You Don't Have to Like It

You Don't Have To Like It--January 18, 2018

[Jesus said:] “For 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 idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So 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. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also 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 to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” [Matthew 20:1-16]

I will tell you six of the most important words I have learned as a parent of young children.  Are you ready for them?  Okay.  Here goes:

You don't have to like it.

There they are.  Six words' worth of crystal clarity.

You don't have to like it. You don't have to like it.

Now, I guess at one level, those are words that I need to hear myself from time to time as a parent.  I need to be reminded that being a dad or a mom is not a hobby or a pastime, done only for the sake of how fun it is or how happy it might make you on any given day.  That ain't the point.  And it is not the sort of thing one has the right to quit doing just because it is hard or you are tired or you don't want to have to be the bad guy telling children it's time for bed or no more cookies for the night.  In such moments, yeah, I guess those six words of clarity are aimed at me:  "Hey Steve, guess what?  You don't have to like it.  It's still your job... your role... your calling, in this moment and this place and time to love children, and that is not dependent on whether you like doing it at the moment."

But more often, I find that those same words are part of the underlying logic of teaching my son and my daughter how to be human in our particular branch of the human family tree.  In other words, I find that a good bit of parenting--of forming children into a particular way of life so they can be good and wise and loving mature adult humans--is teaching them that there are some things we do in life whether or not we "feel like" it, and whether or not we like it.  And there are some things that are true about how we "run" the household that are not up to their votes or their liking or disliking.  Being loving to one another is not up for debate--that is how we treat one another in this household.  You don't have to like it--that's just how it is.

So, for example, if one kid got to have a special treat in school and the other is left without, well then, yes, Mom and Dad reserve the right to find some other kind of treat to give to the one with nothing, even though that puts an end to the gloating from Child #1 (and to be honest, sometimes it seems like the gloating is more the point for them than whatever the piece of candy or cheap colored plastic is that they are bickering over).  In moments like those, I get to be the dad who says, "I know you are upset that your sister gets something as well as you getting something.  You don't have to like it--but that is how we do things in this family.  We don't gloat about having when someone else is going without."

Or, when Mommy is sick or tired and needs to go to bed early after a rough day or a nasty flu bug, sometimes the conversation has to be had with the kids:  "I know you don't like helping clear the table and doing the dishes with me, but right now we need to let Mommy have a break and that means we're going to do the clean-up.  You don't have to like it--but that's how we do things here.  We take care of the one who is feeling sick."

I'll bet you can supply your own instances from your own family life as well.  Sometimes it's teaching the kids that even when someone else is mean or rotten or unfair to them, we treat them back with respect rather than meanness--when they go low, we will go high.  Sometimes it's about our collective responsibility to clean up after ourselves, or the limits of how much television or candy can be consumed in any single twenty-four hour period.  Sometimes it's the insistence that we will be holding hands and praying before we eat, and that means we will wait for everyone to come to the table rather than scarfing down the macaroni before everyone is seated.  Whatever the particulars, I'll bet you have had the experience in your own life, whether on the giving end or the receiving end, of the sentence, "You don't have to like it!  But this is how it is..."

And as much as that might sound like a harsh line to take with children, ultimately I think it is freeing, for the children and the grown-ups alike.  It is a reminder that we are called into families in this life, whether biological, adoptive, or the spiritual kind of family we call Church, that shape us for a particular way of doing things, a particular way of life.  And in the household, or the "economy," of God's family (the word "economy," remember, comes from the Greek word for "house" or "household"), God reserves the right to be gracious more than we deserve, and beyond what we think other people deserve, too.  That is the kind of community God calls us into. 

That's one of the things I love about this story from Matthew's Gospel.  The landowner knows perfectly well what he is going to do all along, and in fact he is the one who creates the "crisis" and tension in the story by setting up the pay line the way he does.  He has called the workers into his kind of system, his kind of order.  When he hires them, they agree to "whatever is right," and that means letting the landowner be the one to determine "what is right."  They are expecting that it will mean getting more than other people, but the landowner all along knows that he is planning to pay them all the same wage at the end of the day--enough to feed their families the next day.  Even just the hiring itself so late in the day is more than the workers are "owed," and perhaps they should have gotten a hint from that at the beginning that this landowner reserved the right to do things differently than they might have expected. 

But once they have been called into his vineyard, they are now also being called into the landowner's way of doing business.  And at the end of the day, as they look at their paychecks and see that they don't have a case for claiming they were cheated, but also as they look bitterly to see that the landowner has made them all "equal", the ones first hired hear the landowner's response:  "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?"  "Didn't we agree on exactly what you got in your paycheck?"  "Are you envious because I am generous?" All of which boils down to, "You don't have to like it, but I choose to be gracious."  The landowner has called them, not just into a day's work, but into a particular way of living, a particular ordering of the household, a particular "economy" of grace.

We should be honest about this ourselves.  To be called by Jesus is, in much the same way, to be called into God's particular way of running things--what Jesus so often called "the Kingdom of Heaven," or "the Reign of God," if you want to be a bit more accurate.  To be called by Jesus is not just to throw on a jersey for Jesus' team (with embroidered crosses on it, I guess?) while still getting to keep our old way of thinking and acting.  To be called by Jesus is to be called into his way of doing things, and that will include our (sometimes grudging) training in the economy of grace.  It will mean that we get used to God running the universe beyond what we deserve, and beyond what we think "those people" deserve," whomever we imagine "those people" to be.

And, like being in a family, it means that sometimes--wonderfully, blessedly!--God says to our stingy, self-righteous hearts, "You don't have to like it--but this is how we do things in this household."  And so Jesus teaches us, like children learning their family's ways of managing the house, to shape us into his own likeness--whether or not it's what our self-bent spirits would have picked.  

He says things like, "You don't have to like it, but in this household, we do good to those who wish us ill.  We will not return evil for evil."

He says things like, "You don't have to like it, but in this household, we admit our mistakes rather than digging in our heels and pretending we weren't wrong."

He teaches us to tell the truth in the face of hypocrisy, and yes, to the face of hypocrites, but also to own up to our own hypocrisies as well.

He teaches us to welcome the last, the least, the left-out, and the lost... and to see that "we" are "those people," too.

He teaches us to surrender ourselves, to lay our lives down for one another, and even to offer up ourselves for the sake of our enemies, rather than insisting on protecting "me and my group first."

He trains our eyes to see a new kind of household--a "beloved community," to use Dr. King's phrase for it--that God is making, one which includes people from everywhere, and to see that beautiful variety as its glory.

Jesus does all these things because we have been called into his household, and whether we like it or not, this is how God does things in the family.  But Jesus teaches them to us as well so that they will become our practices, our way of thinking and doing, and our character.

You don't have to like it when God is gracious beyond your expectation.  But you are--inescapably--part of a family in which the head of the household not only practices such grace, but trains up all the children in the family to do the same.

Lord Jesus, you have called us into this family, into this household, into this economy of grace--shape us in the likeness of your way of doing things, into your way of loving.