Sept 19, 1999
"IN THE
STRUGGLE TOGETHER' (Matthew 20:1-l6)
At the outset I like this
capitalist landowner. He is a hands-on guy. Up before
dawn, he's at the hiring place to select personally his
workers for the day. He doesn't delegate the hard work
and he's back a few hours later at nine o'clock to hire
more; and then at noon; and again in the late afternoon.
Here is one executive who is going to earn his executive
stock options.
But, on the other hand, he
pursues a wage policy that is plainly crazy. If everyone,
who ever reported to work, got the same pay regardless of
the hours worked and the quality of the work done, we
would have a capitalistic breakdown. The story stands on
its head the most elemental control of workers' output -
wages as rewards.
I have never been a day laborer.
Trying to hitch a ride in my youth in France and Spain is
probably the closest experience I can claim to being a
day laborer. You stand there with your thumb out, in the
rain in Spain, and never know whether the next car will
pick you up or a thousand will pass by indifferent to
your need. It's a feeling of dependency and vulnerability
to the decisions of others, which must be somewhat like
the many millions of day laborers who gather in places
such as southern California and every European city and
even right here in Hong Kong.
And day labor is not all that
appealing. I have seen beautiful photographs of workers
in the vineyards of Tuscany or Napa Valley and fantasized
that would be a beautiful kind of work - for a day! I had
a friend in Costa Rica who owned a coffee plantation and
every January, when the coffee bushes were heavy with
their berries, he would give a barbecue party. We his
guests, upon arriving, were given a basket and invited
to fill it with coffee beans before we
lunched.
This was a joke because my hour
of increasingly hot, sweaty work produced barely enough
berries to cover the bottom of my basket. To consider
that a coffee picker had to fill at least three such
baskets to earn his day's wages quickly, and to allow me
to enjoy my cappucino at Pacific Coast Coffee, quickly
destroys any romantic notions about the charms of rural
day labor.
Of course, none among us is a
day laborer. We are salaried and do precious little
manual work. A round of golf is about as physical as it
gets for many here. Yet we can easily identify with the
anger of those who worked hard all day and wound up with
the same wages as those who were Johnnies come lately to
the work but received the same wages. Salaried workers
and mangers in Hong Kong are not spared the pressure of
quotas and the constant struggle to produce or die. But
it is a limited sense of solidarity we have. Worker
solidarity like human solidarity only goes so
far.
Is this an earthly parable about
communal economics? At the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus'
approach appeared to be from each according to his gifts
and to each according to his needs. Is Jesus an incipient
socialist in this parable. My reading is ambivalent.
Jesus clearly affirms the importance of contractual
obligations, a bedrock in our economics as his. Those who
worked all day received the usual wage. They were not
cheated. They were paid in full. Their upset came when
they saw others who worked less get the same wage. They
wanted more. It is very difficult when you are fully
employed to identify with the struggle of those "who were
not selected."
Likewise, it is very difficult
for those who are physically and intellectually strong to
identify with those who are different. It is in fact
difficult for anyone who belongs to any majority group or
who has a heightened sense of personal self worth to
identify with the struggles of those who are a minority
or who appear to lack self worth.
I chaired a meeting of 25
professional clergy this past week for a discussion on
"Christian Issues on Homosexual/Lesbian Issues." It was a
serious sharing which revealed substantive differences
among we professional workers. The division came between
liberal Christians, like myself, who believe we must
interpret the bible, both in its original context and in
our own, to arrive at the most responsible reading.
Frankly, I am suspicious of those inerrant interpreters
who believe that all scriptural truth is self-evident. I
do not find the very few references in the Bible to same
gender relations either as meaning what many bible
readers think they mean nor comprehensive to our present
situation which presents in modern consenting and
committed relationships a social model of which the bible
writers were entirely unaware and lacking in experience.
In these controversial debates I
experience that both liberals and fundamentalists can get
on their high horses and pronounce judgements upon the
other side from a position of presumed moral superiority.
But in our discussion of last Tuesday that presumption
was claimed almost exclusively by the fundamentalist
position which claims insider information on the will of
God and do not hesitate to pronounce the judgement of God
upon a different minority. We all need to ask in these
heated discussions: Where is Jesus in all our argument
and interpretation?
No matter what our standing, if
we identify with a convinced majority, or minority, it is
difficult to identify with the struggle of others who
represent alternate readings, experiences, and
lifestyles. It is very difficult to identify with the
struggles of others.
I touched briefly last week upon
the debate now taking place in international bodies like
the International Monetary Fund and World Bank about how
to handle the debt of the Third World countries to the
First World. It is evident that the majority of these
countries can barely pay the interest on that debt. In
most of their cases half or more of all foreign earnings
go only to service the debt. There is no prospect that
the principal will ever be repaid and yet the continuance
of the debt prevents these struggling societies from
repositioning their economic planning toward any reality
and hope.
