2023-09-26
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
September 24, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Matthew 20:1-16 The Federated Church, UCC
A new study, one of many over the last few years, has itemized the harmful effects of social media on teenagers. The study, in The New York Times, set down the distinct benefits of social media—the connecting, the exposure to uplifting videos and articles that enrich young lives. And it also detailed the deleterious side effects of such media.
The study mentioned that, in some ways, the crisis of social media is little different from the crises that have confronted youth since time immemorial. Each generation, says The Times, has what might be called its “moral panic.” In the 1950s, it was rock music, “and long hair, rap music, and video games in later decades.” And for today’s teenagers, that moral crisis is, “undoubtedly, social media.”
The crisis, as you who have teens at home know far better than I, is rooted in the central dynamic of so much social media, which is that you are always comparing yourself to what you see in your friends and countless influencers. What teens—not to mention the rest of us—see so often is that they’re not as smart or pretty or clever or thin or chic or well-connected as their peers, that their vacations are not as cool, their athletic accomplishments not as dazzling, their tastes not as awesome as others in their cohort.
What’s different about this generation’s moral panic, though, is that, with the rise of social media, there has been a noticeable decline in mental health. With none of the other moral panics was there a corresponding nosedive in psychic wholeness. “Teen mental health (and the amount teens sleep) began to decline between ten and fifteen years ago, just as smart phones, Facebook, and other social media were becoming ubiquitous.”
The Times repeats some of the more common suggestions for counteracting the effects of social media, including: “You don’t have to reply right away; unfollow people who make you feel bad; put your phone down and go outside; and—a tip for parents—watch your own social media use” (“The Morning,” Sept. 21, 2023).
Useful as these suggestions undoubtedly are, though, there still remains the matter of the underlying issues in the anxiety so pervasive in social media use. And what seems abundantly clear is that this anxiety is rooted in our almost pathological sense of inadequacy. This is true for teens and adults. With uncommon frequency, we feel insufficient when we compare ourselves to so many others. We feel we just don’t measure up. And the bald fact is, in many ways, we don’t. There’s always somebody eating better, vacationing more exotically, dressing more snappily, partying more heartily, hanging out with cooler kids than we are. We are always going to be not quite as good as someone else.
When Jesus tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard, he’s telling that parable to us. FOMO—the fear of missing out—is the psychic fraying we all share. It’s in the water we drink and the air we breathe. And it yields a kind of perpetual low-level, or too often high-level, anxiety: am I good enough; do I have as much as everybody else has; I wish I were as accomplished as so-and-so.
It happens at all sorts of levels. Mary and I were eating out one evening this summer, and she ordered a pasta dish that was absolutely succulent. Whatever poor plain old dish I had ordered now seemed bland and boring by comparison. And I was a little mopey, because I wished I had ordered what she had.
Jesus knows how easy it is to fall into that trap again and again. So the parable of the workers in the vineyard, sometimes more accurately called “the parable of the generous boss,” calls us up short. Jesus isn’t telling us what to do about our envy as much as he’s reminding us of the trap we so easily fall into. You and I are tempted, again and again, to think we’ve come up short. You and I know who we are in this parable. Most of us see ourselves not as the latecomers, but as the workers who came out at dawn and labored all day under the hot sun. We’ve guided our business or tended our family or engineered our deals or won our cases or preached our sermons because we’ve been uncommonly devoted to unceasing hard work. So of course we should get the reward. We deserve it! Right?
And when those saps who started at the end of the day and worked for a piddly hour in the cool of the evening—when they get paid precisely what we’ve been promised, we start to get that little bit of excitement in our stomachs, assuming that of course now we’re going to get much more than we’ve been promised. That would only be fair, wouldn’t it?
And it’s totally dumbfounding and beyond irritating to look at the check that gets handed to us and to see that it’s no more than those lazy latecomers have received, the ones who couldn’t even be bothered to show up for a full day’s work. What kind of nonsense is this? It’s a totally insane way to run a business, with no respect at all for the ones who have borne the lion’s share of the load.
And of course this is a terrible way to operate a business. Nobody who does things that way is ever going to make a profit. They’re never going get an employee to work a full day again. It may be the worst business model ever. It’s never going to be a Harvard Business School case study. It is always going to be the height of unfairness and stupidity.
And yet, deep inside, we know there’s something there, don’t we. We know that our fear of missing out is killing us inside. We know that our incessant comparison of ourselves to everyone else is slaying our souls. We know that that sort of relentless envy is no way to live our lives.
If we wonder how in the world we’re supposed to undo this lethal envy of ours, this pathological sense of inadequacy, Jesus doesn’t really offer us any solutions. At least not here in this simple, striking, spare story. Some of the dimensions at the heart of our relationship to God do suggest an approach, though. Two faith practices in particular seem crucial to our overcoming this envy and sense of inadequacy.
First, it’s paramount that we remember that our worth is not determined by popular opinion or the assessment of our spouse or parent or child or neighbor or social media friend. It’s God alone who declares our value. And in the eyes of God, we are always—always—treasured. The next time we feel the anxiety of not appearing to measure up, perhaps it’s time to look in the mirror and repeat to ourselves God’s words to all of us at baptism: “in you I take delight” (Matthew 3:17, altered). It matters not in the slightest if we don’t have a boat that wows the crowds, or if we haven’t gotten to the Galapagos this year, or if we’re comforted by music that might make someone else roll their eyes in derision. Doesn’t matter. It’s not those others whose views of you count. The only evaluative voice that matters is the voice of God. And God is eternally whispering to us words of grace and peace. In this moment, and this moment, and this moment, God is saying to you and me, “You are precisely the being I had in mind when I gave you life. You’re not an accident. You’re not less than. You are the precious wonder I made you to be. Exactly as you are.” The next time you’re feeling inadequate, remember that this is what God is saying to you: “You are the precious wonder I made you to be.”
