Proper 20 (A) + Unstopped ears + 9.21.14
M. Campbell-Langdell
All Saints, Oxnard
(Exodus 16:2-15; Ps.
105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16)
`Friend, I am doing you no
wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to
you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not
allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because
I am generous?'
Here God, or the vineyard
owner, reminds me of Maya Angelou in her poem “Still I Rise.” A part of it goes
like this:
“Does my sassiness upset?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got
oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing
high,
Still I’ll rise.”[1]
This infectious confidence,
this understanding of the world in a different way, speaks in Angelou’s poem of
the reclaiming of her identity as an African-American woman. But it could also
speak to us of God’s sassy generosity which doesn’t follow our rules. And it
may also speak to us of how we as Christians are to be confident in a way that
makes no sense in our culture unless you have untold wealth.
Yes, we are called to walk
like we have oil wells pumping in our living rooms, but not because we are
called to the haughty self-sufficiency of wealth as much as to the complete
reliance of everything in our lives on God. When we lose the anxieties that our
prayer today talks about in order to trust in God’s provision, we gain
confidence and new life. Just as the Israelites did with the manna all those
years ago, and just as the laborers came to do with the vineyard owner, knowing
that they would receive their daily wage.
I have personal experience
with this. Any of us who is in his or her early twenties or has been at some
point remembers that it is a time of anxiety. You look back on that time as a
time when life had all this opportunity and you were still in such good shape,
but if you are honest with yourself, most of us got a bit stressed at one point
or other in his or her early twenties, and if you are there now, we feel you!
I remember a particular time
when I was in college. I had a wonderful, womb-like experience of college in
many ways wherein whilst I was away from my relatives and childhood friends, I
still had all my needs mostly provided there at school. Food was plentiful and
if not in unlimited supply, at least in enough bounty that I knew I would not
starve. I had college housing and enough funds to supply myself as needed with
clean clothing and books. Then I spent a summer living in northern New Jersey
and working as a canvasser for Greenpeace. I shared an apartment with a friend,
my first time paying rent, and I was working on commission and commuting into
the city every day to the tune of an hour and a half each way of bus and subway
travel. It was an exhilarating, exhausting way of life. I had canvassed before
door to door but this was different somehow than standing on street corners
with tired legs for hours and approaching every person that walked past, in New
York City no less. I had some fabulous conversations but they were always laden
with a twinge of anxiety that I might not “get the sale.” Because although I
began the job with the idealistic expectation that I would help save the planet,
I was really selling Greenpeace memberships. And selling something largely
intangible like that is hard. If I signed up a certain number of people as
monthly givers a day I was good, but if I failed to meet my quota I would be
paid barely enough to cover the day’s transportation, forget about rent or
food.
So I relate a bit to these
guys standing around in the city square. They are standing there diligently,
but if they are not picked, they will not take home the daily wage. This daily
wage was basically enough to feed your family for the day, the same thing I was
going for, but in my case it was rent and feeding myself. There is an anxiety
to being left in the square, trying your best and not getting selected. Many of
our young people experience this in job searches. And it can feel like
everything is hanging on you and your actions.
Cue the Israelites in the
desert. They ask God why God didn’t just leave them to die in Egypt? Sure they
were slaves (somehow that part is sidelined with the memory of fleshpots). The
memory of a really good steak stew, right, and they forget everything else? Who
knows how often they really ate meat? Now they will be eating quail every night
and this funny manna bread every morning, but they have to trust God. They must
let go of their anxieties that there will not be enough. Which is hard to do
when you are in a desert.
Which is hard to do when you
are in the town square, in the heat of the day, waiting and waiting and waiting
to be called on. Which is hard to do when you are barely out of your teens,
sweating on a street corner in New York City, asking each person who goes by if
he or she cares about the environment. And all so you can earn your daily
bread. It’s anxiety-producing.
So what did I do with all
those nerves? I went to church, or I tried to. Unlike pretty much any other
place where I’ve lived, I did not have easy access to an Episcopal Church, so I
walked to the couple of churches near me. On Sunday mornings my longtime
God-habit pulled on me and I explored the neighborhood churches in my New
Jersey town. I tried the Roman Catholic Church a short walk away and was
uninspired by the sermons and unable to take communion. I tried the Methodist Church practically
across the street and communion was different and I felt awkward when I was
literally the eighth person to show up and I didn’t know anybody and they
didn’t know what to do with me.
So I found religion in some
devotionals my mother had given me. In the heat of the day, in my anxiety, I
lifted up books that cooled my brow and reminded me that God was in charge of
all of this. God was in charge of my life, not me. Just like the Israelites, I
learned that I needed to trust in God’s daily provision, be it of manna and
quail or peanut butter sandwiches and homemade vegetarian dishes influenced by
the Middle Eastern market across the street. Yes, I still had to get up every
day and go to work, just like the Israelites must gather and just like the
laborers must wait in the square and then be willing to work. But God would
provide. And, in the bargain, there would be rest. The Israelites are told that
they must pick up double on the day before the Sabbath, because as “God’s
food-from-the-sky restaurant will be closed on Sunday” as theologian Amy
Erickson puts it.[2]
And this is a relief, because
we are humans, not machines. Erickson says of the Israelites that “even in
crisis, with chaos all around, Sabbath practice is essential to their lives and
their emerging identities.”[3]
This is true for us, too. We have lives that can tend toward chaos and anxiety,
but God does provide and God reminds us that we have a reason to be confident.
Confident enough to trust that we will have our daily bread. Confident enough
to rest in our Sabbath time and know that there will be time enough for work
another day. Confident enough to listen to what God has given us to do and to
live into the fullness of God’s vision for each of our lives.
It was not long after I went
through this period of anxiety and then reliance on God that I began to
actively start discerning a call to the ministry. I don’t think it was an
accident that I was able to hear God’s call on my life after I relinquished my
anxieties about my security of food and lodging. Doing what I must and placing
the rest in God’s hands opened up my ears.
We, like the Israelites, only live into our fullness too when we listen to God and are open to God’s provision. And who knows what those unstopped ears might hear?
We, like the Israelites, only live into our fullness too when we listen to God and are open to God’s provision. And who knows what those unstopped ears might hear?
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