Sermon Notes Mt. 20:1-16, Ex. 16:2-14

We get a look at two sides of human life, one based on scarcity and one based on generosity this morning. My guess is that this story was kept by Matthew to guard against a special place for the old guard as new members of the community were being added. The book of Revelation imagines 12 gates around the heavenly city and it doesn’t matter which gate you enter. (taxi driver joke) God’s generosity is not tied to merit or work. How we read this story depends on with whom we identify.Wordsworth-”high heaven rejects the lore of nicely calculated less and more.” I do feel for the folks who worked all day. When they saw the generous pay to the folks who worked one hour they figured that they were going to get a huge bonus ($50) In the culture of scarcity we are always afraid that someone is getting more than their fair share, unless it is we.This marvelous story works at many levels. it uncovers the resentment we have over what someone else deserves. It even describes some political attitudes right now when a lot of us are concerned about the undeserving poor getting too much governmental largess. Part of our resentment is the conviction that we have not received what we deserve, but others get more than their fair share.

What if God doesn’t playy by the rules of scarcity? When we were young, my mother used to say:”money doesn’t grow on trees.” In the manna story we get at the abundant generosity of God,where food rains down from the sky. The former slaves are being introduced to the ethic of plenty v. the ethic of scarcity. The same murmurs are hit in the parable but here they are heard-here the people are so miserable that they yearn for Egypt’s slavery. The people’s complaint is again heard, even though we are one chapter past the crossing of the Red Sea. Here we get the clear notion of sabbath as a time of rest. Only slaves and crazy Americans work seven days a week. The manna story imposes a holy pattern on to the every day.Sabbath recalls redemption from slavery; it points toward freedom.Instead of searching for straw for bricks they get to scatter to look for the daily allotment of food.the people mistrust continues so they naturally try to gather on the sabbath anyway.God is a god of patterns even in time.Glory here is the present help of God in the wilderness.
I was going through some old pictures and our eldest daughter rivalled Winston Churchill in the number of pictures taken of her. We have a bunch of her carrying a basket absolutely delighted as she was filling ti with Easter eggs that were hidden and scattered about. She knows that she will fill up her basket.

Pharaoh is fearful,ruthless, and greedy. He was hit with plague. Now the freed slaves see blessing. Rooted in insecurity, we try to wrest every bit of usefulness we can out of things but also people. Rooted in the security of god, we find enough for the sabbath-no hoarding. Notice how many sinful dispositions deal with possessions but the desire for more doesn’t seem to apply for emotional and spiritual plenty nearly as often. Coveting puts into motion the desire for getting what belongs to someone else. Greed is the insatiable desire for more and more. Material gluttony and envy is more corrosive in its way because it looks to remove something someone has as if they do not deserve it and have not earned it Tightfisted with good often leads to tightfisted people emotionally and spiritually. Even if the ethic of scarcity is good economics, it is lousy for personal and spiritual life. Every unearned smile, every Communion service, every answered prayer is manna, bread from heaven.