Latest / St. Paul Podcast / A Thief of Joy 09.20.26

Transcript

A Thief of Joy 09.20.26 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, senior pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Open the eyes of my heart.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Open the eyes of my heart.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see you.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see all the holy holy holy I want to see.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Holy Holy Holy.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: In just a few moments, I'm going to read for you a parable that ends with a line that will sound familiar.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's when Jesus says those great words, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: But before that, Jesus tells this story that isn't really a favorite of many people.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a story that ultimately talks about fairness.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: And to be honest, as human beings, we're sort of wired to want things to be fair and equal.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: You get what you deserve, you get what's fair in life.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this shows up in the ways we compare ourselves to others, the ways we uh want what we get from life, from God to be fair.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So as you listen to the story, I want you to notice just how you react.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you hear fairness show up?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: How would you feel or react if you were any of these different workers?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: What do you make of the different reactions that Jesus describes in the story?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: So let's take a listen to the Gospel of Matthew now, uh chapter 20.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus told this story.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: So they went.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: When he went out again about noon, and then about three o'clock he did the same, and about five o'clock he went out and found still others standing around.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he said to them, Why are you standing here idle all day?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: They said to him, Because no one has hired us.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So he replied, You also go into the vineyard.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received a denarius.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Did you not agree with me for a denarius?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Take what belongs to you and go.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Or are you envious because I am generous?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, now that we've heard that parable and maybe even imagined how we would respond if we were one of those workers in the vineyard, let's listen to this reflection and think together a bit about how fairness and gratitude factor into our lives of faith.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Here it is.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm thinking this evening about how much time we all spend comparing ourselves, our possessions, our lives, to others.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: A few examples for you this evening.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: We have on a wall in our kitchen a children's growth chart where we measure every few months how tall our kids are, how they're growing, and it never fails.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: That first we'll measure our five-year-old, Micah, and then Mia, who is two years younger.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: And she will inevitably stand as tall as she possibly can, only to become disappointed to learn that she is still shorter than her brother.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: She has not gained any ground.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: We don't really have the heart to tell her that she'll likely always be shorter than her older brother.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Or another example, growing up, one of my best friends, her mom, would keep track down to the penny of how much she spent on each child for their Christmas presents.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: She would make sure that each of the kids had the exact number of presents, the exact same amount spent.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes she would even give kids, her other kids, cash if she sent more on another child.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was an exercise in equality, I suppose, so that there would be no complaining or comparing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: We would like to think that much of the world of comparison happens with kids, but we know it doesn't.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Last year, we bought a new van for our family, and we were at the dealership trying to decide which trim level to buy.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: We had settled on one particular version that had nice leather seats, more technology than we knew what to do with.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: We were very pleased with our decision, never having bought a brand new car before, until the salesman said, Well, there is one trim higher, and that van has a built-in vacuum and a small mini fridge.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And within seconds, our nice new van suddenly already felt outdated.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: We did not buy the van with the mini fridge, by the way.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's actually a whole lot of research about all this.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's called social comparison.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's a project called the Happiness Lab out of Yale University.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: They have this podcast that's really interesting, all about what really makes us as humans happy and grateful.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things they discovered when they did this huge survey of Americans is that the amount of money people needed to feel truly content was right about, as you might expect, the kind of median income in the United States, which is right now about$67,000.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: But there was a caveat where they learned that the more money people make doesn't actually make them happier, but making more money relative to other people does.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And their study they talked about how they we have this evolutionary tendency to compare ourselves to other people.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: We compete to see how we stack up next to anyone, everyone else.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: One researchers researcher said that even the richest people in the world, they can look around and find someone who is just a teeny tiny bit richer and therefore their money isn't making them as happy as they would think.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: The researchers said they can't be grateful when they're already resentful.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then of course there's a challenge of the internet or social media.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: We have this constant comparing of our lives to the perfect presentation of someone else's.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: They have the most beautiful family, the best vacations, the happiest kids, whatever it might be.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: I know none of this is new to you.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: We live it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: We are wired as human beings to compare, to look around ourselves and see how we stack up, that we're keeping up, or at minimum, we have this desire for some semblance of fairness.