A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith

September 18, 2005
Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT?

Once upon a time A man joined a religious order which only allowed its members to speak two words every 10 years. On his 10th anniversary, the monk was brought before the Abbot and invited to say his peace. "Bed hard," he said.

Ten years later, it was his time again. In front of the Abbot he said, "Food cold."

After another ten years had passed, he said, "I quit."

"Well I'm not surprised," said the Abbot. "All you ever did was complain!"

And then there was the church that installed a new voice mail system. When you call it, this is what you hear: "Thank you for calling the First Congregational Church. If you'd like to find out about weddings, press 1 now. If you'd like information on our pre- school, press 2. If you'd like to complain to the minister, press 3. If you'd like to complain about the minister, press 4.... 5..... or 6!"

Well, I'm not complaining, mind you, but I do field my share of complaints. One summer, I got two comments on the fellowship register on the same Sunday. One said, "Your guitar music is great! Why can't we have it all the time?" The other said, "We'll be back when the choir comes back!" Then a another time, two more notes, again on the same day: "Why can't we sing the old hymns?" And, "When are we going to get some new livelier music?" We pastors have heard them all: "I can never find you in your office." "You're not out calling enough." "Why don't we have more children around here?" "Those kids sure are noisy!" And my favorite, the complaint-disguised-as-a-compliment, as in "That sermon today was unusually good!" When I think about it, of course, I find I get far more compliments than complaints. It's just that like most ministers, I am more sensitive to the complaints, and my nature is to try to please. It takes about ten positive comments to offset the one negative one. There was a woman in one of my former churches who had a very dramatic way of expressing her displeasure about the hymns. She never said anything, but she sat in the front row, and when she didn't like a hymn, she would slam the hymnal shut and just stand there scowling until it was over. One Sunday I decided to make her happy and sing her favorite hymn to open the service. She came in late, just in time for the second hymn, which was new to her.... Well, you get the picture. Complaining in church is a time honored tradition. I have often said that my chief consolation dealing with all this is in knowing that even God cannot please everybody!

This is certainly evident in our scripture lessons today! One of my favorite of Jesus’ parables is the one we just heard, often called “the laborers in the vineyard,” but which you might also call “the generous landowner.” It’s about a landowner who needs laborers for his vineyard, whom he hires at different times throughout the day, as he finds them, but at quitting time pays them all the same amount. This doesn’t really seem fair, of course, especially if you’re one of those who has been sweating since sun-up, and of course there are complaints. And rightfully so, it would seem, until you remember that Jesus says right up front that this is what the kingdom of heaven is like, an existence characterized by God’s scandalous grace and generosity. God’s realm, God’s way, isn’t always what we think it is, or should be, but instead of being grateful, we complain!

This parable is an echo of an earlier story, found in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. Even after God has led the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, into glorious freedom, they are not pleased: "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." No matter that life in Egypt was no picnic, that they were slaves, that they had no freedom, no dignity, no future. No matter that they got their fondest wish, their prayers answered in being led out towards the Promised Land. At the moment they were in the middle of the wilderness, far from any comforts of home, no convenience stores or roadside rest areas, having to subsist on this strange food raining down from heaven called "manna" (a word literally translated, "what is it?"). Maybe it wasn't what they had envisioned, and the fact that in Egypt they were at least well fed caused them to grumble. But as Professor Walter Bruggemann points out, "present anxiety distorts the memory of the recent past." It always seems better than it really was, and when the going gets tough, the easiest thing to do is to complain! Or as Mick Jagger sings, “You can’t always get what you want....”

If you read this whole section of the book of Exodus, you find they actually complained no less than ten times. Of course over 40 years that may not be too bad -- how many of us have complained only ten times in forty years? But one does get the impression that it was rather constant, and that Moses and Aaron became awfully frustrated with the whole lot of them, these "nattering nabobs of negativism" there in the wilderness.

We owe that phrase to former Maryland Governor and Vice President Spiro Agnew, or at least one of his speech writers. He had many colorful phrases -- that’s part of being VP -- and he used this one complain about the media - which he said were dwelling only on the bad news and creating a climate of pessimism and fear. Well, I wanted to ask him, "Who was creating the bad news that they were reporting?" -- but Agnew did have a valid point -- and that is, when all you do is complain, it does foster a climate of negativity, of pessimism, of despair, which is not healthy for a nation, or -- I would add -- a family, or a church.

I should point out, however, that there are two types of complainers -- the chronic "ain't it awful" kind, who just like to complain, and who can always find something to complain about and someone to blame it on -- and those who have a legitimate reason to complain, like social visionaries who complain about poverty or discrimination or pollution, and who attempt to do something constructive about it. They follow the great prophetic tradition, of lifting up injustice and wrongdoing as the first step towards making things right. You see I would never want to suppress all complaining, because some of it is legitimate. Ask residents of the Gulf Coast! Constructive criticism is, in fact, appreciated. And useful!

