“Making Sense Out of Nonsense”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – September 20, 2020

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 105:1-6; Matthew 20:1-16

 

    Most of us are familiar with the parable of Jesus that described a wealthy vineyard owner who hired workers at different times during the day.  When it came time to pay the laborers for working that day, the vineyard owner directed his foreman to pay those who were hired last the same wage as he paid those who were hired first. 

    There is an eagerness in people to discover what others are being paid. Many people appear to have attached their self-worth to a dollar amount. When the laborers learned that all of them had been paid the same wage, they were unhappy.  When they challenged the vineyard owner about how unfair his business practices were, he reminded them of their initial agreement.

    Each laborer had agreed to work for a silver coin.  As for paying everyone the same wage, he said, "Don't I have the right to do as I wish with my own money, or are you jealous because I am a generous man?"  (Matthew 20:15)

    Each of us would understand the vineyard owner's right to do what he wishes with his money, but paying his laborers the same wage would be greeted as pure nonsense.  How could such a practice be justified or tolerated?

    Clearly Jesus was making sense out of nonsense.   He began his parable, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like this," thus Jesus was not talking about the world of commerce.  Jesus was describing the nature of God.  But, even so, can this be true? Was Jesus suggesting that in the next world, Adolf Hitler would receive the same reward as the Apostle Paul?  If so, how could this possibly be true?

    The answer for making sense of this apparent nonsense is easier to understand once we understand God's nature, the purpose of the world, and the right of each of us to evolve exactly the way our decisions mold and shape our destiny. 

    Religion is partly responsible for the way we look at life.  People have created certain eternal destinations for the faithful and for those who never grew up by maturing spiritually.  We have labeled these destinations as Heaven and Hell. From Persia's Zoroastrianism, the early Hebrews adopted images of a God of light and a God of darkness.  This dualism fueled the way our faith and trust in God has evolved. Even the Apostle Paul viewed his goal in life to win the prize of being with God.  (2nd Timothy 4:6f) 

    Jesus used metaphors of dividing the sheep from the goats and wheat from the chaff in order to teach his listeners that judgment is built into creation. Each of us chooses which world will best serve our needs, the world within or the external world. (Matthew 25:32f) Those serving their inner world were separated on the right and those serving the needs of the physical world were on the left.   

    What is missing is God's nature of infinite and everlasting forgiveness.  When we see all the evil in the world, we can feel smug in our feelings that someday evil people will get theirs. God will see to it! How easily we forget Jesus' lesson of "In my Father's house are many rooms." (John 14:2) Most certainly, this cannot mean that everyone in this life gets the same silver coin.  That would be sheer nonsense. Really?

    We see God's forgiving nature showing up in Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son.  We experience the nonsense when the wayward son gets the feast and the son who remained faithful during his life never received any reward for doing so. He talked back to his father:

Look, all these years I have worked for you as a slave. I have never once disobeyed you.  What have you given to me?  Not even a goat for me to have a feast with my friends!  But this son of yours wasted all your property on prostitutes and when he comes back home, you kill the prize calf for him."  (Luke 15:29f)

    We can see the linkage of the vineyard owner paying all his day-laborers the same wage and the forgiving spirit of this father whose son was lost before coming to his senses and decided to return to his home. What was Jesus illustrating regarding life in the Kingdom of Heaven? 

    Listen to the words of this poem:

I was shocked, confused, and bewildered as I entered Heaven’s door, not by the beauty of it all, nor the lights of its décor.  But it was the folks in Heaven who made me sputter and gasp – the thieves, the liars, the sinners, the alcoholics, and the trash. 

There stood the kid from seventh grade who swiped my lunch money twice. Next to him was my old neighbor who never said anything nice. Herb, who I always thought was rotting in Hell, was looking remarkably well.

I asked Jesus, 'What's the deal? I would love to hear your take. How did all these sinners get up here? God must have made a mistake.  And why is everyone so quiet, so somber – give me a clue.'  Jesus said, 'They, too, are all in shock.  No one thought they would be seeing you.'

    God's love and forgiveness is like the vineyard owner doing what he wants with his wealth. It has nothing to do with rewarding anyone according to their worth. God's forgiveness captures the essence of God's spirit.  It has nothing to do with the responses of people who will never escape what they were when they were here on the earth.

