Sisters and brothers, grace to you & peace from the God of all grace, the Christ of all compassion, and the Spirit of all life. Amen.

Well, how timely. It’s … a debate! And, one party — the one currently in power — is questioning the other party’s — the relatively-new guy’s — qualifications and credentials.

Sounds familiar!

But this morning, it’s not our sparring presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

This morning, it’s Jesus Vs. the religious establishment, it’s Jesus Vs. the professionally religious, it’s Jesus Vs. institutional religion.

If we back up to the beginning of ch. 21 in Matthew’s gospel, we see why the chief priests and the spiritual elders in Jerusalem were nervous about Jesus and why they became so confrontational with him, questioning his qualifications.

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Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from our overly-generous God, the counter-intuitive Christ, and the ever-surprising Spirit. Amen.

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” This is the question the vineyard landowner asks the workers who had been hired at daybreak for the usual daily wage. They are miffed, they are ticked, they are … well … you know what they are.

What kind of a business owner is this? Doesn’t he know the basics of incentive and reward? Time plus effort equals production, and production equals pay! The hardest workers who were hired first and who have been hanging around all day deserve to be paid first and most.

The workers hired at daybreak had expectations. They felt entitled to more than those who joined them at 5 PM and only worked one hour. So the owner of the vineyard names their “stuff,” and calls them on their complaining.

Yes, everyone gets paid the same. Everyone gets paid the usual daily wage for work in the vineyard. But “am I now allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

And we know what the answer is: Yes, we are envious. Yes, we are ticked off. Yes, we think we have more coming to us.

I think we get what Jesus is trying to teach us in this morning’s little story about how it is with God, how life IS in the reign of God, and we don’t like it one bit.

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Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the God of love, the Christ of compassion, and the Spirit of light and life. Amen.

Jesus is talking about tough love in this morning’s Gospel text. This isn’t easy listening; this isn’t light fare; this isn’t Candyland for Christian living. Rather, this is hardcore, honest, cut-the-bull-and-go-straight-to-the-source authentic “community relations.” This is Jesus’ policy position on conflict in the church. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, the word “church” only appears in two texts: the first was a few weeks ago as we hear the account of Peter’s confession of Jesus to be “the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Jesus was so impressed that Peter had gotten it right that he said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Upon that bedrock confession of Jesus as “Messiah” and “son of the living God,” Jesus promises Peter he will build his church. This is the very first mention of church, EKKLESIA in the Greek, literally, “ones who are called out,” called out from the world to be the body of Christ in the world.

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