Gossip in the Marketplace
By Rev. Dr. Rebecca Brown
When I was growing up, we had quite a bit of gossip in our home town. From the lady who had too much of a bounce in her step when she walked around the block to the elderly gentleman who put on clown shoes when he marched in the parade, we were always talking about somebody. We took on all sorts of angles as we talked about each other: who looked too fat, and whose clothes didn’t fit, and whose actions were embarrassing, and who was too thin.
In part, this tale-telling was a self-regulatory measure. It was to remind ourselves never to walk with a bounce in our step, because others might talk about us if we did. It was to remind us to try not to get too thin or too fat. It was to remind ourselves to give away the clothes that didn’t fit, and only wear the updated ones, even if it meant repeating outfits a lot. It was to remind ourselves never to dress like clowns in the parade, because people might think we really WERE clowns, and then where would we be?
Gossip is such an interesting thing. It has an impact on those about whom we talk. And surely it has an effect on those who do the talking, too.
Members of the church say to me often, “I’m not sure about coming to church this fall; I don’t want people to talk about me at church.” