God-Given Human Value
THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Exodus 16:2-15 • Philippians 1:21-30 • Matthew 20:1-16
What does heaven look like? Do you ever think about that? As I get older, I spend less time thinking about it than I used to. I suppose I might reach a point in the future where that trend will start to reverse itself. Whether you think about it a lot or not, take a moment or two to let your imagination roam around the kingdom of God for a little bit. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Smell like? It is a familiar place? Somewhere you’ve been before? Or something completely new? Maybe it’s being held in your grandmother’s arms. Or sitting at a dinner table with all your heroes. Or walking through a grassy meadow with your best friend.
I always imagined heaven would be like sitting on the pier out on Mobile Bay down the hill from where I grew up. We didn’t go there often when I was a child, but every time we went I felt like I had come back to the place where I most belonged. I’ve never been one to sit still for very long, but I could let hours go by in that place, just watching the waves come in on the murky brackish water with a friendly breeze blowing in my face. I always knew it had been too long since I’d been back home when I could feel that ache in my soul that only the coast could soothe. I used to think that was what heaven must be like until someone told me that there is no sea in heaven.
In the Book of Revelation, John, the mystic seer, is given a glimpse at what awaits us, and he writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (21:1). When someone first told me that, I felt like everything good had just been drained out of the Bible. We were in a class, sharing our dreams about what heaven would be like, and, when I described a sunset over that pier, another student took the opportunity to burst my eschatological bubble.
It's not the pretty sunset over the water that’s the problem, of course. The reason that first-century author envisioned a paradise in which there was no seashore was because, to a first-century dreamer, the sea was a place where only nightmares came from. Imagine living on the coast but not knowing when the next storm would roll in. Imagine being out on the water when your boat was swallowed up by the sort of chaotic, primeval energy that only God could tame. Of course the ancient imagination of a world in which God’s reign was complete didn’t leave any room for the sea! Because a piece of my heart will always belong on the coast, it’s hard for me to accept that the vision of Revelation 21 is an authoritative depiction of the literal heaven that awaits us, but the exercise of having my earth-bound expectations of what will be stripped away is a pretty important step in getting ready to take part in the coming reign of God.
The kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is like a landowner who doesn’t know the first thing about running a business. Actually, that’s not what Jesus says, but the parable he tells us isn’t like any economic situation I’ve ever seen. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard,” Jesus says. “After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.” So far, nothing strange. But then, three hours later, he went out and hired additional workers. And then, at noon and three and five, he did the same thing again, each time promising to pay the laborers whatever was right. But, when it was time to pay everyone, he gave them all the same amount—the usual day’s wage.
When the workers who toiled all day long—twelve hours in the hot sun—realized that they had been paid the same amount as the ones who only worked one hour, they were angry. Of course they were angry! Who wouldn’t be angry? And why? Is there anything that hits home with us as clearly or forcefully as what they said to the landowner: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us.” You have made them equal to us—to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. If you think that anyone is going to show up at 6:00 in the morning the next time you’re looking for laborers, you’d better think again.
This parable flies in the face of first-century expectations just as fully as it slaps us in our twenty-first-century faces. We are no better than Jesus’ disciples at imagining a world in which a business owner would voluntarily pay their workers not in proportion to the work that they do but just because they showed up. But that’s exactly what the world looks like when God is in charge. That’s how the value of a human being is assessed in God’s economy—in the heaven that awaits us. And it’s no surprise that it’s hard to imagine that from here.
In this parable, Jesus gives us a glimpse into how people are received and valued and rewarded in God’s reign. In heaven, we matter to God not because of what we do or how long we’ve worked or how much we’ve produced. We matter to God because God is generous. “Take what belongs to you and go,” the landowner says. “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Our expectations of how God will receive us when we get to heaven are conditioned by our experience in this life. We expect that people who have been faithful their whole lives will stand ahead of us in line at the pearly gates. We expect that the best seats at God’s banquet table are reserved for the saints who gave up the most for the sake of others. We expect that the golden, jewel-encrusted crowns worn by those who follow Jesus for decades will outshine the cheap, tin replicas worn by those who only forsake their wicked ways right before they take their last breath. But that’s not how the reign of God works. Our way of making sense of things doesn’t make sense in that place where all people are valued by their Creator not because of who they are or what they do or how good they’ve been but simply because God is the one who loves all of us with limitless generosity.
Our understanding of how things are supposed to work doesn’t often fit within the reign of God. That’s why Jesus uses parables to teach us what heaven is like—because straightforward thinking that doesn’t challenge our earthly assumptions rarely produces a dream worthy of God’s reign. But is the reverse is also true? If the way things work here on the earth can’t be used as a model for how things are when God is in charge, is it also true that how things are when God is in charge makes a poor blueprint for how life could be here on the earth?
The kingdom of God is like a landowner who hired laborers all throughout the day but paid them all the same amount—a denarius, a day’s wage, enough money for them and their families to live on. That’s no way to run a business when you’re trying to cut costs and maximize profits. Admittedly, Jesus wasn’t giving out business advice. He wasn’t teaching MBA students how to run a commercial enterprise. He was teaching us how to imagine ourselves in the reign of God. Surely, the stock market would be in a lot of trouble if preachers like Jesus were in charge of setting corporate policy, but what would the world look like if CEOs and corporate board members and hedge fund managers and day traders and casual investors like you and me woke up and suddenly realized that the value of a human being in this life is no different than their value in the next? Could we figure out how to live together in this world if we all agreed that the real, true, eternal value of a person isn’t tied to their output or the value they add to an economic model but simply to the basic humanity and personhood that all of us share?
I freely admit that I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to get from where we are into the radical reign of God and back again. But I do know that you are loved by God not because of what you’ve accomplished but because our God is generous and loving. I know that your place in the reign of God is secure because of who God is and not because of who you are. I know that you are important to God because God made you and not because of anything you have made. And I believe that that starting point has the power to change this world not only in the next life but also in the one we live here and now because, once we realize that God’s generosity has already made us equal in God’s eyes, the illusion that some people are worth more than others disappears completely.
© 2023 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas