Scripture:  Matthew 20:1-16

"So the last will be first and the first will be last."

This past week we were cleaning out some of our kitchen cabinets and just generally getting the house picked up.  Whenever we do that there’s a shuffle of papers here and there—stacks to be organized, filed, recycled, shredded… One thing that emerged in the process was the “Use and Care Manual” for our electric range and oven.  Our stove came with the house, and it’s probably not the one we would have purchased ourselves—it’s got more bells and whistles than we’re normally comfortable with, so over the past few years we have kept the directions somewhat handy. 

Anyway, I was warming up a cup of coffee in the microwave when I glanced down at the back cover of our “Use and Care Manual.”  I started reading.  Tiny print—paragraphs with bullet points referring to things like proper installation and sufficient voltage.  It takes about twenty-five seconds to heat up a cup of coffee, and that’s about as much time as I’ve ever spent reading the warranty information about anything.  But then my eyes fell on a particular phrase that piqued my interest.  Under the heading “This warranty does not cover the following” I read these words:             

“Damages caused by services performed by servicers other than Electrolux technicians or their authorized servicers… use of parts other than genuine Electrolux parts… or external causes such as abuse, misuse, inadequate power supply or acts of God.”

My coffee was done, and ordinarily I would have happily moved on, but now I was curious.  Acts of God?  It just ended there, without explanation.  I had never stopped to wonder what God might have against our stove, but it was clear that the good folks at Electrolux/Frigidaire Inc. had been in prayer about the situation.  Perhaps they knew that God was just waiting for the chance to ruin our oven—to cook a frozen pizza, for example, without removing the plastic wrapper. 

I began to do something completely out of character for me.  I started reading all of the warranty information for all of the Johnston-Krase home appliances, eager to see which manufacturers had also discerned that the wrath of God might one day become a problem for their product.  As it turns out, our Sunbeam toaster is also not covered.  If someday God breaks into our kitchen and smashes it to pieces, or innocently melts it while over-toasting an English muffin, we’ll have no recourse.  It’s all in the fine print—the routine legalese where God is strangely mentioned among operating instructions and warranty limitations. 

I began to wonder a bit more about our society’s general assumptions about God, and I realized that some of it is in the fine print.  Have you looked at your money lately?  At the fine print?  What does it say about God?  “In God we trust.”  It’s a nice sentiment, of course.  I generally like the idea of trusting God.  But I’m not always sure we should have that printed on our money.  It’s not like people trust God with their money, and it’s extremely safe to say that money gets used in lots of ways that reflect absolutely no trust in God.  But it’s there, oddly, in the fine print. 

For some, the whole Bible is “fine print.”  When their blender breaks down, they get out the warranty and read the fine print.  And when life breaks down… when the job is lost, the marriage is lost, when cancer comes, then and only then, it’s time to read the fine print—to scan through to try and find some loophole, some exception to the rule, some explanation that “Acts of God” don’t really work this way…

Or maybe it’s safe to say that the trouble with the Church these days is that too many of us aren’t actually reading the fine print.  Sure, we read the Bible and we study the gospels, but maybe we tend to ignore the fine print.  We look for passages that agree with us, inspirational stories, pleasant psalms, useful guidelines for living—but we gloss over the fine print, the words we’re not sure we really want to hear.

In today’s reading, we have some fine print.  Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a landowner hiring workers for his vineyard.  Starting at 6am, he goes out, and every few hours he hires more workers to come into the fields.  At 6am, and 9am, and noon, and at 3 and then finally at 5pm he hires them.  6:00 rolls around—this last batch of workers has barely broken a sweat—and the landowner announces that it’s quitting time.  So the workers line up, and the 5pm crew gets paid first and each of them receives a full day’s wage.  The guys in back see this, and they start feeling pretty good about themselves.  “If he paid them a day’s wage for just an hour, think what he’ll pay us!” they whisper to each other. 

But as each worker is paid, it’s the same amount.  By the time they’re done, the guys who’d worked all day outraged.  “You made them equal to us!” they cry.  And so the landowner reads to them the fine print:  “Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  And am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

When I was a kid I had a dog, and whenever we made a funny or unusual sound, that dog would cock her head to the side and look at us that way.  I imagine that’s what the disciples did when they heard this parable—cock their heads over, as if looking at Jesus sideways might help them understand him better.  I bet Jesus got that look a lot from people—that look that said, “Just what are you saying, really?”  And it was a moments like this that Jesus himself shared the fine print.  “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” 

In this last section of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus and the disciples are closing in on Jerusalem and he knows that his days are numbered.  So in these final conversations he works to help them understand the way of the world—not the world as it is, but the world of God’s kingdom come and will truly done.  His teachings and parables are peppered with fine print:  “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  “Whoever wishes to be great must be the servant of all.”  “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” 

Jesus’ words here in Matthew remind us that the entire gospel story, beginning with Jesus’ birth, is a story about God taking everything we think we know about power and turning it upside down. 

We tend to think that the wealthy are powerful.  But in the fine print, the poor will inherit the kingdom. 

We tend to think that you’re blessed if you’re strong and happy.  But in the fine print of Scripture, you’re blessed if you are meek and if you’re persecuted for the sake of the gospel. 

We tend to think that shopping is a recreational activity and our politicians are practically begging us to start spending again to save this economy.  But in the fine print, the rich man walked away from Jesus feeling sad, unable to follow because he couldn’t part with all his stuff.

In the fine print of Scripture, the poor are rich, the weak are strong, the fools are wise and the outcasts are the ones who belong to the kingdom of heaven. 

It’s no mistake that you and I tend to gloss it over, because in the fine print of Scripture, we are not the “in crowd.”  Try as I might, I will find no addendum to the gospels that says that the kingdom of heaven will be inherited by white heterosexual middle-class American Christians.  No, it will be those who are last, says Jesus.  The last will be first, and the first will be last.

This is difficult fine print for many of us to read—the fine print that reminds us that the gospels tend to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. 

This is where some leave the Christian Church—because Jesus makes them feel guilty about owning a second home or a boat, or three closets full of clothes. 

This is where some stay in the church but stop reading the Bible seriously—stop thinking that what Jesus said has anything to do with them, and ultimately stop believing that their presence in a Christian church is anything radical at all.

This is where some come up with excuses.  I know I have.  Excuses like, “Yes, but the Bible was written a long time ago.” And “Jesus was speaking in a particular context.”  This is where we pretend to listen to Jesus without seriously considering the consequences for our own lives.

But fortunately, friends, this is where some of us cannot and will not let go.  This fine print.  This is the place where some of us—you and I maybe?—where some of us get gloriously stuck in life—stuck in the struggle to remain faithful to a gospel that calls us more deeply and radically in love with Jesus and with the world around us. 

This is the place where some churches—First Presbyerian of Racine, maybe?—This is the place where some churches find their center and begin to live out of Christ’s heart for their neighborhood. 

“The first will be last…”  Maybe this is the place where First Presbyerian Church starts to think about being“Last Presbyterian Church”—the church with the gigantic heart for all of God’s people, but especially the LAST—the unluckiest, the misfits, the hungry, the poor. 

And maybe this is the place where the keys to our salvation lie in our ability to give up being first and to usher in a new kingdom in our minds and hearts and daily living.