No Arm So Weak

Peter had a question, a legitimate question. Perhaps we have the same question. A rich young man had just asked Jesus what he had to do to obtain eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything he had, give his money to the poor, and join Jesus’ band of disciples. No surprise, the rich young man wasn’t ready to do that – who is? – and he went away disappointed. Then Peter piped up. “Say, what about us, Lord? We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will there be for us?” Jesus reassured Peter that all who had made sacrifices for him would be rewarded. Then, to drive home his point, Jesus told a provocative story.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...,” Jesus began. Then he went on to tell about a vineyard owner who practiced the most bizarre form of labor relations and economics. Certainly there were day laborers in ancient times hired on an as-needed basis. But hiring people throughout the work day, even as late as an hour before sunset? Paying the last to arrive first? Paying those who worked hard all day the same as those who worked only one hour? What was this vineyard owner thinking? Weren’t those hired first right to complain, “You have made them equal to us”? Treating those hired first this way wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense in Jesus’ or in Matthew’s time. And when we hear it, all we can do is shake our heads and wonder. Treating workers this way is totally contrary to anything we might do.

Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel didn’t preserve it, in order to instruct us in correct labor relations. Neither Jesus nor Matthew was sitting at the bargaining table advising either labor or management. Jesus told this story, and Matthew recounted it for his community, and by extension for us, in order to remind us of God’s true nature and to give us a vision of the new realm into which we are incorporated through Jesus.

Jesus told this story first of all to remind us of God’s unbelievable, immeasurable generosity. This was not a new theme in Scripture. The Exodus stories, the psalms, and the writings of many of the prophets also stress God’s generous love. Even the story of Jonah, the end of which we heard in our first lesson, emphasizes God’s gracious care and concern for all people, including the Ninevites who would eventually be enemies of Israel. In this provocative story, Jesus reminds his disciples and us that God is still a generous God, freely offering salvation to all who have made sacrifices for Jesus’ sake. We do not need to work to earn God’s free gift of salvation. Indeed there is nothing we can humanly do to earn God’s gift of true life. If we have been fortunate and have accomplished great things, or if we have been unfortunate and have stood idle most of the day, God still offers all of us salvation. Whether we have been an achiever or an idler, whether we were baptized as infants or adults, whether we have worked hard for the church all our lives, or whether we have come late to a life of devotion, God cares for us so much that God still generously offers us the gift of eternal life. And we all receive the same wage – the gift of a generous God, not a reward for hard work. Salvation is for all of us, no matter how long we have spent in the church. God’s gift is ours simply because we have shown up to claim it.

God’s gift of deeper life, Jesus also reminds us, is not just for us as individuals. God also invites us into a community in which all are loved. A few weeks back, our Gospel reading reminded us that the point of confronting someone who had hurt us was to preserve the bonds of community, to “retain that one,” if at all possible. Here we are reminded, or perhaps reassured, that the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm, is one where all are needed to bring in the harvest. The Kingdom of Heaven is a community where all, regardless of their skills and abilities, regardless of their time in the saddle, are assured of their worth in God’s eyes. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are needed, and where all know that they are valued and beloved by God.

Do our Christian communities look anything like the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this parish a community that appreciates God’s generous gift of new life to all of us? Our liturgy helps us to embody our understanding that all of us share God’s generous love. Following our confession of sin, all receive the same absolution. There are no gradations of absolution. Whether we are repenting of sin for the first time, or whether we have had a lifetime of daily confronting our shortcomings and failures, God offers us the same absolution. When we come up to the altar rail in the Eucharist, we all receive the same piece of bread, and we all drink from the same cup. Jesus offers his Body and Blood to us all, whether we were baptized today, or whether we have been lifelong disciples.

And when our liturgy is over, what then? What does our parish community look like then? Do those who have spent a lifetime in the church wonder about those who have just come in? Do those who have been longtime members look askance at newcomers? Or are all welcome? Are all valued? Are the contributions of all recognized? Make no mistake, no one is superfluous. All of us are valuable and beloved in God’s sight. And all of us are needed for the spread of God’s Realm.

During the summer of 2006 I did a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. I was assigned to a floor that concentrated on respiratory illness. There were always children with cystic fibrosis. There were also a number of severely disabled infants, as well as some severely disabled older children. The severely disabled children always raised questions for me, as I wondered what kind of life they would have, and how their families would care for them. In one or two cases, it seemed as if their families had abandoned them. In others, their families were totally devoted to them, even to older children who could not care for themselves at all. I observed all these families, and like Mary, I “pondered these things” in my heart all that summer. I even befriended the mother of an infant who was born blind and deaf. But I didn’t come to any conclusions.

And then I read an article by Amy Julia Becker entitled “An Hour with Penny.”1 Two medical students on pediatric rotation came to Becker’s house to learn about children with disabilities. They wondered what it would be like to have such a child. They spent their first hour on the floor playing with Becker’s three year old Down syndrome daughter. Later at dinner, they shared with Becker, her husband, and her mother, how encountering Penny had changed them. “They had been humbled by the opportunity to come to value another human being, in this case a human being with Down syndrome,” Becker tells us. A few days later, Becker read the story we just heard of the laborers in the vineyard. And she herself had a revelation. “I could envision Jesus at our kitchen table,” she says, “telling those students that for all their hard work and good grades and accolades, he didn’t consider them any more important than this little girl with an extra 21st chromosome, with glasses, a speech delay, and a hearing loss. I could envision Jesus explaining that they each had something of equal worth to contribute to God’s work in this world. The kingdom of heaven had come among us, for just a moment, when those students saw Penny as a gift.”

We too are invited into that kingdom. We too are invited to be thankful to God for all of God’s gracious and generous gifts to all of us, most especially the gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We too are invited to see each member of our own families, our parish family, of our surrounding communities, of our diocese, of the whole church, ultimately of all humanity, as valued and beloved. And we too, regardless of who we are, what we possess, how much education we have, how old we are, what the state of our health is, or how long we have been here, we all are valued and invited to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.

1. Amy Julia Becker, “An Hour with Penny,” Christian Century, January 12, 2010 (Vol. 127, 1)