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Biography
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"What’s Right" And so Jesus tells a story: The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing around in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard and I will pay you what’s right.” They went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner saying, “These last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But he replied, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.” God, says Jesus, is like...well, is like a farmer who had grapes to harvest. He goes to town at dawn, contracts with some workers, they go to work, agreeing to work for the usual daily wage. At mid-morning, he’s back downtown. He hires more workers, they go to work. At noon, he’s back, saying, “Come work for me, I’ll pay you what’s right.” At three in the afternoon, he’s back. You can imagine who’s left at the Unemployment Office by this time of the day: people nobody else wants! Still, he invites, they go to work. One hour before quitting time, he’s back! No self-respecting boss wants the folk who’ve been passed over by everybody else, who’ve been hanging out all day on the street corner—except this boss. At quitting time, the boss calls everybody in and pays everybody the same wage, even if they have only worked an hour. Well, there are murmurings of injustice: What about those of us who worked all day! We’re being treated just like those guys that showed up just before quitting time? It isn’t right! Well, what is right? First day of class the professor says, “Now this is a class in advanced mathematics. Your entire grade will be determined by your success in solving a complex mathematical problem. And I want everyone to get an ‘A’. So I’m going to give you the problem to be solved today, first class. And I urge you to begin work right away because I want everyone to get an ‘A’.” Well, you don’t what to have happen what happened to you last semester so you begin work the next day. And sure enough, the problem is a real killer. You set aside some time to work on it everyday. But you are surprised a bit when, at a party on campus, you run into Jane and she says, “Hey, aren’t you in that math class with me? Didn’t that professor give out some kind of problem the first class? I need to get that sometime.” She hasn’t even begun? Wow, is she in for a shock! You continue to work on the problem, making headway each day. One week before the end of the semester you see George. “Hey man, I really need to get going on that math problem for our final.” Is he kidding? He hasn’t even begun? There is no way he he’ll get it done! Last day of class, the professor says, “Now class, hand in your final exams.” You proudly bring your papers forward. You have bought one of those great blue folders. Teachers like those. “Good work,” says the professor, looking over your paper. “Looks like you got yourself an ‘A’ right here.” But you are shocked to see Jane come forward and hand in her paper. How did she get it done? You are about to find out. “Thanks for helping me. I’ve learned more in this class than I ever have I’ve taken before! There aren’t many professors who are willing to go out and tutor a student three afternoons a week!” George comes forth. He hands in his paper. He says, “You know, I’ve never done this well on an exam. But then, of course, I’ve never had a professor who, the night before the exam came to my dorm at midnight, to help me over the hump. And I’m sorry what my roommate yelled out when you knocked on the door. He never expected a professor to be in the dorm in the middle of the night. Hope you got some sleep this morning.” The outrage of it all! You grumble to the professor. She has the nerve to look surprised, “Didn’t I say, first class, that I wanted everyone to get an ‘A’? Well, you got an ‘A’. Rejoice. The others needed a little bit of help. I’m a teacher! I teach!” You look at your ‘A.’ It was what you wanted. But somehow it doesn’t feel like an ‘A’ now that everybody’s got one! What with these midnight forays into the dorm and spoon feeding to these idiots! You grumble! That’s not how we think of “what’s right,” is it? Over the front door of our courthouse, there is a statue of a blindfolded woman. She holds scales in one hand, a sword in the other. She is Lady Justice. That’s our view of justice: blind, no partiality, dispassionate, disengaged, cool and calm. Well, Jesus indicates another sort of justice, another definition of “what’s right.” Here is a God who does not, thank God, give us “what we deserve.” We don’t get our just desserts; we get a God who seeks, who intrudes, who reaches. We get a God who just won’t rest until everybody, no matter what hour they showed up, has joined the party. And Jesus says, God is the grape farmer who is more interested in recruitment, inviting, seeking and finding people to work on his farm than in the harvest. Oh, how this view of God collides with much that we think. In the modern world, God is the great bureaucrat in the sky, just following the rules, treating everyone the same, saying, “They know my office hours. Let ‘em come to me if they need me. I’m not going out to them.” Deistic, distant, calm, cool, detached and aloof. You look back over your life, and in sober moments you realize all the ways that you have disappointed yourself, and God, all the times when you failed, when you knew better and all the wrong that you did because you didn’t know better. Would you really want a God who gives you, what you really deserve? Sometimes I think of my life as the sum of my achievements, “I’ve got what I’ve got because I worked hard I earned it. I deserved it!” But in rare moments of honesty, I know that most of what I got came as gift, grace, unearned, undeserved. In my life, I’ve never gotten what I deserved: I got more, oh so much more. And that’s good, that’s good, except when it’s God’s graciousness that’s your graciousness. Look, I’ve been in church all my life. Don’t I deserve something special for that? You want to know how many sermons I’ve suffered through (both on the giving and the receiving end)? You want to know how good I’ve been, even when I didn’t want to, how hard I’ve worked to get in good with God? And for you, of all people, who don’t know as much Bible as I know, to waltz in here at the midnight hour, just because you think God has got this thing for you, loves you, is willing to forgive you for