As we enter this Twenty-Fifth day of Lent I'm reminded of a when I was a child living at home. On Sunday's my mother would always prepare a big meal for the family, which also meant a lot of dishes that would need washed. It always fell upon us kids to wash the dishes and clean up the kitchen after dinner, so our parents could go in the living room and watch their favorite television show (60 Minutes). Often us kids would complain to our parents in the fact that other families had automatic dishwashers, and my father would say: "We already have an automatic dishwasher and its name is Kevin, Tim and Tracey". Well after that discussion we would get to cleaning the kitchen, and this often turned into us kids worrying about which one of us was doing the most or the least work. Often during this cleaning time the big trick was which one of us was going to say they had to go to the bathroom, which often would take as long as it took to clean the kitchen.
After Christ was resurrected he began his final journey to Jerusalem and while on the way he told the parable of the householder that hired day laborers. Different laborers were hired throughout the day, but when it came time to be paid at the end of the day, they were all paid the same amount whether they worked the whole day or just one hour. The laborers who had worked the longest complained to the householder and thought that they should be paid more or the others paid less on the account of the amount of time in work spent. The householder stated: "I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree on the amount I would pay you when I hired you?" "Am I not allowed to do with my money as I wish?" "Why do you argue my generosity"?
As I look back on this story in the context of kitchen cleaning as a child, I never thought of the amount of time that my mother spent in preparing a great meal, or the hours that my father labored on the docks and in the semi truck to pay for the meal. Instead I thought of only myself and the short amount of labor that it would take to wash dishes and clean the kitchen.
Brothers and Sisters the message that Christ was telling in this parable was the fact that in the larger scope of things, we need not worry about what others are getting or not getting, and what they are doing or not doing. Our faith is to be lived out in the context of our own personal faith and our own walks with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are all servants of God who have been placed in labor for the benefit of God's kingdom. It is not our place to dictate what God does! As God's beloved and blessed creation, we are to understand that God does what God does, and that he is the householder of the universe. The universe and all that God has created are God's to do with as he wishes, and it is never our call to begrudge the generosity of God the householder.
The Happy Dish Washing Pastor
Tim
Bible Text Reading For Lent Day Twenty-Five
John 21:15-23
Matthew 20:17
Matthew 20: 12,13,15
Philippians 2: 12,13
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