One Day at a Time

Transcribed from the sermon preached September 18, 2011

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16

 
Hello, it is good to be back.  I want to thanks the Church for giving me a sabbatical, and Bob and Marilyn, Karen, Nellie, Fred, Fred and Claudia and Gail and everyone else  for going beyond their normal good work to lead the church over the summer.

Returning to work feels a bit like returning to school as a kid.  It has been fun running around barefoot, taking trips and sleeping in.  I could do more of it for sure.  But I am excited to see friends and excited at the challenge of work and study, and hopeful of possibilities for what we can do together with God.

As most of you know I spent five weeks with my boys in Indonesia surfing.  For five weeks I took a break from the news.  Frankly it was a joy to check out and pretend there was nothing more to life than sleeping, eating and surfing on a tropical island.  What I missed most, and more and more as time went on was the warmth of my wife Feliciana…and good Mexican food.  But world class surfing breaks in general are a wilderness of female companionship, as the pursuit of surf in incredibly boring for those who don’t surf.  The male to female ration was about 35 to 2.  Anyway, I missed my wife, but not the news.

When I did get in front of a TV, the news was horrible.  I discovered floods were devastating the Midwest, the credit rating of America had been downgraded, the stock market was tanking, unemployment and foreclosures were higher, the Republicans and Tea Party were pummeling Obama. America was bombing yet another country, my garbage disposal was out, and Alex Smith was still the quarterback for the 49ners.  How long, Oh Lord, how long?

Being so out of it I didn’t know where to begin this week, so I fell back on the community stream to use the lectionary.  The lectionary is an eccumencical tool which takes us through the Bible over a periods of three years.  This week’s passages find us journeying with the Israelites through the wilderness and contemplating the strange labor practices of a landlord who is analogous to God.

It wasn’t a chapter back in Exodus that the Israelites are singing praises to God for victory and freedom, but quickly they fear of starvation.  They complain bitterly, and consider that perhaps they would have been better off if they would have stayed under the leadership of George Bush…I mean Pharaoh, rather than starve out here in the wilderness with Moses.

What is clear is that there is no quick fix for the fact that the wilderness lies between Egypt and the Promised Land. As they might have hoped, they will not jump from slavery to the land flowing with milk and honey in one full swoop as they might have hoped.  They don’t like this realization, so they start complaining.

We might think that the message would be that faithful people shouldn’t complain and that the lack of faith showed by the complaining would result in further punishment.  But as the story goes, God listens and responds to the complaints.  “Draw near to the Lord,” Aaron tells the people, “because he has heard your complaining.”

But we might still complain that the result is not that great.  They are not suddenly whisked out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey.  They just get enough to sustain them through each day.  Quall, and some mysterious fine, flaky substance they call Manna.

The Exodus is one of the greatest stories ever told, for no matter who we are, no matter where we find ourselves in History, we will find parallels between this story and our own lives. Eventually, we will all find ourselves in the wilderness.  Maybe not an actual wilderness, but a time and place when resources are scarce, dangers are ever present, and our faith in God and our ability to get through are stretched thin, and the end is nowhere in sight.  Our wilderness may look more like a hospital waiting room, or the empty house we come home to after the loss of someone we love, or a child whose health or development takes a turn for the worse.  It could be the loss of a job and a foreclosure notice.  And the wilderness doesn’t just present us with one problem, but with several at the same time.  It is not just jobs but also foreclosures, not just foreclosures but war, not just war but also natural disaster, not just natural disaster but a quarterback who chokes under pressure.  Where ever we find the wilderness, it will surely attempt to dry out our heart and starve our soul of hope.

Part of the great lesson is that we often find ourselves in the wilderness precisely after we have made an escape from something that enslaves.  It could be a bad job, but then once out of it we are reminded, at least it was a job.  Often it is a lifestyle, addictions or ways of behaving or relating that we are stuck in.  Perhaps there is an intervention, a friend or loved ones, a teacher or prophet who leads the way and gives us the courage to step out.  There is an initial celebration, the recognition of freedom, the hope of new beginning, and then we have to face the long hard work of getting through the wilderness.  It is in the wilderness that we see our own limitations and the limitations of those around us, perhaps, dare I say it, the limitations of God…or at least our ability to comprehend why, if there is a God, does there have to be a wilderness at all?  Have we been freed only to come out into the wilderness and die of thirst and starvation?

