Making a Virtue from a Vice -- Reflections on Matthew 20.1-16

Making a Virtue from a Vice

Reflections on Matthew 20.1-16

 

RCL Proper 25A

24 September 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Church

New Westminster BC

 

Some years ago during my tenure as Acting Director of what we then called the Native Ministry Programme at Vancouver School of Theology, I chaired an impromptu meeting to discuss an issue that had just popped up.  As the meeting had been unexpected, I hadn’t made any arrangements for refreshments or, if needs be, lunch.  So, when lunchtime arrived, I apologized that we would be ‘on our own’ for lunch.  Since Paula and I hadn’t been shopping and our cupboards were low, I also apologized for not being able to have folks come to our place.  “I’m not sure we have enough,” I remember saying.

 

Later that afternoon, as we were adjourning the meeting, one of the Aboriginal members of the committee came up and thanked me for offering him an unintentional insight into cultural differences.  “You didn’t ask us to your house for lunch because you felt you could not host us well,” he said.  “In my community we just invite everyone and make do with what we have.  It usually works out okay.”  Where I had been acting out of an attitude of scarcity and a particular understanding of what it meant to be a good host, my Aboriginal colleague was acting out of an attitude of prodigality and embracing whatever hospitality was on offer.

 

In most cultures generosity is considered a virtue and miserliness a vice.  But we’re also unsure about the opposite of miserliness – prodigality.  After all, too much of a good thing is not necessarily to be encouraged.  I think that we are suspicious of such open-handed generosity because somewhere, lodged deep in our cultural DNA, is the knowledge that today’s abundance can become tomorrow’s scarcity in a heartbeat.

 

Recent events, such as the pandemic, the concrete consequences of climate change and economic ups and downs, have served to confirm this bias towards limiting our generosity.  As Paula and I continue our preparations for retirement from fully active lives into something less active, we’ve been in extensive conversations with our financial planner.  Because Karim is person of faith, we find these conversations to be more about values than financial assets.  What is the legacy that Paula and I wish to leave not only to our children but to our community?

 

Today’s parable of the labourers in the vineyard comes to us with some questions:  Where do we find ourselves on the spectrum between miserliness and prodigality?  Are we more motivated by gratitude for God’s open-handed generosity or by fear of scarcity?  Do we look forward to the future or do we dread it?

 

These questions apply to our current situation as a parish.  We are in the midst of numerous transitions.  In July we bid farewell to George Ryan and are currently seeking his successor.  Today we bid farewell to Carole and Don and wonder who will step into their roles.  At the end of the year I will retire and a new priest will come to bring their particular gifts to this community.  Looming behind, above and in front of all these transitions is our long-awaited project of restoring the Cathedral and redeveloping the Parish Hall site.

 

If we are captivated by an attitude of fear and of scarcity, then these are troubling realities.  No matter what we do, we will not have what we had before.  Life at Holy Trinity in the coming months and years will not be what is was before COVID and before George and before Carole and Don and before me.  We may find ourselves like the labourers hired first thing in the morning, grumbling at what we find in our pockets by the end of the day.

 

But I do not think that we are a community motivated by fear and scarcity.  We are a generous community and our current situation is inviting us into embracing God’s prodigal and open-handed generosity.  We are grateful for the music leadership of George, but we’ve been gifted with the leadership of Joash and Jasiel and the Choir as we move forward.  We know how richly Carole and Don have graced this Parish with their leadership and service, but we can be confident that others will step up and bring their own gifts to our community ministries and our worship.  In one hundred and sixty-four years of our Parish’s life, I am the sixteenth priest in charge and, in 2024, the seventeenth will take up their ministry here.  Each one of us, as well as the various curates and associated clergy, have provided pastoral care, taught and ministered the sacraments of the new covenant.  

 

Friends, Jesus tells us that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Let me say to you, that we are not the first to serve here, nor do I believe we are the last.  We may, from time to time, feel like the Israelites in the desert, but God has a habit of providing what we need.  “We are pilgrims on a journey, fellow-travellers on the road”, a journey, a road that leads us ever closer to the world as God desires it to be.  That world is a world where the open-handed, prodigal generosity of time, talents and treasure is a virtue, a participation in the graciousness of the God who has created us, redeemed us and sanctifies us.