The other practice in which to engage to lessen our sense of envy, our sense that someone else is making out better than we are, is the practice of gratitude. Each moment, maybe especially those moments in which we’re feeling inferior, is a moment in which to take stock of the little treasures that dot our days. If we’re feeling that we don’t have enough, it’s an opportunity to remember what we do have. Maybe we have luscious tomatoes just now ripening in the garden. Maybe we cuddle regularly with our children or grandchildren. Maybe we have an opportunity to walk in the Metroparks or to Worship with Nature this afternoon. Maybe we have a friend or relative with whom we laugh uproariously. When we feel less than, when we feel as though we’re missing out on something, a compelling antidote is to take stock of the dimensions of our lives that are real gifts.
In telling this parable, Jesus reminds us that we are infinitely more luminous than anyone else’s opinion of us might indicate. And perhaps the call from Jesus is for us to give thanks for the simple wonders that fill our lives and make of them something gorgeous and sublime. You and I are precious. And we have enough. That’s the gospel truth.
There’s another dimension to this story that calls out to us, as well. When it reminds us that we are each precious and spectacular, and that God has made us to be the remarkable beings that we are, it is also reminding us that it’s not just we who are that way. It is also alerting us to the deep truth that the very one we may have dismissed as unworthy of God’s generosity is, in truth, a precious marvel, as well. This is why their pay is equal to ours. “God doesn’t make junk,” goes the old cliché, and that means, not only that you and I aren’t junk, but that nobody we meet is junk. That person whose political opinions seem absurd, whose personal habits rub us the wrong way, whose air is off-putting—that person is equally treasured by God. And if we’re to be true to God, these people are to be treasured by us, as well.
This is especially pertinent to us in these last few weeks because of a recent policy put forward by our Roman Catholic siblings in faith in the Diocese of Cleveland, a directive on gender matters issued to the seventy-nine elementary schools and five high schools of the diocese. “The policy,” as summed up by The Plain Dealer, “restricts gender expression, including gender-affirming care and the use of pronouns different from those affiliated with the person’s biological sex. It also bans same-sex couples at events such as dances. It also requires church or school staff members to tell the parents of a child who might be transgender” (Sept. 20, 2023, p. A8).
Before addressing this new policy directly, parenthetically, it’s vital for me to say that we make it a practice here at Federated not to bash other denominations or religions. I find it necessary to remind us of the luminaries of Roman Catholic faith who have graced us with their light and who have greatly enhanced my own faith, people such as Thomas Merton, Joan Chittister, Henri Nouwen, Julian of Norwich, Gregory Boyle, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Karl Rahner, Elizabeth Johnson, Richard Rohr, Dorothy Day and I could go on and on. These are Roman Catholics who have glistened with brilliance and grace. They have shone the light of God in uniquely wonderful ways.
That said, it is also incumbent on us this morning to say that the recent directive of the Diocese of Cleveland on gender matters utterly betrays the depth and glory of that most illuminating Roman Catholic train of faith and thought. This is a directive that completely fails to recognize the grace and wonder in our gay and lesbian and bisexual and trans siblings. As such, it entirely misses the heart of Jesus’ parable about the workers in the vineyard. Remember again Jesus’ parable: at the end of the day, we are all equally treasured by God. This is lightyears from what the recent edict of the local diocese declares.
This was brought home vividly to me in some correspondence I received this week from Sol Rizzato. Some of you will remember that Sol preached here on Pentecost in June of 2022, and shared with us an extraordinary journey of trial and grace, a journey of coming to awareness that the gender assigned to Sol at birth was not who Sol was. Partly because of that experience of Sol’s having preached here, you’ll be interested to know, Sol is now headed to seminary.
You may remember from Sol’s sermon here—and Sol uses the pronouns they and them—that, because of this recognition of their true identity, they had been told they were no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. I only this week learned of the specific language sent to Sol in separating them from the church. This is what the letter said: “We separate her”—meaning Sol, not acknowledging Sol’s sense of gender identity—“from the society of all Christians . . . we declare her excommunicated and anathematized, as well as judge her condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobates.”
These two judicatories, one in Cleveland, one in Oklahoma, have essentially said, ‘Some people are normal and deserve to receive a full day’s wage, while others are not normal and should receive far, far less—maybe even nothing at all. These others don’t, in any way, belong in the vineyard. They’re really nothing.’ And this is so far away from the Jesus I know that it seems a grotesque betrayal of everything Jesus stood for.
To state the obvious: gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and Queer people have not chosen these characteristics for themselves. No, they have been made this way, just as those of us who are straight and cisgender have been made as we are. And in all of us, each of these precious selves, there resides a spark of the luminous God who is manifest in an infinite variety of human shapes and forms. It is not the case that some of us are right and others wrong. It is not the case that some are accepted while others are dismissed. No, each and every one of us is paid the same at the end of the day. And the pay is God’s unending acceptance and adoration of all of us. That’s it.
After Sol had been removed from the Roman Catholic church, they asked for a meeting with the official who had sent the dismissing letter. When Sol arrived at the diocesan office, “The first thing the vicar general said to Sol was: ‘in the eyes of the church, you do not exist.’” And what were the words that Sol said to the vicar general in response? “I forgive you” (see column by Rini Jeffers in the Chronicle-Telegram, Sept. 16, 2023).
And so we ask ourselves: in that exchange, who conveyed the heart of Christ?