumble against their employer in Matthew’s parable. The scenarios are very different, but each response is in its own way a resounding rejection of grace. The psalm, by contrast, articulates the opposite, positive, response to God’s mighty acts on Israel ’s behalf: praise, thanksgiving, celebration, and—in the concluding verses—obedience to God’s laws. The Philippians passage, likewise—especially when the preceding verses (18b-20) are considered—bespeaks the appropriate human response:  joyful surrender of everything to God, even life itself, in a commitment to mission.

Process theology, in accordance with the centrality of the enjoyment of experience in Whitehead’s philosophy, provides a conceptuality highly congenial to an emphasis upon the role of joy in Christian existence. It also amenable to an emphasis upon the theme of surrendering all to God: true fulfillment comes as we abandon our self-centeredness and learn to live on behalf of the whole in the knowledge that all that we do in this life is retained in the ongoing life of God. Those working from a process perspective might want to caution against the world-negation that seems to lurk in Paul’s declaration in Philippians 1:23: “my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” But they can still affirm the principle that lies behind it: our lives ultimately belong to God, and the meaning of our experiences and deeds in this world lies in what they contribute to God’s life.

The grumbling of the Israelites is particularly ironical, coming as it does in the wake of the deliverance from Egypt. Yet it also illustrates all too common human tendencies—not only the “What have you done for me lately?” syndrome but, more profoundly, fear and weariness in the face of the underside of freedom—the contingency and seeming unprotectedness that come with it. But this is a phenomenon to which process thought is well-attuned: understanding God’s protective action as persuasive rather than in terms of coercive supernatural intervention, it demands of its adherents a willingness to live with contingency and vulnerability. Of course God does eventually intervene with provisions in the Exodus story, but the quail and manna lend themselves to metaphorical valuation in the context of proclamation, especially when one similarly plays upon the metaphorical value of the context in which the grumbling takes place: the wilderness. As individuals and as communities, we know wilderness all too well; but in faith we also experience the “miraculous” appearance of meat and bread for sustenance within it.

Like the story of the burning bush, this Sunday’s reading from Exodus offers a good opportunity for process-oriented preachers to take note of the way in which the biblical tradition presents God as interacting with the world. Here again we have a strong declaration of God’s empathy: “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites.” ( 16:12 ) And it is interesting that God responds to the complaint without criticizing it. Even grumbling—a form of communication after all—merits divine attention!

The grumbling in the parable is even more blatantly a denial of grace than the complaining in Exodus, since it is actually a protest against generosity. The grumblers in the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard are usually understood as allegorical ciphers for the Pharisees, and there is much in the Matthean context to support this view—e.g., the specific depiction of the Pharisees as hard-hearted in 19:8 and the narrator’s notation in 21:45 that both the chief priests and the Pharisees recognized themselves in the wicked tenants of 21:33-44.

There is, however, another way to read the passage in its Matthean context. The preceding pericope, in which Jesus makes promises to those who have left everything to follow him, concludes in 19:30 with the statement, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Then comes the parable, which begins with the conjunction “for.” Clearly, then, 19:30 points forward to the parable, not backwards to vss. 27-29. It is the parable that is supposed to illustrate the reversal of first and last, and 20:16 reiterates the point. The “but,”  however, also connects 19:27 -30 and 20:1-16 by way of contrast. So the logical development is something like this: even though the disciples are to be praised for leaving all, within the community one must beware of claims to superiority, since “the last will be first.” The saying is admittedly an imperfect way of making the point, since the parable actually illustrates a kind of leveling rather than a reversal. (It floats freely in the gospel tradition, becoming attached to various contexts with varying degrees of appropriateness. And 20:16 was almost certainly not part of the story as Jesus told it.)  But the effect is in any case to warn against thinking of oneself as superior to others on the basis of the contribution one makes. And the grumblers stand for community members, not any outsiders such as Pharisees—an interpretation that brings this parable into conjunction with the story of the mother of James and John in 20:20 -27. Application to the contemporary community with its own particular grumblers is a time-honored homiletically move anyway, but this interpretation provides a way of making it without lambasting some ancient Jews along the way.

The traditional interpretation understands the issue at stake as “works righteousness” vs. grace, which brings the passage close to a strongly Protestant reading of Paul that has to some extent itself been challenged by recent scholarship (since many scholars no longer regard the doctrine of justification as the all-determinative center of Paul’s theology). But read against the background of inner-church scrambling for position, the parable does not really touch on the issue of salvation. The grumbling workers are not cast into outer darkness like the improperly clad guest in 22:11 -14—only upbraided for their ungenerous spirits. They certainly reject grace, but we need not translate that rejection into a project self-salvation or dub it “legalism.”

If we pay attention only to the meaning that derives specifically from the Matthean context, however, some of the power it likely had for Jesus’ original hearers may be muted. On this latter level also, the parable has generally been understood as an attack on the Pharisees. But this is not necessarily the case. The extent to which Jesus was actually in conflict with the Pharisees is a matter of dispute, and it is unclear how much of the gospel accounts on this matter are actually reflections of the disputes between the post-resurrection church and the leadership of the Jewish community that was its contemporary.

In any case, the parable attacks an attitude that is found not simply in one religious group in the ancient world but in human society generally. And that attitude is precisely a grudging regard of the neighbor that sees the other always as a competitor rather than a compatriot. (Again, the issue is not really an attempt at self-salvation). Luise Schottroff thus sees two foci in the story—God’s goodness on the one hand and human solidarity on the other. The fatal flaw in the all-day workers is that they start with something good—a basic sense of fairness—and push it in the wrong direction, using it in an attempt to set themselves above their fellow-workers. They break solidarity with them. And the unintended irony in their statement of complaint is devastating. They object to the employer treating them equally, but this equal treatment—this inclusion of all without distinction—is precisely the metaphorical nub of the parable: thus it is with the Rule of God, and therein lies its radical grace.

Typical of the parables of Jesus, the story is skillfully crafted and poignant. The hearer is actually seduced into siding with the grumbling workers, since the employer’s action does in fact seem unjust on the surface. And it is one of the great challenges to the preacher to re-create the naiveté of the original hearers, getting the congregation somehow to lay aside their prior knowledge that the complainers are the bad guys. For of course the parable performs its function fully only when the hearers are led to see how they themselves manifest the ungenerous spirit that begrudges others the grace God offers them.

It is always a judgment call whether to treat a parable from the perspective of its gospel context or to place it in the setting of the historical Jesus. In my opinion, either is valid, but the preacher should choose one or the other and not confuse the two. The congregation need not always be informed of the issue, but the preacher should be aware of it. But whichever context one chooses, the “material” dimension of the parable should not in my opinion be overlooked. Particularly if read in its Matthean context, it does invite abstraction from the specifically economic theme and foster emphasis upon a broad attitude that can manifest itself in many ways. Nevertheless, the fact remains that an economic theme was chosen as the operative metaphor. Of course the story is not a literal prescription for management policy.  But is difficult to imagine that either Jesus or his original hearers would have seen the economic reference as devoid of any literal weight at all, given the extreme class differences prevalent in the ancient world and the blatant economic oppression that the vast majority in Jewish Palestine suffered under the brutal rule of Rome.

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