We complain, and we are told God has heard our complaints.  But rather than immediate exit from the trials, we get quall and some weird flaky oatmeal stuff.  But it is enough for the day.  And that is a great lesson of the wilderness.  We have the long term goal of getting out and on into the Promised Land; there is a big, long term hope out there. But when we don’t see when or how we are going to get out, our focus and hope and thanksgiving is for today.  One day at a time. And for today, quall and manna get us through. Today, quall and manna are tasting pretty good.  For today, we can thank God.

Now in the Gospel message Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who, in short, pays everyone the same daily wage, even when some get on the job later than others.  And to make matters worse, the later workers get paid first.  The early workers complain.  There is a lot of complaining going on in this morning’s passages.  And frankly, as anyone with a brother or sister who has gotten the same reward for different quality or time of work, either as a young child or later in the care of a dying parent, the complaints seem justified.

For a strange parable like this, it helps to look at where we find it in the Gospel.  Just before our parable the disciples are asking what they will get in reward for giving up so much to follow Jesus.  And just after, the mother of James and John petitions Jesus for the best thrones in the Kingdom.  Jesus is quick to let Mom know she may not know what she is asking, because the throne will be in the form of a cross.

Now there are all sorts of angles we can take on this story: but I just want to focus today on the fact that the God keeps coming back with the same offer.  Who knows why some of us aren’t’ there to start the day.  Maybe, we’ve lived on the other side of the tracks, or the border crossing or wall.  Maybe we were helping mom make tortillas and haul milk.  Maybe we didn’t believe there would be a chance for a person like us. Maybe we had made it our job to complain until we found that complaining doesn’t put bread on the table and doubt doesn’t fill our soul.  Maybe we don’t think we are worthy of the job.  Maybe our relationship failed but succeeded in making children, and we couldn’t get childcare until later.  Maybe we got ourselves into some kind of trouble earlier, maybe we partied too hard for too long and slept in for the last few years. Then in the middle or late in the day or life, we finally decide it is time to get up and go down to the market. Most everyone is gone, either already at work or they given up and gone somewhere else, so we find ourselves standing on the street corner, leaning up against the fence, hoping someone in a pickup will drive up in need of workers.  

Barbara Brown Taylor in her sermon Beginning at the End suggests while we may look at this parable and think of ourselves with the early crew, part of the worthy hard workers who deserve to be at the front of the line, perhaps we aren’t as far in front as we think, but somewhere back in toward the end.  Why? She asks, Perhaps “No one told us about it, for one thing.  But even if we had, we might not have done much about it.  We know all kinds of things we do not do much about.  There are so many things we mean to do that we never get around to doing, and there are so many things we mean not to do that we end up doing anyway.  Even when we manage to do our best, things get in the way: people get sick, businesses fail, relationships go down the drain.  There are a lot of reasons why people end up at the end of the line, and only God can sort them all out.”

Maybe we had to cross a wilderness before we got to any land worth owning and farming.  Now here we are late in the day.

The question I ask this morning is not whether or not we should have been down to work with God early, the question is, is it too late?  A great thing about the bible is that it helps us see that while we might just see who starts working first, God sees and can be there to help us through the wilderness, and at the same time, She can be the landowner with a generous offer for work. Others may have gotten on board earlier, maybe they have been faithful Christians or church members all their lives, and they seem to know the language and how to pray and talk about God, and they do things like helping to run the church while the pastor is away…and good for them.  Thank God for them.  Surely they are blessed for the opportunity to serve.  We may think they deserve to be in the front of the line when it comes time to be paid.  But comparison isn’t worthy of much; for as they don’t know what we have been going through up to this point, we don’t know, really, where they are at.  Still, we may think we are too late, but God has come back for us now today, at this late hour, with an offer of amazing grace and the opportunity to serve.  And maybe we are not even ready today, but we can be sure God will keep coming back until we are ready.  Even at the eleventh hour of our life God comes back.  This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   

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