The Laborers in the Vineyard and the Inward Island of Peace

The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard that we read this Sunday is framed by its “point” in the verse that precedes it (at the end of Matthew chapter 19) and by its concluding sentence: “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” The reign of God, embodied by work in this vineyard, does not conform to our standards and expectations of what we deserve. We derive our expectations from imagining that what we have or receive is our own and not God’s. The challenge of Jesus’ teaching is to leave those expectations behind.

At the beginning of his Meditations of the Heart the preacher, teacher, and “everyday mystic” Howard Thurman placed this short description of “The Inward Sea”:

There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is ‘the angel with the flaming sword.’ Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon the altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes ‘the angel with the flaming sword’ to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of ‘the fluid area of your consent.’ This is your crucial link with the Eternal.

The pressures and demands of life press on every person; no one is free from this. But our personal strength, weakness, success, failure, politics, good deeds, mistakes, even faith and spirituality do not form our true self. The true self lives on that “Island of Peace” Howard Thurman described, in the Presence of God.

To establish this Island of Peace within your soul is to visit the place where what you really think and feel stands revealed—all the wrongs inflicted on you and the wrongs you inflict on others. And this is also where you go to reflect on the purposes and dreams that God has given you.

In the terms of this week’s parable from the Gospel, this is the place of the reign of God, where you find God attending to what you truly, deeply need in order to live your life’s purposes and dreams from Him.

As you prepare for worship on Sunday and for living your life in the world on Monday, imagine that Island of Peace within you, the place where who you really are rests in the Presence of God. What illusions about what you “deserve” need not to be placed on the altar there? And, equally importantly, how can you ask God there for what you need from Him in your life right now?