... as we struggle together to live the Way of Love....

While I was on sabbatical this summer, I began a new hobby. Thanks to a recommendation from our son, Noah, I started watching a series called The Great Pottery Throwdown—it’s modeled after the Great British BakeOff, but it’s about people making pottery rather than baking. And as I watched, I was reminded, as I have previously shared with you, that the only kind of “art” I felt any good at in school was pottery. I made that koala bear which actually looks like a koala bear, and I also made a nice bowl which I still have.  I mean, they are pretty good if I do say so myself. And as I watched the series I thought to myself: I’d like to try pottery again. It looks like it would be meditative. So in July I took a class and found myself loving it, making 2 smallish pieces, and since then I have gone to the Lincoln Center to try my hand at pottery.

And what I have been acutely reminded of is the struggle that comes with learning something new, and especially when you are really trying to deepen your skills. During my sabbatical I watched a lot of folx making pottery—in the TV series and on some YouTube classes. I came to know a lot of content: pottery vocabulary, methods and tools. But that content was all in my head. When it came to actually doing pottery, trying to center the clay on the pottery wheel, to shape it, to know how to trim and finish a pot—-I was only on square one. It’s going to take a lot of practice. I will need to return again and again to the clay, making mistakes and starting over—in order for me to move that knowledge and content from my head into my body and my hands…..and then into the clay. It’s going to take hours of trying and practicing before working with the clay becomes more natural, more instinctive.

In our reading today Paul is writing to a newish church in Philippi who are trying to learn how to be the church in their everyday lives, and Paul reminds them: “... as you struggle together to remain faithful to the gospel.” The church, the gathered people of God, do and will struggle together in order to stay aligned with the gospel. It’s why God calls us to community, to church, because learning how to follow the Christ is like the journey I am on to be a potter. We need to learn knowledge and content, but that content, those creeds and commandments, have to move out of our head, our mind, and into our body —  changing our eyesight, fine-tuning our ears to Love’s frequency.  The beliefs need to flow from our heads into our whole body so that, in love, we decide what our hands will do, where our feet will go, and what words will come forth from our mouth, what choices will show up in our investments, and how we will use our influence and power, our vote and our will, to live and move and have our being in this world as a Christian, 24/7. This world that is far too often not a reflection of God’s realm, or as Jesus puts it today: the kingdom of heaven.

Let’s remind ourselves of just what heaven is in Scripture. It isn’t a location that is earned by our productivity as a reward for good behavior in this life when we die. In fact, it really isn’t about, or for, when we die at all. Heaven is all about how we will live. Now. IN this life. Heaven, after all, is simply where God lives — where Love is present. Heaven is unveiled whenever Love is in charge. In today’s story this is indicated when Jesus talks about the landowner. In Greek this is the word, oy-kod-es-pot'-ace oikodespotes, meaning “head of the household.”  This landowner, this God the Creator, is the wise and generous one who has provided enough for all and who brings out of the treasure of this creation what is new and what is old for the Common Good. 

And this realm, this household, this kingdom of heaven, does not function the same as the world’s household. In this vineyard where Love is the landowner, whether you are early or late to the vineyard you are worthy of having, worthy of being given, what is needed for you to live. That’s what the denarion symbolizes in this story—a denarion was the daily living wage—or as we hear it in the prayer Jesus teaches us: our “daily bread.” And God believes, and acts, in ways to insure that everyone be given it; this is God’s will for Creation. Without exception. Everyone receives what is needed to live. Give us this day our daily bread. 

In Love’s household, salvation isn’t something to be earned. It is a gift. It is not the result of human productivity but a given that comes from God’s generosity. For each and every person.  In this household, all belong, all are in; there is no us versus them, there is only us. The last line in today’s Gospel reading reveals that God does not move from hierarchical value—the first is the last and the last is the first, no order of value. Instead all have value, all are worthy. This is a radical statement of not only equality, but of equity. In God’s household, this world’s hierarchical order of worth is turned on its head. And this means, Christians—we who follow the Christ—are NOT meant to live by the world’s hierarchies. Even when every system and economy in our world does. We have taken vows to live by the ways and means of God’s household and economy instead. Even when it seems in direct opposition to the ways of our culture, our society, our government.  . . . as you struggle together to remain faithful to the gospel.

And it is a struggle, a challenge. We see and hear it in today’s reading when those who first arrived to work in the vineyard see the landowner giving the last arrivals the same daily wage as they then receive, they grumble.  And let’s do a bit of language work here: our translation says that the first arrivals to work said: . . . they received the same pay as we did…but what the Greek really says here is that the first arrivals said: . . . you made them equal to us. Their complaint was not strictly that they ought to be paid more, but that “they” have been made equal to “us.”  The first arrivals see these latecomers as not worthy of receiving what they themselves have received.  They are missing the mark of love, in common terms: this is sin, this way of thinking—wherever it shows up. It is the sin of coveting. Beloved, the definition of coveting isn’t the same as envy. Envy means I want what someone else has. Coveting is different. Coveting means I don’t want you to have something that I want for myself.  The first arrivals, even though what they received is what is needed to live, our daily bread, the first arrivals did not think the latecomers were worthy to have what is needed to live. So much contempt here. Resentment. A divisiveness that leads to an us versus them.  The ugly, racist and sinful language we hear all around us, day in and day out. And the ugly, racist and sinful language that comes out of our own mouths.

And the householder, this God of Love, says: not in my vineyard, calling it out as an “evil eye.” Again, some language work: in our translation it reads Or are you resentful because I’m generous? But the Greek is closer to: do you look with an evil eye on my goodness? In chapter 6 of Matthew’s gospel Jesus says: The eye is the lamp of your body—either it is healthy and then your body is full of light or your eye is unhealthy and your body is full of darkness.  The  first arrivals’ eyes are not seeing their siblings with God’s eyes, with light, but with a sight restricted by self-centeredness which places no value on the Common Good. The early arrivals fail to see the world as God sees the world: all are worthy and deserving of having what is needed to live (after all, God is the one who has provided all that we have). Instead they see this world, this life, this Creation as a pie with only so many slices, and they want to make sure they get theirs, no matter the cost to others. They see competition. But God sees, and has created, a creation built on communal collaboration in order to provide for the flourishment of all. All. No exceptions.

Underpinning the first arrivals’ way of thinking is a “work and reward” ethic—the same ethic this world lives by, and the ethic we have been raised and shaped by. But this parable of Jesus is saying that “work and reward”  is not the ethic of God’s household; this is not the ethic of the way of Love. Instead in God’s realm everyone is worthy of having what is needed to live, regardless of their productivity. Because God has created a Creation that can support everyone having what is needed to live, but only when we are living by the ethic of God’s household, only when we are living in the Way of mutual Love. Not a work and reward ethic, but an ethic of gift and gratitude. Everything is a gift from God (even what our own productivity has seemingly earned), and so what we do with our gifts expresses our gratitude to God who provided it. 

. . . as you struggle together to remain faithful to the gospel. Moving these challenging Gospel truths from knowledge and content in our heads, down to our hearts where we make decisions and choices, out into our hands that do and give, into our feet that take us to the margins, and our voices that share God’s love. This is why we are Church. We need a community to help us in this struggle, to help us make that movement from our heads to our hearts and bodies. That helps us unpack these Gospel Truths so that our understanding of them aligns with the Life and Love of Jesus. We require a community to help us find the path of Love and to return to it when we get lost along the way. A community where we practice this love. Like learning to become a potter, we need lots of practice. We will make mistakes; we will need do-overs. But, if we commit to the struggle, the learning, loving as Christ loves will become our nature, our hands and feet will learn what to do, as will our hearts, minds, spirits. It will become who we are. No matter what the world chooses.

The Buddhist practitioner of living in this way, Pema Chodron, describes it like this: “As we practice, we make friends with our fears, our grasping, and our aversion. Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons. Everything we encounter thus becomes an opportunity for practicing loving-kindness.” May it be so, Beloved, as we struggle together to remain faithful to the gospel, may it be so.