    Some of us may recall the rebellion of the natives of Zimbabwe when they turned on the wealthy farmers and killed them and their families in order to gain control over their land.  The government did nothing to interfere.  It was not long thereafter that reality set in.  The natives knew nothing about crop rotation, when to apply fertilizer and pesticides, how to repair farm equipment, where to buy plants, seeds, parts for making repairs, and how to market their crops.

    All the natives knew was that the land produced wealth for the farmer and his family. What turned a gold mine into a waste land was that the natives had no knowledge of how to manage a farm.

    The same is true about life.  All of us enter our world with amnesia of where we came from. Our physical vehicle comes from the union of a sperm and an egg. What enters that physical form does not come from human beings.

    The physical world offers every incarnating entity a chance to experience what this spirit-being can do in this material setting that only appears to offer everything anyone could possibly want. John 10:34f)

    Can you imagine an archangel incarnating on the earth and developing a love for having power, prestige, and wealth?   This spirit-being has no memory of being anything else prior to entering a physical form.  What resulted from having a lust for the things of this world was a puffed-up ego and an insatiable hunger for more power. 

    Only when that archangel returns to its place of origin will the spirit-being realize how poorly it behaved. The being never awakened spiritually but chose instead to remain a prisoner of having power in the material world. That archangel's experience in the material world would be quite humbling. Jesus, had awakened and began teaching those who could understand how the power of loving and serving others impacts and influences them.

    The earth experience with all its temptations, attractions, and promises is a movie where we become an actor in order to see how we do for a brief period of time. The first are always last and the last are always first but only a few awaken to that understanding while they are here.  The earth-experience for spirit-beings is not for the uninitiated.  They crave to experience human emotions, but do so without any understanding of who they were prior to their incarnation into human form. THAT is their risk. They can become a St. Francis or an Adolf Hitler. 

    This is why God has no need to judge anyone.  Each of us is doing that by the choices we make.  Only those who realize that more is happening here than what appears, can seize the moment and learn to fly while others crawl with all their material blessings.

    Those who know what is really happening during their earth-experience will quietly and humbly operate behind the scenes and sow their seeds filled with attitudes that work on earth as they do in Heaven.  Others who are listening to these teachers will discover their own treasure buried in the field within them.  (Matthew 13:44)

    This is why Jesus could be at peace in Galilee instead of wishing that he had been born in Rome, Athens, or Alexandria.  From his experience at his baptism, Jesus became a giant by living the last three years of his life in a place few people cared about.  What mattered was that he did so fully awake to his true identity. As a result, the qualities of Heaven poured through him. From those last three years of Jesus' life came changes that would affect the future of those still in physical form.  Now, it is our turn to reveal the energies of Heaven.  The result will be making sense out of what appears to be nonsense.

     

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

We are grateful, O God, that you never sleep. You are never far away from us.  Each time a sparrow falls, you know.  Each time someone expresses his or her pain or gratitude, you understand.  Each time someone feels alone and forsaken, you are present.  How many times the earthquakes, winds, and fires of life try to convince us otherwise?  How many times the unexpected has evoked our frustration because our plans were spoiled? How many times have our worries chased smiles from our faces? Thank you for helping us to remember that we belong to you and that living in our constantly changing world is not our final destination.  Amen.

                                                                                 

PASTORAL PRAYER 

Loving and ever-present God, in the quiet and hush of these moments, we ask that you still our spirits with feelings of peace.  How grateful we are that regardless of whom we have become, or what rules we have broken, or what unloving thoughts we have held, you accept us just as we are.  Regardless of our age, all of us are in the process of growing and maturing in spirit and we tend to judge ourselves with little confidence that we see ourselves as you do. 

Our faith tells us that there will always be a silver lining to our clouds, that pain is never permanent, and that vacuums created from losses are always filled with unexpected surprises.  And yet the journey to that day often seems long and exhausting.  May the challenging realities that so many of us face help to bring a different perspective to our lives.  There are times when we are tempted to find fault, blame and complain, believing that our happiness has been destroyed by others.  We forget how to be grateful that our lives are surrounded by so many blessings. 

Today help us to find healing for our spirits.  May those of us who are worried, anxious, and feeling alone leave this service reassured that you are our life-partner forever. Rather than believing that we have such a long distance to grow before we feel whole, inspire us to take what we have, as humble as that may be, and use it to make your Kingdom more visible.  We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . .