"No one has hired us"-Sermon for Proper 20, Matthew 20:1-16
So, as I was praying over our gospel reading for today early in the week…I was brought back to really one of the most powerful cinematic moments in my life. I was in college. It was 1993. And, the movie was Schindler’s List. I happened to be taking a class that very semester on the Holocaust, reading Primo Levi and Victor Frankl, and I was at the perfect age to soak it all in…let my heart be broken and commit to being a part of a different sort of future in my own day
I want to show a clip from the end of the film…but to set the stage, in case it has been a while for you…as it has for me…Oskar Schindler, born in 1908, was a German Industrialist and member of the Nazi Party. He was in the business of building enamelware and munitions. And, during World War II, the Nazi’s essentially sold Jewish people to loyalist businessmen as a way to pay for the war and increase productivity in German factories. The only potential good that could be associated with this system was that those Jewish people sent into the factories would have otherwise been sent to concentration camps.
Well, Schindler initially began to pay for Jewish people to work in his factories simply for financial gain…cheap labor…more profits. But as he began personal relationships with the Jewish people working in his factories and knowing what would happen to them if he did not keep them employed began to change something in him. And, as you see in the film and read in his biography, what I think really broke his heart wide open were, again, the relationships he forged. Those who began working for him as a commodity of labor…became friends. He really heard their stories…their fears and hopes. He began to see the Jewish people, demonized by the Nazi party, as wholehearted humans…breathtakingly beautiful and capable…God’s own beloved…no different than himself. And it all began with a few words…a willingness to listen to another’s story…listening to understand the experience of another…and this sort of exchange makes friendship possible…and when fighting for friends…anything becomes possible.
So, Schindler begins to hire, or really buy, as many Jewish people from the Nazi’s as he can to keep them out of concentration camps. And he does so frantically, creatively…like a person on a mission. He makes up jobs for them…he bribe’s the SS when they get suspicious…he builds factories in other regions within the Nazi occupied territories where there was less pressure to send his workers to the camps…he sells all his personal belongings to fake profits to justify bringing more Jewish people into his factories…he literally gives it all away…risking his own life and his wife’s, who is right there with him in it all the way to the end, to save as many Jewish people as possible, some 1100-1200 human-beings. When you look at the full story of Schindler’s life, you see that he actually succeeds at little. His marriage fails and most of his businesses also fail, but in this moment in his life…in saving these God-given lives…God’s own beloved…he succeeds…and this is the most important thing.
The scene I will now share is from the end of the movie. He is surrounded by all those people whose lives he has helped save as he and his wife have to leave them, these people who have really become their family, to escape. The war has ended and, as a member of the Nazi Party, he knows that he has to get out of Germany if they are to survive. So, as they prepare to make their escape, he is presented from his Jewish friends a gold ring on which a quote from the Talmud is inscribed that reads, “He who saves the life of one man saves the entire world.” Here goes…(link here).
Now, as I began, this film and really the true story behind it came to mind when praying over our gospel lesson assigned for today which is, perhaps, the familiar parable Jesus tells about the Laborers in the Vineyard. And, in particular, it was the conversation that happens between the laborer’s and the landowner toward the end of the workday that reminded me of the film. Jesus says that the landowner goes out from the vineyard for a final time around 5 PM and discovers more un-hired laborers standing around. We don’t know why the landowner went out…perhaps to recruit more laborers to complete additional end of the day tasks…or perhaps he just headed out on some other sort of errand and stopped as he was surprised to find laborers still looking for work at such a late hour. We don’t know. But what we do know is that the landowner did not just pass them by. And, even if…for we don’t really know…but even if…his initial thoughts about this group of laborers was not that noble…perhaps thinking they had simply slept in a missed out…or just didn’t try hard enough to get noticed and get chosen. Still, the landowner does not just pass them by, judging them as he does so. Instead, he engages with them…begins a conversation with them…asks them a question…perhaps a question they were very happy to answer, “Why are you without work.”. For standing idle, as our translation of Matthew reads, doesn’t necessarily suggest laziness…just not presently working. And the landowner gets an honest and straightforward answer from the Laborers, “We are not working because no one has hired us.”
And, here is where I find the comparison to Oskar Schindler helpful, I imagine that as the landowner engages with the workers…really hears their story…his heart is broken open…it is transformed. He begins to understand why they are yet to begin their day of work…understand that it is not from lack of effort…not because they don’t want to work. They just haven’t been hired. Maybe like the old backyard football game…they had not yet been chosen by the team captain because one had a slight limp, another a patch over an eye, another a rash noticeable on the skin, another difficulty speaking, and another was shorter than the rest. I don’t really know…but what I do know is that the landowner stops and engages with them…and what he learns burst his heart wide open. He hires them on the spot…whether he actually needs them or not…and he pays them based on what they are worth and what they need, not what they are able to produce. And the very fact that the landowner is willing to pay a full day’s wage for a few hours of work makes clear that he is not motivated by profit…but by something else altogether…love…grace…generosity…care for all without distinction. His mind is not set on earthly things but on heavenly things.
Now, there is so much that Jesus is trying to teach us with this parable. But, today, what I want to leave you with is that moment of engagement…of conversation…of listening to another’s story to understand their experience…this sort of exchange makes friendship possible…and when fighting for friends…anything becomes possible. I think that Jesus is asking us to not assume the worse of those who look, live, love and believe differently than we do…and certainly not to just walk by them…or worse see them as a commodity to exploit as a means to our own ends. Instead, Jesus is asking us to engage with them…begin a conversation with them…listen to them to understand their experience.
Perhaps just a friendship will be forged, which is a really good thing. But, maybe, just maybe, our hearts will also be burst open in a new way, adjusting our priorities…how we see the world…unleashing in us more love, more grace, more generosity than we ever imagined we were capable of. Maybe one’s dignity can be restored…maybe even a life saved…maybe we can be bold enough to believe that when one saves the life of a single person…he or she saves the world. Indeed, a conversation worth engaging in. Amen.