everything, and is just dying to have you work for him, well...I grumble! Conversation with William Willimon Lydia Talbot: Will, I suspect your students at Duke, over the 20 years you served there, would grumble a lot at that parable! Will Willimon: I remember I preached years ago on that parable and when I came out of Duke Chapel, this student, a young woman, was standing there. She said, “Where do you get these stories that you use in your little talks?” I said, “Stories? I guess, growing up in South Carolina.” She said, “I was really offended by the one today.” I said, “Offended?” She said, “Yeah. That’s not the way to treat people! The people who’ve worked all day should get more than the people who just showed up.” I said, “You know, that story is not original with me. What’s your church background?” I was just praying she wouldn’t say Methodist! She said, “Presbyterian, sort of.” I said, “Well, just for your information the man who told that story was later murdered for telling it. They really didn’t like that story.” Talbot: A very great man used to write in parables. But you retell Jesus’ parable in the context of personal gain, your example of the student who wanted the “A” and so on. Let’s take it to a different level: corporate, political gain in the market culture in which we reside. Unpack that for us. Willimon: I think we do live in, as you said, a market culture in which you get what you work for and you work for what you get. I mentioned at the beginning about this. It’s interesting, lately I hear a lot of: “You deserve it! You deserve this. You worked for it. You earned it.” Christians schooled in stories like this one keep trying to understand that, no, it’s a gift and I really haven’t earned or gotten what I deserved. God is, as the Scripture says, kind to the ungrateful and the selfish, which is me! Daniel Pawlus: What’s interesting to me, Will, is this idea of us playing the judge or wanting to play the judge. How do you think perfectionism factors into that? Sometimes we’re going along and thinking we’re doing God’s work, but we’re really tough on ourselves in those times. Willimon: Perfectionism has not been my sin! Sorry if it’s yours. But I think sometimes we forget how really odd it is to have this God, who comes to us in Jesus Christ, who says I’ve come just for sinners. That’s all I’m here for is just sinners. How you qualify is to be an honest to goodness sinner. We get confused into thinking that, basically, religion is about really being a much better person rather than open-handedly receiving that grace. Augustine said one time, “Sometimes we sin, even against Sunday, by turning Sunday into just another day of work.” Talbot: But how do you read the Bible? Wouldn’t you agree that God has preferential treatment for the poor? Willimon: Yes. Jesus is not too nice on rich people, like me! Some have said maybe one reason the poor come across as particular recipients of God’s grace is that they are reminded daily of their need, of their dependency. And once again in our culture dependence is a ugly word. Most of us never want to be dependent on anybody, even though we are constantly, in ways we refuse to acknowledge. Maybe I could think of being a Christian as sort of training in learning how to be dependent and learning to admit my need which is so often covered over by my affluence. Pawlus: It does go to the point, too, where you mentioned that we want to think that if we put in enough time, enough quantity, that it’s going to equal quality. But that’s certainly not the case in our relationship with God, is it? Willimon: No. I think we put in time and effort in our relationship with God the way we put in time and effort in any love relationship we’re in, a marriage or whatever. I think one problem the poor have always suffered is the notion that you’re in the circumstance you’re in because of what you’ve done or not done and I’m in the circumstance I’m in because of what I did. So if you find yourself in a condition of poverty it must be because you’ve done something wrong. Well, the Bible really works against that and it gives poor the dignity of being special objects of concern. The rich, at least in Jesus, have special responsibilities because of the material gifts they’ve enjoyed. Pawlus: As Bishop of the United Methodist Church for northern Alabama, Will, what have you learned about this whole question of justice and systemic problems that you see from your perspective as bishop? Willimon: One of the great things about being in a place like Alabama is that we really got caught in vast systemic generational injustice with racial segregation and oppression. I say that’s a gift because one thing Americans are not that good at is admitting we’ve done wrong. And again it’s kind of wonderful. Gary Wills said some time ago, “If you’re a white male Southerner over 50, there’s no way I can convince you people can’t change because you’ve experienced such radical change in your own soul, in your own family.” That’s why being in Alabama is sort of fun, to realize how much change has happened. A lot more change needs to happen, but I keep telling my churches it’s no small thing that Christians gather on a weekly basis and on most Sundays stand up and say we’re wrong, we did wrong, we are wrong. That’s not something that comes with being an American, it appears. We’re pretty defensive that we’re right and we mean well and what we do turns out well. Pawlus: Are you seeing that open up in some of the churches in terms of social justice activities and more of a consciousness to be involved and help in that way? Willimon: Alabama is one of the poorest states in the country so that does mean that you’ve got a high percentage of people who’ve either been in poverty or have been in poverty recently enough to remember what that feels like. I was at a church not long ago where the pastor was saying, “We’ve had the most wonderful ministry among the homeless and feeding them because I’ve got about half-a-dozen people in this church who are old enough to remember what it was to be hungry at some time in their lives and they are incredibly generous.” He said, “One of my people has said, ‘If you know of anybody in this town who needs food, you tell me. You provide it for them and I’ll pay you because I know what a horrible thing that is.’” Pawlus: Thanks so much for joining us today, Will. We appreciate it. Willimon: Thank you |
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