September 15, 2005
About
Pentecost 18/20A
Irma Rombauer in “The Joy of Cooking” talks about food like Jesus in “The Joy of Good News” talks about the kingdom. Throughout, as the subject of each different victual is taken up, Irma inserts a little preface, “About Bread,” “About Fish,” “About Beans,” etc. Throughout, as Jesus spins his parables, he says “the kingdom is about… ” “the kingdom is like… ” In neither case do these teachers get literal. They both leave room for the imagination, for analogies, for creativity, and where we lack a capacity for these things, they help us along with marvelous and enticing illustrations.
Jesus’ kingdom parable this Sunday is no different (Mt 20.1-26). This time, “the kingdom of heaven is like a householder” who’s a vintner making work for some laborers who are idling around outside the local unemployment office, probably wondering what’s next in their lives. You know the story. Some of them, the householder hires for the whole day, and others seem to come in shifts all the way to nighttime.
None of them strikes me as all that eager to get a job. But then, Surprise, and lets hear it for minimum wage! They all get paid the same, no matter the hours they put in.
This parable has always been the absolute plague of our labor and management economy and probably drives a biblical inerrancy entrepreneur out of his mind. For it’s a parable based on grace. We’ve an economy based on merit. And the two have never mixed all that well, not even with the trickle-down voodoo economics which never worked at all. It’s the problem with Christianity, grace is always a pain in the… pride. But until we find out what grace is about, what the kingdom of heaven is about, nothing about this Gospel will ever make much sense, for even when we do find this out, it’ll still not make sense because making sense is our criterion and making sense is not the end-all and be-all of grace.
Maybe the Bible’s a good place to start. The whole Bible is an about book, not an is book. So with life, so with us, each of us and all of us are parables. We are parables emulating Jesus who is the Parable of God. Jesus is not God. Jesus is about God. So, with grace, so with the payroll for the laborers in the vineyard. It is precisely where we turn all these analogies upside down and take then literally, that we emasculate the Good News.
One of the big troubles with religion is how difficult it is to get this straight. Religion wants to be an is way of handling grace instead of an about way. On the other hand faith is an about way. Religion needs faith to keep it honest. Faith needs religion — or a reasonable facsimile — and religion’s as good as the next — like we need our bodies, to keep us between the curbs. But the two are never the same.
So, the kingdom of heaven is never a place, but a relationship with God nourished by grace and implemented by faith. It is a story, a parable, and, like all stories, leaving much to the imagination. It is for this relationship that we are imagined by God and freed to sign on in the vineyard at the beckon of the householder and at whatever time we choose. Or, just stand around outside the unemployment office.