We have staff meetings every Tuesday morning. Similar to our wardens/clergymeeting on Wednesday mornings, we begin with prayer and bible study. This past week we were to study the text for today from the 20^th chapter of Matthew...with news of the Dow Jones Average having plunged 500 points hovering in the air, reminding us of the realities of economic vulnerability.  Internally I was wondering which news would be the gospel-voice for the morning...Jesus or the Dow?

The staff and I found ourselves initially stumped by what we found in Matthew, and what we thought it said about God's economy and our understanding of the churchand stewardship.  Jesus, to put it bluntly, turns upside-down our understanding of what is just in the economy of God. "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner," Jesus tells those who want to follow after him, who goes out to hire "laborers for his vineyard".  Like a contractor circling the parking lot of a Home Depot looking for immigrant workers, the landowner goes out looking for laborers.

Some of the day laborers the owner finds begin work in the early morning - others not until mid-morning or noon or even mid-afternoon and others not until the evening shadows lengthen.   Jesus knows we have experience with workers like this. Jesus also knows we have most likely never encountered an employer who pays each laborer the same wage, whatever time of day their work had begun.  Jesus presents his hearers, and us, with a challenge to our assumptions about what is fair and just.  The owner is resolved to pay each and every day laborer one denarius, no matter how many or few hours they worked.  One denarius feeds a peasant family for one day.  This troublesome landowner turns out to be a threat to all of us who assume that what we receive in wages should be based on the maximum that we can earn and then hoard the rest. The landowner-to the contrary-bases the wages he pays on the minimum that is needed by each person in order to live until tomorrow so they can work again.

No one is more significant in God's economy than any other.  No one deserves to be given more than anyone else if it deprives another the minimum they need to survive so that they can work again.  The economy of God isn't based on scarcity of funds, and competition to see who gets them. The economy of God is based on divine generosity- in which there is always enough for each of us to receive what we need. God's economy is not like ours. We measure out the day's pay according to hours worked.  Like the Hebrew people who had followed Moses into the wilderness, we murmur about how long success is taking,and grumble that so much is being asked of us. Even when showered with blessings, we want to stockpile, struggling to trust that God's blessings are sufficient for us just one day at a time. 

As the staff and I read and talked about today's gospel, there was a bit of squirming and wrestling with questions you're asking yourselves right now: "What do I have that is not just what I need, but that is more than my share, even if I am convinced I deserve it because of my hard work?" And why do I resent someone else receiving "enough," especially if I feel they've worked less for it? It confronts us that Jesus is so comfortable talking about poverty, when we Episcopalians experience discomfort merely talking about money, even when we've got more than enough of it.  Why is it that each autumn of every year we find ourselves wiggling around in our seats or being tempted to squeeze in just one or two extra trips to Rehoboth, rather than being willing to sit down during our stewardship campaign to wrestle with the economy of God and the part we play in it?