Kingdom Economics

• Exodus 16:2-15

  2 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

  4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.”

  9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites: ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’ ” 10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11 The Lord spoke to Moses, 12 “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ ”

  13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?”[a] For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

• Matthew 20:1-16

  The Laborers in the Vineyard

  20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 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.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’[a] 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”[b]

My grandmother, my mom’s mom, has little to no filter in casual conversation. She likes to blame it on her age, but she’s been saying that as long as I can remember. This lack of a filter is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there’s an honesty to it that you might not otherwise get. When presented with a person, phrase, or situation, you’ll often get her honest first impression—whether you like it or not. On the other hand, honesty doesn’t always sound nice, and that can be difficult when serving in churches as a pastor. This quality was fun growing up, especially when my grandmother would reserve her comments for just the cousins and me, rather than broadcasting them. I most remember these unfiltered comebacks following the sharing of platitudes and pieces of meant-to-be comforting advice. “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “God gives his toughest battles to His strongest soldiers.” “God is good all the time, all the time God is good.” Those kinds of things. There was always at least an eye-roll, often a not-very-polite comment for just the grandkids to hear, and sometimes a tempered, pastoral response, if the situation called for it. I think about these responses, filtered and unfiltered, each week as I read commentaries and work to prepare sermons. If you stop by my office when sermon prep is happening and I look like I need to fix my face, I probably just read or heard something like the aforementioned platitudes, and that’s just my body’s natural response. 

I thought about those kinds of phrases a lot this week, partly because I was in a church setting where sayings like those run amok. Partly, though, I thought about these phrases as I encountered them in the research I was doing. “God gives us just enough to get through the day,” was a pastor’s response to this gospel reading. Just enough what? Food? Money? Grace? Love? Patience? What about those who don’t have enough of any of those to make it through the day? We know that people often don’t have the food, money, safety, or privilege to make it through the day. Perhaps those in school, or those with kids in school, would question whether each day contains sufficient patience to make it through. What is it, exactly, that God gives us enough of to make it through each day, and why does it seem like some have far more of that than they need while others have their “enough” taken away? Where is this supposedly generous God, whose generosity seems to be limited to the people who already have plenty? And there’s another thing. This landowner, who we take to be God, claims this label of generosity, when that generosity only seems to extend to those who only worked for an hour. How is that fair to those who had worked all day? My God, I thought Jesus was supposed to be perfectly clear about everything, but here he goes, stirring up even more confusion and hiding the Kingdom behind riddles once again. And there we go, hiding the Kingdom behind our own platitudes and limited imaginations.  

One thing that these phrases often miss is the context of a passage or an idea. In this case, it’s important to know that Matthew’s gospel is addressed primarily to a Jewish audience, and that the Hebrew scriptures and rabbinic were very much concerned with workers. It’s crucial, then, for us to think about this passage in terms of economic systems. In our own economic system, as was the case in Jesus’ day, people have to work in order to have their basic needs met. Generosity is not the default. We save generosity for times of surplus. We give gifts on particular occasions, when we can afford to. Generosity in the workplace is a bonus or, more commonly today, a pizza party for the office. Compensation, by this earthly model, is based on hours worked, years of experience, level of education. Generosity, then, is a little something extra—when the earnings report allows and if you’ve already exceeded expectations. So, for these vineyard workers, the economic system should have insisted that those who were with the company longer be paid more than the newcomers. If there were extra wages, those should have been given to the workers who had been at the vineyard since dawn, not equally distributed among the workers. Generosity would have been a bonus for those who had been there all day. For those who were accustomed to wages being based on how much work was done, this would have been an insult. For the landowner to then call what they did “generous,” would just be rubbing salt in the wound. In this economic system, as in ours, this would have been generous to the late workers and unfair to the early workers.

Perhaps, then, God has a different understanding of what a fair economy would look like. Perhaps what we think is fair, what we think others deserve, is not the same standard that exists in the Beloved Community. And perhaps this standard ought to cause us to rethink what it means to be generous. Maybe God’s generosity lies not in sharing the surplus with those who are most deserving, but in enabling the community to flourish together. Maybe God’s generosity lies in freeing us from standards and mindsets that put us in competition with one another, standards that would have us work the longest hours, produce the most content or generate the most profit for our industry, or sacrifice our emotional, social, mental, and spiritual health to be seen as deserving. Maybe God’s generosity lies in being set free from the thought that someone is going to steal your job, or replace you, or take away your way of life. Maybe God’s generosity lies in the freedom from the idea that you are worth more, or less, than anyone else because of how much, or how little, you can or do work. This economy of generosity might sound like an abomination to us. How can we function apart from these ideas? These are the cornerstones of our society, our economy: the ideas that our work is our worth, that we need to be better than others, that what we produce is a sign of God’s blessing or God’s favor or some inherent spiritual superiority. This economy of generosity turns our patriarchal, heteronormative, ableist, white-centered capitalist system on its head.

This is the economy of the Beloved Community. It does not need to ask who deserves what. It does not need to ask who deserves food, who deserves love, who deserves community, who deserves grace, or who deserves patience. When we ask how we ought to divvy these things up among us, the answer is simple: generously. With all that we have and all that we are, we are called to live out this economy of generosity. Not to hold what we have close to our chest, but to love freely, to share our time with those we see as less than, and to break bread with our neighbors as we find them. This is our call, to reveal the Beloved Community in our midst through unwavering generosity, trusting that there will be enough when we do so. It is not for us to determine who is worthy, who deserves more or who deserves less. God has determined that we are to share of the gifts that we have. May we live generously into this call. Amen.