Raining on the parade

Rhona Cathcart October 12, 2023 2 8

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Matthew 20: 11 (NRSVA)

11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,

There’s a brilliant Scots word for a kind of rain I don’t remember experiencing growing up in Canada. The word is ‘smirr’ and the kind of rain it describes is a rain which is so light you can barely feel it — definitely not worth an umbrella — yet it somehow manages to soak you through sheer persistence.

Our human tendency to grumble and groan is a bit like a smirr. It seems harmless enough, a way to let off steam or cool down, and yet let yourself wallow in it too long and it can end up drenching us all with negativity.

In Jesus’ parable, the workers are allowing the smirr to get out of hand. Instead of the generosity we saw in the landowner yesterday, we get moans of ‘why are they getting paid as much as me?’ The landowner nips such negativity in the bud. It’s his money and if he wants to be generous he will be generous. If he wants to celebrate this who are they to rain on his parade so to speak?

Did the workers go away still grumbling? Did they think, ‘right, tomorrow I’ll take advantage and come at teatime and not have to work so hard’ Or did they decide that such a generous landlord was worth working for and working well. Jesus doesn’t say, but he does point out that putting our own interests first doesn’t do us any favour in God’s eyes.

PRAYER:

Lord,

When the smirr of a bit of moaning and grumbling begins to sink in,

and we realise that instead of relief we have created an atmosphere in which everything is negative and quite frankly soggy;

send a spindrift of grace to lightly whip up our spirits

that we, and those around us, might walk on, refreshed.

Amen