And so there is a total or
partial debt forgiveness plan a foot. It may happen just
because it's in the self-interest of the lending agencies
and the First World economies to reduce the burden of the
Third World so that they can qualify for yet more
loans.What is so disturbing to me is that the First World
countries have framed the debate in such a way that the
they are cast as generous, if they forgive the debt, and
contractually sound if they do not. You read almost no
history about how these loans were made in the first
place, almost always to dictators in Africa and without
any responsible checks upon the use of the funds to help
the peoples and economies for whose need the loans were
justified.
It was very easy for lending
authorities to identify with dictators like the late
Mobutu of the Congo. IT is difficult to identify with the
struggling masses especially when our own culpability is
called into focus.
As an earthly parable this story
has some provocative lessons. But of course, it is a
heavenly parable. At the very outset Jesus states: THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE A LANDOWNER WHO WENT OUT
EARLY…This is a heavenly story.
The Generous Employer may
represent God. While there are winners and losers in the
earthly market place, God runs heaven on his own
standards, valuing persons because in his love he has a
vocation for every one of them. The love of God disturbs
us when we see others getting more than they deserve,
although we ourselves can justify absolutely everything
we get! The ruthless competitiveness of the Marketplace
militates against our rejoicing when those on the fringe
of employment, or acceptability, or conventional
morality, have good things come their way (the elder
son's envy and hostility in the story of the Forgiving
Father.) Even in our achievements and our faith we are
still insecure and troubled to see others getting
anything if they do not conform to our standards of what
is right and good and fair.
Remember that great line in THE
UNFORGIVEN when the kid who has just killed his first
man, a bad guy, and is deeply troubled, says in
self-exoneration: "I guess he got what he deserved." And
the Cliff Eastwood character replies: "Kid, in the end we
all get what we deserve." That is a sobering coda to the
earthly market place thinking.
As a story with a heavenly
meaning, the parable corrects our very earthly standards
with the standards of God's judgement. These are some
further meanings of the parable as a heavenly story,
suggested by Ronald W. Graham in his published sermon,
"An Earthly Story with a Heavenly Meaning?" and I would
like to draw upon his thinking now.
First, God judges according to
our motive. If one worker bargains for a stated wage, he
will receive it. If others accept the assurance of God's
faithfulness and goodwill, their trust will be justified.
In heaven there is pay enough for everyone.
Did you read the happy story
recently of the American businessman who sold out his
company which he had built from scratch. He cleared over
US$400 M. To the delight of the 200 or so workers in his
firm, he took about US200M and gave it to them as
bonuses. Those who had been with him for years received
several million dollars each. Those who were hired only
the week before received several thousands. True, he did
not divide his generosity into equal parts, but everyone
got something. They all got a lot more than they had any
reason under our earthly market standards to expect.
The Kingdom of heaven is like
that. Could earth be more like that?
Second, God's judgement is
rendered not only on the basis of what is accomplished
but also according to the measure of opportunity. God
sees everyone and everything and God appreciates that
some are abled and gifted and start off with sunrise hope
and invincible purpose. Others start off later in the day
of opportunity; they have a disadvantage, some
impairment, negligible or serious, of the mind, or the
body, or the environment, or of social non-acceptance.
They are among the differently abled. They are desirous
of serving God but cannot as they would. "No one has
hired us." I shrink from buying a big Mac with its 65%
fat content but I admire Macdonald's policy of hiring the
differently abled.
In our internet emerging economy
and in places like Silicon Valley thousands of persons
are becoming millionaires in short order. They have
opportunity and have seized it. But what of the struggle
of the many more who must resist the foe repeatedly and
yet struggle on without earthly reward and social
affirmation. Only God knows who among us deserves the
victor's crown which on earth may so easily be rewarded
to a few and withheld from most. Those who are victorious
on earth seldom give full measure to the element of lucky
circumstance in their rise. In heaven God gives full
measure to the element of opportunity and the lack of
it.
One of the truly fine films of
this year is OCTOBER SKIES. It is the true story of four
high school boys in West Virginia who in l96l, following
the first outer space triumph of the Russian sputnik,
decide to build a rocket. The situation, however, is that
these are four poor kids in a typically poor West
Virginia high school which never even sent a graduate to
college. In their context their ambition is seen as a
pipe dream by most of the authorities including their
parents. They endure, they struggle, and they, after many
setbacks, go on to win the state high school science
fair and then the national high school fair with their
rocket which actually does soar. All four go to college;
two end up as engineers, one working all his career at
NASA.
Yes, it's heart warming because
the underdogs win. And they show extraordinary true grit,
struggling on in the face of opposition from the school
principal and their parents. But they did not do it
alone. They had some who joined them in the struggle - a
high school English teacher (there was no science teacher
in this school) who herself was dying of leukemia and
many poor folks, black and white, whose dimes and nickels
kept the project financed.
And so it is in heaven Jesus
tells us that the first may end up last and the last can
end up first according to God's criteria which are not
ours. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways
our ways. And aren't we glad of that! Aren't we glad that
Jesus' parable as a heavenly story suggests that everyone
will be welcomed, there will be enough for everyone. We
do not finally get what we deserve. We get what God is
willing to give us. This parable ought to give us insight
and courage to work for more of the heavenly marketplace
here on earth and in Hong Kong.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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