September 21, 2014 The Parabolic Problem

Exodus 16:1-15 Matthew 20: 1-16 This morning, the children found the Chancel covered in sparkling manna (Chocolate Kisses) to illustrate the gathering of manna. Another time, as a children's moment, I told the children we had a gift for them. I then gave each child a Kennedy Half-dollar; until the last two, and as I had $20 worth of half dollar pieces left, I gave these two, twenty half-dollars each. We then asked the children how they felt about getting the half-dollars, and they were thankful, but when we asked about those who received more, they said “It's not fair!” That is the problem of this morning's parable. It is not fair. Garrison Keilor described the problem with preaching this parable is that you get the idea that you only need show up for the last 5 minutes of the sermon to get the same value as coming early. We can each anticipate the problem with this parable is the following day or the following season, when the owner goes to the marketplace to hire laborers. Will they hire on for a full day, or only for the last hour, expecting to be paid for the full day? Titling this as “The Parabolic Problem,” I am reminded that years ago, I bought a stained glass window for a church, but the Church had round walls. A Carpenter in the congregation said “Not a problem.” and he proceeded to make a Parabola, a flat plane that intersects a curved wall as a shadow box frame. The wood touched at every point, so light did not escape around the edges, and the flat window matched as it intersected the curved wall. There are other problems too. A parable is intended to be a metaphor, a comparison as a figure of speech for shock value, to catch us off guard and make a point. “All the world's a Stage and all the men and women merely players, each with their entrances and exits and roles to play.” But this is not the first time any of us have heard this parable. We have heard the parables over and over enough that rather than metaphors they have become similes, where instead of making a point, we have been given the meaning of every player and every comment that is made. We know, or at least we think we know what is fair and what is not, what Manna is, and what this parable is about. Our sense of reality operates according to several different natural laws, We know that gravity causes things to fall...We know the Laws of Motion and that every action has an equal and opposite reaction... The Enlightenment was a Scientific Experiment to catalog and know all the Laws of of the Universe. The people of the Exodus had for 400 years been slaves of Egypt. They knew, that as hard as life was, as unfair, as much as they were slaves who could be beaten and whipped, bought and sold, raped and bred, who were of less value than a horse or cow, still they had a place to sleep and bread or stew to eat. It may be rancid, it may be hard, but you were given food and rest and security that tomorrow would be much like today. The plagues had come upon Egypt, the people had listened to Moses and Aaron, had sacrificed a lamb rubbing the blood on their doorposts, and despite the devastation of the Empire of Egypt, that the firstborn of every family died, their own children were spared. The people were allowed to leave, were chased by the Egyptian Chariots, yet as they waded out chest deep into the water, suddenly the wind blew and the water receded and they walked across on dry land. This was like some Bizzaro-world where the Natural Laws of Reality were suspended, like Alice through the Looking Glass, you were never certain whether something was what it appeared. They came upon a Salt-lake too polluted to drink and Moses threw a Tree into the water, and suddenly it became pure sweet refreshment. SEVEN days have gone by without food and there are hundreds of thousands of men, along with their wives and children. Rationally we have to wonder how are all these people going to be fed. In the good old days in Egypt, we had food every night, here we do not know from day to day what is going to happen. In the morning, as far as the eye could see, there was something sparkling on the ground. Moses called it Manna. Historians believe that there is a variety of lice, which in the wilderness eat the Tamarind seed and the lice secrete a sweet substance that dries to the consistency of flour. The point is not what Manna was, it probably was Sweet lice poop, but it was a new reality, a substance in great quantity, high in protein and basic nutrients. But the real point of Manna, was that it conditioned the people day after day after day, week after week for forty years to a different reality. Instead of having stew or bread handed to you by your owners, instead of having left-overs added to the pot day after day Every person had to trust that as little as there is, there would be enough supplied by God for tomorrow How much, an “omer” per person, about a mouth-full, but it was enough. If they gathered too much, it rotted and was infested with worms. If they did not gather enough, still it would be enough. And weekly, every six days, they were able to gather enough for today and tomorrow, so