Hired at 5:00

Sept. 21, 2008

Exodus 16:2-8

Mt. 20:1-16

 Theme: the common complaint humans have is "it is not fair; she got more than I did."  This jealousy of others and appeal to fairness makes no sense in God's kingdom.  God is able to hire someone at 5 p.m. and pay the same rate as someone he hired at the break of dawn, if he so desires.

 Our selfishness must diminish so that God's will increases, if we are ever to become the church God wants.

Underlying Problem: Control

Dandi MacKall's Kids Say the Greatest Things about God

(Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1995):

A kid's view of prayer:

What does God create? "In the beginning, God created heaven and Earth. Now he just does people."

"Life is hard, like the song: My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of misery ...."

"Jesus is God, only with real fingers and toes ...."

Jesus may have been "God's only Son, but he still had to go to school."

What does God look like? "How am I supposed to know? You gotta' use your imagination. He's indivisible."

“You can always reach him at
dinnertime."
 

Donald W. McCullough, president of San Francisco Theological Seminary and senior editor of Christianity Today, argues that "The worst sin of the church at the end of the 20th century has been the trivialization of God."

He argues that this sin of trivial gods is equally strong among liberals, evangelicals and charismatics (each of which leans respectively toward political correctness, theological correctness and experiential correctness).

I. First, God is God and we are NOT!

Instead of "have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3), we have a pantheon of trivial gods.

- the "god-of-my-cause"

- the "god-of-my-understanding"

- the "god-of-my-nation"

- the "god-of-my-experience"

- the "god-of-my-body"

- the "god-of-my-species"

- the "god-of-my-generation"

- the "god-of-my-race"

- the "god-of-my-gender"

- the "god-of-my-class"

But only God is God, and we are not.

God will not be trivialized down to human-sized aspirations. God will not be domesticated to our fads and fancies. God has purposes and ways that are far beyond us and our reckonings.

==

II. Second, Jesus’ teachings turn our sense of equality upside – down!

Our sense of what is right comes mostly from our experience in society. The rules, the rights people have, make us feel we know best when we follow them. The Jews understood right and wrong from their rabbis who interpreted the law of God. But sometimes they missed the entire point of the law; according to Paul, “it was a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.”

So then in Today’s gospel reading, we have to put this parable

Into context.