WHAT!  NO THANKS?

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Question to the men in the room:  Which one of you, when watching the Super Bowl, says to his wife, “Here, honey, come sit with me and watch the game?”  No, you don’t ask your wife to sit with you.  Instead, you say to her, “Sweetie, we’re out of chips and dips in here.  When you get those, we’re going to need some more Buffalo wings and pizza.  Oh, and don’t forget to refresh our Cokes.  And we’ll need some more ice.”  What we don’t say, even at halftime, is, “Here, honey, I’ll come put the pizza in the oven.  I’ll open up a new bag of chips.  I’ll see to getting the Cokes and ice.  You just watch your movie on the other TV.  I’ll get all this stuff.”  No, we don’t say that.  And, guys, if we aren’t having our wives wait on us hand and foot, we’re wishing it were happening.  We’re thinking that we’re entitled to watch the Super Bowl uninterrupted because we’re guys who like to be waited on while we watch the big game.  We want to be served so we can do what we want to do undistracted.  And, while we might say a perfunctory, “Thanks, Sweetie,” are we really grateful?  Or do we think, “She’s just doing her duty?”

            Well, if you listen to Jesus’ parable in our gospel reading, you might think getting thanked is not something to be expected.  The servant in the story gets no thanks.  Early in the morning he goes out to do his work.  He takes care of the sheep.  Or he spends the day plowing in the hot sun.  At the end of the day, does he get to put his feet up and cool off with a glass of lemonade?  No.  There is still more work to do.  He goes into the kitchen and makes dinner for his master.  When it is ready, he serves his master at the table.  Only when his master throws his napkin on the table and slides back in his chair is his day over.  Then he can have his own dinner.  And does the servant get a word of thanks in Jesus’ story?  No.  He does not.  Not one word of thanks.

            The parable sounds heartless.  My own style of leadership includes thanking the people who work for me.  Oh, sometimes I get busy and forget.  But my failure to give thanks to my co-workers is not a matter of policy.  Instead, I believe in thanking people for doing a good job.  It feels good to hear that your work is appreciated, and I feel that it is important to show gratitude.  People gain a higher level of job satisfaction in an atmosphere of appreciation.  Back when I was serving a church in Indiana, I volunteered as a TV director at a PBS station.  The station was attached to a high school, where their students often carried out its operations.  But, for the fundraising auction, college students were brought in to operate cameras.  At one point, I was the floor director.  He’s the one who tells the on-air talent which camera to look into and gives other important signals.  I could hear the director in my earphones yelling at his camera operators.  They weren’t doing anything right, he barked.  I looked over at the camera operator nearest me, and I could see his white knuckles as he clutched the camera’s handles.  After that director’s shift was over, it was my turn to call the shots.  I had a completely different way of working with people.  It is the TV director’s job to compose each shot.  The director’s instructions sound something like this:  “Camera one:  Two-shot of the talent at the premium board.  Ready one.  Take one.  Camera two:  Cutaway of the people answering the phones.  Ready two.  Take two.  Camera three:  ECU on the honey jar.  Ready three.  Take three.”  After a while, I would let the camera operators compose the shots.  I’d say, “Camera three, get me something from the phone bank.  Oh, that looks good.  Maybe just a little tighter.  I like that.  Ready three.  Take three.”  I first took the attitude that we were all on the job because this is where we wanted to be, and that we all wanted to do it well.  I saw no reason for our work not to be fun.  Then I showed appreciation to the camera operators for their helpfulness and creativity.  I could get anything I wanted and more from my camera operators, because the atmosphere in the workplace changed from constant criticism to a stream of appreciation.  This is the way Liz and I like to work together in the church office.  We laugh and have a good time.  In that atmosphere of appreciation, Liz comes up with some good ideas.  She had the idea of a woman serving her husband without thanks.  After I heard that, I said, “I need that for my sermon somewhere.”  When I got back to my office, I rewrote my introduction to this sermon.  That’s what happens within the right working atmosphere.  I hope I show appreciation for all that Liz does, for she is the most helpful sidekick a pastor could ever want.  My leadership style is to provide an appreciative atmosphere.  That’s the way I’d want to be treated.

            Oh, wait!  Jesus’ parable isn’t about the workplace in his day.  Jesus is not taking the opportunity to approve of the institution of slavery, for it is unimaginable that he would have approved of it.  Nor is Jesus saying that one should be a heartless master over one’s slaves, for that doesn’t sound like the same Jesus who prescribed loving one another.  No, there’s another point in his story.  We’ve heard Jesus tell a story about a shepherd and his sheep, saying, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”  When Jesus told that parable about the lost sheep, he wasn’t making a point about shepherding.  The point was somewhere else.  Now we hear Jesus ask, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?”  You can count on the fact that this parable is not about the proper relationship between masters and slaves.  Jesus is using an everyday occurrence to illustrate a point about discipleship.  In Jesus’ time, apparently, slaves did their work without any expectation of receiving thanks.  The point could be made in our own time with this question:  What college professor among you thanks her students for turning in their term papers?  The answer:  No one, of course.  It is the student’s responsibility to turn in his assignments on time.  He has no right to expect that the professor will say, “Oh, thank you, Mr. Butterfield, for turning in your paper.  That was very thoughtful of you.”  No. The student is only doing what the teacher expects of him.  At the college level, gratitude to a student is neither required nor expected.  What Jesus is saying, then, to his disciples is this:  When you work for God, gratitude to the disciple is neither required nor expected.

            Let me see if I can hear your mind working.  I can hear someone thinking, “Just hold on a minute!  I’ve been working for God for nearly all of my life, ever since I was a child.  Look at all the things I’ve done.  I taught Sunday school for years.  I’ve done work in the yard.  I’ve cooked in the kitchen.  I’ve been an officer in Presbyterian Women.  I’ve sung in the choir.”  Or you may be thinking, “I’ve serve on the session.  I delivered meals to the homebound.  I’ve fixed the plumbing.  I’ve organized workdays and cleaned the carpets.  I’ve served as a worship lay leader.”  And maybe everyone is thinking, “I’d kind of like to think that, at the heavenly banquet that we anticipate every time we celebrate the Lord’s supper, there might be an awards ceremony where God’s hard-working servants will get a little pat on the back, maybe even a wall plaque for our mansion in the sky that says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”  I hear what you’re thinking.  After we have worked for God all our lives, we’d like to receive a little gratitude.

            Oops!  There we go, thinking we can put God in our debt.  But we can’t.  God could never be put in our debt.  God has done so much for us, we, in a lifetime of service, could never match God’s abundant giving.  That’s what Jesus is saying in his parable.  God doesn’t owe us; it is the other way around.  Consider:  One day you became aware of yourself.  You noticed your hands and your feet.  You could see and smell things in the world.  You began to notice the world:  the birds, the sky, the green grass.  You noticed your mother and father.  As you grew up, you realized that you didn’t give these things to yourself.  All that you noticed and all of the abilities you have, you didn’t give to yourself.  They came from God.  And God gives us everything we need to live:  food, water, fiber, materials for shelter, and plants and elements to make compounds for all kinds of medications.  These are God’s gifts.  How could we ever pay God back for all of this?  We can’t.  On top of all this, we have God’s free grace.  As a people and as individuals, we have rebelled against God and turned to our own way.  We have the arrogance to think we know what’s good for our lives better than does our Maker, the one who loves us.  So, we do things our way, making a mess of the world and of our relationships and institutions.  In short, we are all sinners.  We are forgiven by the sheer grace of God.  That grace was delivered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Do we imagine that we can ever give to God anything that equals the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ?  No.  That’s the message of Jesus’ parable.  God doesn’t owe us; it is the other way around.  We serve God out of gratitude to God, not to receive gratitude.  “Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”