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And as it turns out, this is not a new trait for human beings.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: It has was happening thousands of years ago as Jesus shares this familiar message that ends with the last shall be first, and the first shall be a last.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: So if today's parable does anything, it might be meant to shake up our sense of reality when it comes to what's fair or what's equal.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: In that parable, Jesus told these groups of workers are brought into the vineyard every so many hours throughout the day, and the last one shows up just about an hour before the workday is done.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And when it comes to quitting time, Jesus describes how the landowner starts handing out payment and ends up paying each of them the exact same amount.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And our human instincts kick in, of course.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: We probably tend to agree with those workers who have been there all day long.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's not fair, of course, that they would have been paid the same amount as the one who worked for just an hour or less.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: But when we get caught up in fairness or comparison, it's easy to miss one very important detail, which is that no one in this story is deprived or shortchanged.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: No one leaves without the money they were promised.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: What feels like the scandal of it all isn't that some people were cheated out of a fair wage, but that their coworkers benefited from generosity without truly earning it.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of funny how something good can suddenly seem less good simply because it's shared.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is, of course, a parable about the generosity of this God of ours, a God who is willing to make sure that everyone has enough, who is less concerned with being fair and much more concerned with being generously kind and filled with grace, who offers this abundant understanding and love giving to each what they need, what is right, as the parable says, rather than being focused on what's fair.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: But it's sort of interesting to me that whenever we hear this parable, I imagine that we're most likely to place ourselves in the shoes of that person who has worked all day and feels slighted.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: That they weren't paid enough.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't fair.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're much less inclined to read the story and put ourselves in the place of the worker who has been there only an hour, who is paid much more than they should have earned.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in all honesty, it wasn't fair for them either.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: We are much more used to looking around at others and deciding we got the bad end of the deal, how we don't have it as good as others.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Rather than looking around and thinking, wow, what a gift I have been given.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: What a life.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's hardly fair.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: This may well be a parable about the generosity, the absurdity of God's amazing grace.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also a parable that should tell us something about ourselves, our ability to be happy with what we've been given rather than grumbling about what someone else has received.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because what Jesus is really telling us in this story is you cannot be grateful and envious at the same time.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: They don't coexist.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: My colleague years ago used to have an off uh a sign in her office that simply said, comparison is the thief of joy.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: We can't live with gratitude for what's right in front of us, for the blessings that abound, if we are more concerned about comparing our lives to our neighbors.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: If we put ourselves in the shoes of those workers who were in the vineyard all day, we tend to think that the miracle here is that those other co-workers, who maybe worked a couple hours at best, the real gift is that they were paid generously.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, the real miracle is that any of us get to share in the work.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: The real miracle is that God comes to the marketplace, pulls each of us out, hands us what we need, and puts us to work.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: The real miracle is that none of us deserve this life that we've been given.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: None of us have earned it, a life of purpose and meaning, grace and forgiveness and connection.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: None of us deserve it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: But all of us are recipients of God's goodness, and fairness has absolutely nothing to do with it.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you think of it, that's really the beauty of why we all show up here on any given weekend.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Just about every area of our lives operates on some scale of fairness.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: If we work, we are paid a certain wage or salary.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: We pay for goods and services on an equitable scale of what we're supposed to pay.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: We have an American justice system that in theory is based on consequences that are that fit the severity of the crime.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: But here in this space, there is no distinction, no hierarchy.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: As you stepped into this room, every seat is essentially exactly the same.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: As you come forward in just a few moments, every single person will receive the exact same little piece of bread and that same little taste of wine or juice.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter how much you give to St.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Paul, how useless or important you may feel, how often you attend or how long you have been a part of this place, the grace and the mercy of God are offered freely just the same for you and you and you and you and all of us.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: Every one of us is lovingly called forward and given purpose in the kingdom of God.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Could there be anything that we could be more grateful for than that?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing about God's grace is fair, but still God is irrationally and infinitely generous and loving.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we can decide where we will direct our time and our energy and our thoughts.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: So as often as we can, may we choose gratitude and generosity, knowing after all that all of it is a gift from God.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Give us today our daily bread.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: May you fill your days with generosity and gratitude.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: May you find ways to put aside comparison and envy, knowing at the end of the day that all we have has been given to us as a gift from God.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: May you notice God's graciousness and generosity all around you today and always.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the Saint Paul Podcast.