Back in the early 1960's, the pastor of my home church came home after spending the afternoon calling on shut-ins in what passed for a nursing home. "That place is a pig sty," he complained to his wife. "Someone should shut it down and build something that treats our elderly with dignity and care!" She looked at him and said,"Then why don't you do it?" And so he did. In 1964 my home church built the Beatitudes Campus of Care, which eventually came to be home for 750 residents, and more than that, became a model for quality senior housing for the whole country. I got my start in ministry there, as a teenager, working as a dishwasher and a busboy. It all began with a complaint, followed by constructive action.

And there are plenty of examples of people who complain about something worth complaining about, and whose concern spurs them to action, and who change things for the better. God bless them, and may their number increase!

As for the other type, those who just like to complain, my advice is the opposite of Nike’s – "Just don't do it!"

Don't do it because it makes you into the kind of person that others don't really like to be around. Monitor yourself sometime, really listen to yourself and ask: am I the kind of person I would like to be around?

Just Don't do it because it wastes energy that could be used on more productive pursuits. And wouldn't we all like to have more energy?

And Just Don't do it because chronic whining creates a climate of negativity. It's contagious, like a bad cold. You start complaining, and pretty soon so does everybody else, and then it becomes an awfully hard rut to get out of. You believe things are miserable and rotten, and guess what: pretty soon, they are!

It's all a matter of attitude, really. You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice that thorns come with roses. It's your choice. But it's a choice that will make all the difference in your life.

In her book, WOULDN'T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW, Maya Angelou has piece called "Whiners" in which she tells of being raised by her grandmother in Arkansas. Grandmother, she writes, "had a particular routine when people known to be whiners entered her store. Whenever she saw a known complainer coming, she would call me from whatever I was doing and say conspiratorially, "Sister, come inside. Come." Of course I would obey.

"My grandmother would ask the customer, 'How are you doing today, Brother Thomas?'

"And the person would reply, 'Not so good.' There would be a distinct whine in the voice. 'Not so good today, Sister Henderson. You see, it's this summer heat. I just hate it. It just frazzles me up and frazzles me down. I just hate the heat. It's almost killing me.' Then my grandmother would stand stoically, her arms folded, and mumble, 'Uh-huh, uh-huh.' And she would cut her eyes at me to make certain that I had heard the lamentation.

"At another time a whiner would moan, 'I hate plowing. That packed-down dirt ain't got no reasoning, and mules ain't got good sense. Sure ain't. It's killing me. I can't ever seem to get done. My feet and my hands stay sore, and I get dirt in my eyes and up my nose. I just can't stand it.' And my grandmother, again stoically, with her arms folded, would say, 'Uh-huh, uh-huh," and then look at me and nod.

"As soon as the complainer was out of the store, my grandmother would call me to stand in front of her. And then she would say the same things she had said at least a thousand times... 'Sister, did you hear what Brother So-and-So or Sister Much-to-Do complained about? You heard that?' And I would nod. Mamma would continue, 'Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake up again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards, and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.'

And Maya Angelou conclude, "It is said that persons have few teachable moments in their lives. Mamma seemed to have caught me at each one I had between the ages of three and 13. Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood."

Moses, I'm sure, struggled to take advantage of those "teachable moments" back there in the wilderness, with his people receiving from God everything they needed, and yet still complaining about it. He took it all to God, and God who had no doubt heard it all before -- and continues to hear it all -- responded -- not by saying, "Just don't do it!" or "Get over it!" but with typical God-like generosity and grace. The Children of Israel didn't recognize it then, but God was taking far better care of them than they deserved. It was only later, in reflecting back on that time that one of their composers would write a Psalm, where God's goodness in the wilderness was celebrated, not complained about:

"Then God brought Israel out (of Egypt) with silver and gold, and there was no one among their tribes who stumbled.
God spread a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light by night.
They asked, and God brought quails, and gave them food from heaven in abundance.
God opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed through the desert like a river.
For God remembered this holy promise, and brought the people out with joy, God's chosen ones with singing...." (Psalm 105)

Even Mick Jagger recognized that -- “You don’t always get what you want...but if you try sometimes you find you get what you need.” God indeed provides what we need, even if it's not always what we think we want. Roy Campanella, a man who had good reason to complain at his lot in life if ever anyone did, tells of the moment when he realized this, after he was paralyzed in an auto accident and his baseball career ended in its prime: "Down in the reception room at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, over on the East River in New York City, there's a bronze plaque that is riveted to the wall. During the long months of coming back there for treatment -- several times a week -- I rolled through that reception room many times, coming and going. But I never quite made the time to pull over to one side and read the words on that plaque that were written, it's said, by an unknown Confederate soldier. Then one afternoon I did. I read it and then I read it again. When I finished it for the second time, I was near to bursting -- not in despair, but with an inner glow that had me straining to grip the arms of my wheelchair. I'd like to share it with you."

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked God for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked God for riches that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I ask God for power that I might have the praise of all people.
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I asked for -- but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among all persons, most richly blessed!"