Proper 20-A (9/21/08) Ex 16:2-15; Phil 1:21-39; Mt 20:1-16
St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids Fr. Joseph Neiman
Theme: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” Mt 20:15)
This has been a very troubling week on the public stage of our country as the economy has floundered and we are left wondering what will happen to our own finances, our own security. We come here before the Lord this morning, and what do we hear from the Gospel of Matthew: the Parable of the Vineyard Workers.
The Parable of the Vineyard Workers is perhaps one of the troubling parables of Jesus for us as Americans. It is clearly unjust in our eyes for those who worked the whole day to be paid the same wages as those who only worked for an hour. If we were the workers hired at daybreak by the owner of a vineyard and we were paid the same as those hired late in the day, we would most certainly picket the owner, take him to court, or in some way try to rectify what we would understand to be a clear travesty of justice.
After this week of terrible economic news, how can we call this reading “Good News”, which is what the word “Gospel” means in Old English?
Neither Jesus in first telling this parable, nor Matthew who put it into the present form, are teaching us about paying wages. The message has to do with God’s justice and generosity with us and with all humanity – a teaching which does have, however, some implications for daily wages but for so much more as well.
The first key to understanding this Parable, which is found, by the way, only in the Gospel according to Matthew, lies in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus. The original audience or readers of Matthew were Jewish Christians, and they would have recognized that immediately, whereas we do not. Hiring day laborers to bring in the harvest was commonplace, and the Law of Moses required that the laborer be paid at the end of each day (Lev 19:13).
In chapter 25, verse 23, of Leviticus we also hear God speaking through Moses and saying: "Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the land belongs to me, and to me you are but strangers and guests." Let's hear that again: "Land must not be sold in perpetuity" - or forever, "for the land (or the earth) belongs to me, and to me you are but strangers and guests."
Put another way: God is the owner of the whole vineyard, the whole land, or the whole earth. God is the Creator and Sustainer of all life, human, animal, and plant life as well. We are all sharecroppers, if you will, or workers. We hold the land in trust - even if we have a deed - or we work the land held in trust by someone else, but God is the owner.
This brings us back to the Parable of the Vineyard Workers and the second key to understanding it, namely, "the denarius." Matthew's original audience understood - we have to be told - that the denarius was "the minimum wage" in the sense that it was the amount a worker needed to receive daily in order to live. It was - to use another term - the amount which would have been symbolic for us at that time of "our daily bread."
So as for our relationship with our neighbor, Jesus is teaching us in this Parable that the resources of the earth - the food resources in particular - have been freely given to all humanity by God, the Creator or owner of the vineyard, in order to sustain life. It doesn't matter where we were born or when or how successful we have been in earning "our daily bread." Each human being alive has a God-given right to the necessary resources to sustain life, to the living wage, or to one's daily bread. This is a gift from God, our Creator, who does indeed have the right to do what He chooses with His own creation. "Are you envious because I am generous?”
This is, as you can plainly see, Good News for the poor of the world, particularly those who are suffering from famine or other dimensions of the problem of world hunger. It is "Bad News" of course for those who believe the land we own or the wealth we possess is exclusively ours to do with what we wish even if that means others will starve.
Now I am not talking about "free-loaders" or "welfare rip-offs" or anything of the kind. The Scriptures also teach each of us must contribute to common good and use the talents we have for the benefit of our families and of all humanity.
I am talking about one part of the teaching in this simple yet profound Parable, a teaching I believe was also recognized by the framers of our own Declaration of Independence who wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...." Put in modern English: each person has an equal or “inalienable” right to life, or the resources necessary to sustain it. That is God’s generosity as the true owner of the “land,” the earth.
But there is more. The literal translation of the phrase in the parable, "Are you envious because I am generous?” reads like this: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” (Mt 20:15). Do we have, in other words, an “evil eye”?
The concept of an “evil eye” is a very old and very widespread superstition which has some basis in reality. “Belief in the evil eye is strongest in the Middle East, East and West Africa, South Asia, Central Asia and Europe, especially the Mediterranean region; it has also spread to other areas, including northern Europe, particularly in the Celtic regions, and to the Americas, where it was brought by European colonists and Middle Eastern immigrants.”[1]
“In some forms, it is the belief that some people can bestow a curse on victims by the malevolent gaze of their magical eye. The most common form, however, attributes the cause to envy, with the envious person casting the evil eye doing so unintentionally. Also the effects on victims vary. Some cultures report afflictions with bad luck; others believe the evil eye can cause disease, wasting away, and even death.”[2]
In the Scriptures, the 10th commandment, “Thou shalt not covet” (BCP p. 318/Dt 5:21), links the “evil eye” with envy, with an inordinate looking at our neighbor’s goods. It easily leads to stealing and/or bearing false witness against our neighbor hoping for bad luck or his or her demise. We say things in English, like “If looks could kill….” Or “Don’t look at me like that.”
In the book of Proverbs, we read: “He chases after wealth, the man with a greedy eye, not knowing that want is overtaking him” (Prov 28:22 JB). Matthew tells us Jesus taught: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Mt 6:22-23).
Jesus also taught: “If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire” (Mt 18:9).
More to the point is the teaching: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Mt. 7:1-5).
A man once approached Buddha and said: “You look like a fat pig.” Buddha replied: “You look like a god.” The man was curious: “Why do you say I look like a god?” Buddha replied: ‘We see what we are thinking about.”
The workers in the parable who were called first looked with an “evil eye” on those who were called last and yet paid the same living wage. They also looked with an “evil eye” on the owner of the vineyard, who is a metaphor for God.
Do we look with an “evil eye” on some people because they are poor, uneducated, retarded, sick, gay, foreign, unemployed, fat, handicapped, or belonging to the “wrong’ political party or church? It is so easy to have such an “evil eye”!
I quoted to you a moment ago that other troubling teaching from Jesus reported in the Gospel of Matthew: “‘If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire” (Mt 18:8-9).
This means, if that which you hold or handle, leads you astray; if the path on which you are walking leads you astray, cut it off. Change your obsession with things. Get ride of them or at least your preoccupation with them. As for the path, turn around and walk in the path in which the good Lord would lead you which is for your well being.
The same holds with the “eye.” We need the “eye of God.” We need to learn to see as God sees, to see each person as created in the image and likeness of God, a unique, precious, one of a kind beautiful individual, a gift from God for us when we enter into a relationship with him or her. God says to us, through the Christian community and the priest, especially when we were baptized or renew our baptismal promises: “You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter, in you I am well pleased.” We who are called to love one another as Christ has loved us (John 13:34-35), can learn to see one another as beloved as well if we look with the eye of God and not with an “evil eye.”
So for your homework this week (I give homework and let the good Lord do the testing to see if you learned anything). Listen to the conversations of others and in the media. How are people labeled? What kind of names and adjectives are applied to people? What kinds of judgments are being made? How are the speakers “seeing” others and their life situation? Then become aware of your own way of “seeing” others and the events of the week. Do you have an “evil eye” seeing with prejudice and pejorative labels? What do you need to do to develop eyes that see as the good Lord sees?
I used to have a poster I would put up in my office at this time of year when the harvests are coming in. It showed a photo of a canning jar and said simply: “Label jars, not people.”
God bless you and keep you this day and always. And remember that the good Lord loves you more that you can ask for or even imagine. Do you believe that?