Early Adopters and New Arrivals

Matthew 20:1–16

September 20, 2026

Sermon

Way back in 1981 —

Which I still think of as 20 years ago

Barbara Mandrell had a hit song, /

"I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool." ///

Barbara was a very early adopter. /

You might be, too. /

But now you’re a Golden Oldie

but you were there first. /

You can still hear the ker-klunk, / ker-klunk

of the 8-track

before it ate the tape. /

Good times. ///

I did some early adopting, too. /

I was into prog rock

before prog rock was cool. ///

In the golden year of 1974, /

I was the proud owner of the very first album by Rush

right when it came out. /

Working Man. /

Back when John Rutsey was still on drums. ///

I even saw Rush in concert

when they were the opening act for a band called, /

KISS. ///

You just can't get entertainment like that anymore.

Except for their expensive reunion tour. /

Maybe you prefer Taylor Swift? /

Ha. /

My "era" was the best. ///

But isn’t that what everyone says?

I was an Early Adopter.

But now I’m an oldie.

I was first. But now I’m last. ///

Wouldn’t it be great to be first again?

We may want to talk to the Manager -

or a good aesthetician - about that.

—

Some of you are new to Presbyterian, new to church in general.

I've been a Presbyterian from birth. /

I was Presbyterian when Presbyterian wasn't…. ///

OK, /

I don't know if Presbyterian has ever been cool. /

But I adopted it, /

or it adopted me at birth. ///

There's a special buzz that goes with being an early adopter. /

There's pride in knowing your good taste, /

your beliefs, /

your foresight got you ahead of the pack. /

Others may follow. /

But you were first. /

Rock on. ///

The scripture today, /

Matthew 20:1-16, /

was written for people who were Christian

before Christian was cool. /

The ones who were The First. ///

But wait. /

Flip the parable over, /

and it's also for the noobies. /

The youngsters who had no right to wear the T-shirt

as if they'd seen Jesus back in the day. ///

Jesus gets it all mixed up.

As Barry White used to sing:

My First, My Last, My Everything.

—

Look around, right here. 

Open the doors, and see all these people in church now, /

Over there, those are the first, /

The ones who were here pre- Frank Beall era.

And then look there – the ones who joined the church two weeks ago, and are already having babies.

Church was and is a mixed up place.

There are the first and the last. /

The earlies, / and the latelys. ///

There are the veterans of days gone by, /

The ones who have served with honor, /

given their lives for these places.

Baked so many casseroles.

Sung so many anthems.

Worked so many Rummage Sales. /

And there are the new recruits. /

The ones who don't even know what PW stands for. /

They see stained glass of Jesus holding a lamb and ask, /

"Who's the bearded guy with the puppy?" ///

The answer is Jesus. /

Like in Children's Sermon: /

the right answer is always Jesus. ///

Gray-hairs like me,

We’ve been around the block so many times

we can walk the halls with our eyes closed, /

and sometimes do. ///

Then there are these upstart teenagers

who go to Dogwood Acres, or Montreat, / once, /

and think they know everything. /

"Let's change it all!" ///

And there are those of us who quote 

the Seven Sacred Words, /

"We've never done it that way before." ///

"We tried that in 1974 /

and I think we all remember

how THAT turned out." ///

Just like the workers in the vineyard, /

there are saints who started at sunrise. /

Built the place with their bare hands. /

Paid for the steeple. ///

But there are also new startups, /

the ones who drove past on their way to the mall. /

People who saw our brand-new website which debuted last week on that World Wide Web /

"My goodness their Internet presence is astounding. /

Let's give that Trinity church a shot. /

They're Presbyterians. Sounds cool." ///

That's the thing about being part of an organization

where the first and the last, /

the old and the new, /

the founders and the fledgelings, /

the early adopters and the latest adoptees —

that's the thing about a place 

where they're allegedly all equal. /

A place where they all get mixed together:

Things can get mixed up, for good and for bad. ///

As Jesus taught, /

as Moses found out —

you mix the old and the new, /

you take people to a new place,

when they're used to the old ways —

even if the food is good —

there's gonna be grumbling. ///

Because change is hard. /

But maybe that's Jesus's plan. ///

Your first, your last, your everything 

get flipped like 45’s -- side A, side B, /

Get shaken, get stirred 

by the winds of the Holy Spirit 

enough —

sometimes, / sometimes —

you're not just a record: you become a church. ///

A church where Jesus mixes us up

and makes everything, /

and everyone… /

better. ///

The early adopters and the new arrivals.

Singing their same old songs, singing brand-new ones.

