"Jesus' Business Plan" - Pentecost 16A

 

The Eve of the Feast of Saint Matthew

Saint Matthew 9:9-13

Saint Matthew 20:1–16

One of the times this gospel was the subject of a Sunday at my former parish a very successful general contractor said while shaking my hand, “I don’t believe it! If I would have run my business like that nobody would have shown up on time.”  He was giving his pastor “the business” as some of you delight in doing sometimes after church but we both knew he was right.

Jesus’ business plan left a little to be desired not that it hasn’t been tried. 

In 2015 Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments who had been raised in a Christian home, announced that he was slashing his multi-million dollar salary to raise the base rate for all the workers at his company to $70,000 per year. Price said in an Inc. Magazine interview that he saw “establishing a $70,000 minimum wage is a moral imperative, not a business strategy.”

He was immediately criticized.

Then the inevitable backlash came. Price has been ... trashed by [a] multimillionaire radio personality who said, "I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work, because it's gonna fail". A Times story in July was so laden with quotes from disgruntled customers and staff that Price's worried friends called to say he could always come and stay with them if things don't work out. Others accused Price of orchestrating a clever publicity stunt. "If it was," he replies, "I'm a genius." Shortly after Price announced his minimum pay plan, his brother Lucas sued him.1

Gravity Payments is a credit card processing firm that caters to to the small business economy with much of its services being delivered to the hospitality industry – restaurants, bars, and hotels.  By May of this year that part of the business was down 65 percent with total revenue down 55 percent.

So Price went to the 200 employees of the Seattle-based company looking for ideas. The solution to stemming Gravity’s hefty losses was voluntary pay cuts, with employees choosing how much they could sacrifice individually. [While] as many as a dozen people opted to take no pay at all.  Price said. “Many of our employees stepped up, and to me it’s humbling.”

“While this is the craziest and most horrible crisis maybe of our lifetime, it’s also a really, really big opportunity to make a difference if we can stick to our values,” Price said. “Our whole thing is sticking up for people who are being squeezed, sticking up for underdogs,” Price said.2

 That is exactly what the landowner who went out early one morning looking for workers in his vineyard did.  

While I am not sure what happens here in the suburbs but on any given morning in Chicago one can go the parking lot of any big-box home centre and see countless labourers waiting around in the parking lot.  They are day labourers, often immigrants, and they are looking for work.  

If you hang around long enough you will see other guys with large pick-up trucks or multi-passenger vans pull up.  They are contractors looking for help.

Unfortunately for the landowner in Jesus’ parable when he gets back to his vineyard he discovers that he has more work than he has workers. So back he goes a little later in the morning, then again at noon, at 3 o’clock, and finally as the sun was setting and he really begins to feel the crunch he goes back again around 5 o’clock hoping that someone will be left.  

Some labourers are still waiting   and so he asks them a question that has been grossly mistranslated.  The Greek word he uses is argos which doesn’t mean “idle” but only “not working.”

 “‘Why haven’t you been working today?’ [he asks.] “‘Because no one hired us,’ they replied.  “‘Then go on out and join the others in my fields,’ he told them.”3

The hour was growing late for the vintner but it must have seemed  like a far later hour for those workers “still standing there, tools around their waist, faces looking long and realizing they’ll be going home to their kids without any food that night.”4

Their being hired was literally a godsend.

As you know, things begin to go south real fast when all the workers line up at the payroll window.  I find it interesting that it is the manager and not the owner who calls the workers together and gives them their pay envelopes.  

Really, this is the owners fault!  If he had paid the first ones first and the last ones last they all would have gone home happy and no one would have been the wiser.  Instead he pays the last first and this causes the others to start thinking about overtime, double-time and triple-triple time until they look at their pay-stubs and realize that everybody received the same amount.

“And when they received it, [those hired earlier] 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.’”5

They feel ripped off and begin to turn on each other making a distinction between “us” and “them” and that “we” are better than “they.” “We” deserve more than “they.”  They are also giving the vineyard owner the stink-eye for the literal translation is “Is you eye evil because I am good?”6

We know what that is!  It’s the side-ways glance that says with a look, “I’m being cheated.”  Or, it may even be the death-stare that glares at another person never and leaves any doubt that the person feels like they are being ripped off.

The landowners response in the J.B. Phillips paraphrase is masterful.  He says.  “‘My friend, I’m not being unjust to you. It is my wish to give the latecomers as much as I give you. May I not do what I like with what belongs to me? Must you be jealous because I am generous?’”7

What Jesus is talking about here is the generosity of God.  This is not a business plan unless we see the business as the kingdom of heaven where grace is always the coin of the realm.

That is why I paired today’s gospel with the one for tomorrow which is the feast day of Saint Matthew.  

Before he was called Matthew was a tax collectors and the charge most often leveled again Jesus was, “he eats with sinners and tax-collectors.”  It was “the insiders” versus “the outsiders”.  It was the “us” versus “them”.  

Jesus is telling us that there is no first or last in the Kingdom of God. There are no “insiders” nor “outsiders.” God has more than enough grace, more than enough love, for everybody.  You’re neighbour doesn’t have more or less of God’s love than you have and you don’t have more or less of God’s love than your neighbour.

And for me that is great news because as Greg Delosch reminded us on this morning’s Day1 program:

This really isn't about you or me or what time we show up to work. This is really about day after day the goodness of God keeps showing up - in the morning, in the evening - all day long - to lepers, to prostitutes, to prodigal children, to Samaritans, to thieves on the cross, to outsiders - to you and me too. It is not about merited work, but generous inclusion.

[When] God shows up and settles up, and it is not always what we expect but it is more than we understand.8

 There are no grace cuts in the kingdom of God like there are pay cuts in the world.  God’s business plan is always on the side of outsider and the person feeling squeezed. We all get the same amount and it is always there in good times in bad, in prosperity and adversity, in crises or calm, God’s grace and love sustains.  

In Jesus’ business plan there is enough grace and love for today and there will be grace and love enough for tomorrow.  

So, it turns out that Jesus’ business plan is a good one after all. Don’t you think?

____________

1. Paul Keegan, “Here's What Really Happened at ThatCompany That Set a $70,000 Minimum Wage,” Inc.com (Inc., October 21, 2015), https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html.

2. Kurt Schlosser, “Gravity Payments Employees Volunteer to Take Pay Cut as Revenue Drops 50% during COVID-19 Crisis,” GeekWire, March 31, 2020, https://www.geekwire.com/2020/gravity-payments-employees-volunteer-take-pay-cut-company-sees-revenue-dive-50-crisis/.

3. Saint Matthew 20:6-7. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971]

4. Philip Martin, “Not My Favorite Parable,” Sermonforeverysunday.com (A Sermon for Every Sunday, September 15, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Phillip-Martin-Laborers-in-the-Vineyard.pdf.

5. St. Matthew 20:11–12. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

6. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 20.1-16 Proper 20 - Year A,” Crossmarks.com, accessed September 19, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt20x1.htm.

7. St. Matthew 20:12-15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).

8. St. Matthew 20:12-15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English: a Translation (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1960).