that for one day each week you did not have to worry, for one day every week you could trust there would be enough and think about other things. I am a simple man, while I enjoy cooking and have a younger brother who is a chef, one of our favorite foods growing up was meatloaf. I can recall the first time trying to share this delicacy with our children. They looked at the substance on the plate and said “What is it?” And when it was explained they refused to eat. So after a while, I took their plates to the kitchen, put the meatloaf on a hamburger bun covering it with catchup, and they devoured it as they best burger they had ever eaten! Manna, is not about what it was, but rather the parable of trusting God, and weekly taking time to trust and dream. The Parable of Paying the Laborers is about Grace, and the Generosity of God. Every laborer is paid enough to meet their daily needs. Those first hired were paid exactly what they had agreed to work for, but those last hired were not paid for the hours they worked, they received grace. AND here, the Parable takes on a twist because the real problem with this parable is that it is about “Coveting” wanting what others have, or not wanting them to have what we receive. The ending which states “Do you look envious because of my generosity?” literally translates “Are you giving me the Evil Eye?” In the Ancient World, they understood that the way others look at you, the way we treat each other, our giving each other the Evil Eye, can destroy another person. Many carried good luck charms so as to ward off evil. One of the simplest methods of protecting against the Evil Eye was to demonstrate an act of charity and act of generosity, which may or may not benefit the one who was going to give the Evil Eye, but would help others in the community to see the donor was going out of their way to do nothing wrong. We live in a world of change. Like the people of the Exodus, our good old days really were not that grand, none of us in those days could have imagined the freedoms and opportunities afforded to us all. The cartoons, The Flitstones and Jetsons, envisioned a future time, with dishwashers and microwave ovens, and vitamin pills, where we got carple tunnel from repetitive finger motion, and blurry eyes from computer screens. But we knew that if we worked hard and kept your nose clean, there would come a day of retirement, when you had the mortgage paid, grandchildren and friends. But then again most of us died before age 70 and many other parts of the world were Dictatorships. Over the last many years, we have struggled to open the bounds of community as wide as imaginable. When couples have come wanting to be married in the Sanctuary, one of whom was Jewish and one Christian, we have erected the Chuppa and broken the Glass shouting Mazoltoff! When couples have brought their children to affirm their faith and commitment to God, we have encouraged that one spouse could confess their faith in Jesus Christ, and another could name Adonai, or simply God. Last February, we learned that there were those in the world who wanted to be Anti-Semitic and to rewrite history regarding the creation of the State of Israel. As a Church we held open discussions about Israel and Palestine and our ecumenical role as Presbyterians. For a Church which historically has acted to not be political, every person who spoke out about this was in agreement, that this set of overtures was wrong. Our Session took Action against this. We contacted our representatives and educated them about the issues which they previously knew nothing about. Some from our leadership even went to the General Assembly, and used our Church's story to demonstrate mission and acting in grace and love. But, in that we have agreed to follow majority rule and to work together, while the BDS action was defeated, the General Assembly was told to sell its investments in Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett Packard for other stocks. There were no requirements upon the local church or upon our people. Three years ago in 2011, NYS legally allowed marriages between people of the same sex. Last summer our denomination allowed marriages in the Sanctuary between people of the same sex, and also that ministers would not be prosecuted for performing these. As your pastor, I have come to realize that our congregation is very diverse, so have recommended that while it would be legal in the State of NY to do so, while in some Churches it is allowed, and Ministers are permitted to perform weddings for people wanting to be married before God, because it would cause greater division among us, until something changes among us, the act of grace would be that I will not. I know and understand that these actions of the denomination infuriate many of you, but as Your Church we have tried to act in faith, with grace and commitment. SO the question becomes, will you act with an Evil Eye or with generosity? None of us know what the future holds, whether the world we have known will still exist, but we preach trust, and faith in God that although our sense of reality may be challenged we can still act as the Church.