Or just good ones. ///

—

Jesus tells a story about workers and management. /

And the moral to his story is: ///

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

What kind of a nutty HR policy is THAT?? ///

When I worked at Texas Instruments, /

we all had our clip-on name badges, /

with our picture, /

in case we became confused. ///

The badges were color-coded. /

Red, / blue, / yellow, / silver, / gold —

depending on how long you'd worked there. /

25 years or more, / you had a gold badge. /

Gold meant you were there in the startup days. /

You were a god. ///

New hire badges were red. /

Redbadges. ///

It reminded us of Star Trek. /

Of course it did. /

We were all nerds. /

"Rock, / paper, / scissors, / Spock." ///

In the original Star Trek, / still the best, /

they had Red Shirts. /

And you did not want to be a Redshirt. ///

Redshirts might beam down to a planet, /

but they were not beaming back up. /

Redshirts were always collateral damage 

for aliens in rubber suits. /

It was canon. /

Last in the credits, /

first to leave the episode. ///

In the real world, we have an employment saying: /

"Last hired is first fired." /

But apparently nobody told Jesus. ///

The landowner in his parable demolished the seniority system. /

And, / the workers in the vineyard united. ///

"What do you mean, /

the first shall be last

and the last shall be first? /

We've got gold badges. /

Our salaries should reflect that. /

We're not redshirts. /

We're not new hires. /

We're the workers who built the means of production. /

Pay us what we deserve, / Comrade." ///

But that's not the way Jesus tells it. ///

—

The first job of Matthew's Gospel

is spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. /

But look closely and you'll see

it's also kind of a Manual of Operations

for the early church. ///

Instead of 100 color-coded sub-paragraphs

like our admin manuals have, /

Matthew uses stories that people actually remember. /

For this new kind of organization they called, /

"church." ///

This weird place where early adopters and redshirts came together, /

to figure out this strange new world. /

Just like Captain Kirk. /

Just like Moses and the formerly enslaved Israelites

had to learn how to live together

in the wilderness of their own freedom. ///

They asked:

What are the membership requirements? /

What days are your Sabbath? /

What about sick leave? /

How do you reserve a meeting room? ///

We are not the first, /

nor will we be the last, /

to wrestle with these angels, /

these demons of spiritual insecurity. ///

These are birth pains. /

These are living pains. /

First become last and last become first enough /

Shake it up – shake it off –

Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake,

and — / sometimes —

a church falls out. ///

—

OK, / hang on.

This sounds like a digression, but bear with me. /

I will get back to the Bible. /

And Trinity Presbyterian Church. /

But first, /

let me say 

that personally, /

I don't think the transfer portal

is a good thing for college football. ///

Back in MY day, /

when I was playing football -- on my ColecoVision

players weren't paid (above the table), /

and you picked a college —

for its stellar academics —

and you stayed there for four years, /

longer if you did grad school, /

like Peyton. ///

And you knew where your school stood. /

Especially when Bobby Bowden was coach.

A-number-one, king of the hill, top of the heap.

But nowadays — /

Indiana? /

Indiana? ///

Talk about your last becoming first. ///

We read Jesus's line about first and last

and we think of it as a ranking. /

Because everything's about competition. ///

"If you ain't first, you're last," /

Saint Ricky Bobby. ///

But the church Matthew — / and Jesus — describe

has nothing — /

NOTHING —

to do with competition. ///

You read the Sermon on the Mount

where blessed are the poor

and the meek inherit the earth —

competition doesn't begin to enter the picture. ///

It’s all flipped.

In the Bible, /

the church, / the world, /

is just all mixed up. /

In a good way. ///

In the Bible, /

church is the place where the oldies and the newbies

are all part of the same secret sauce. ///

And no secret, /

we all get mixed together —

first and last, / last and first. /

Which one are we? /

I don’t think Jesus really cares. ///

The starter for the Bread of Life has been around forever. /

But it's always baked in a new atmosphere, /

with new salts of the earth, /

pressed into shape by hands young and old, /

Some nimble, some arthritic, /

Some calloused and some smooth. ///

—

In the parable, /

the workers aren't, like, /

"Oh yes, / thank you, sir. /

Now I see the point of divine generosity

and faith-based egalitarianism." ///

The workers argue. /

They look down their noses at each other. /

They protest the company's policies. ///

And I can just see Jesus with his hand on his forehead, /

shaking his head, / saying, /

"Here we go… / again." ///

Moses can vouch for it. /

Whenever there's change, / there's grumbling. /

Often about the food. /

"What is this stuff?"

Exactly. It's manna. which means, "What is it?"

You'll eat what God gives you. And you'll like it.

Welcome to the human race. /

AKA, / the rat race. /

AKA, / the races we run

Racing strangers, 

Running against even the people we love. ///

Trinity Presbyterian Church (USA)

is in a time of transition. /

There's a lot of new going on.

There’s a lot of new coming soon. ///

I think Jesus would say to y’all:

Remember.

Remember you're not racing against each other. /

You're racing with each other. /

Nobody wins until we all cross the finish line. ///

—

In the parable, /

at the end of the day, /

everybody gets the same payoff. /

The early adopters and the latest adoptees

They all get the same wages. ///

They knew that’s not fair, / 

and we know, / that's not fair. /

It's NOT fair. ///

You know what it is? 

It's church. ///

As followers of Jesus Christ, /

it's not our job to be merit-based. /

It's our job to share. ///

Share how much? /

Jesus said, /

"Share Everything." ///

I know that's not the way the economy works. /

It's our job as Christians to live in a different economy. /

The economy of the Kingdom of God, /

where at the end of the day

You can’t tell the Mandrells from the Tame Impalas

Can’t tell the founders 

from the immigrants fresh off the boat,

Who just popped in through the portal, ///

It’s our job as Christ’s workers to build a playlist

Where the last are the first. ///

And the first are the last

To build a church where everybody can sing along, and be cool, with Jesus. ///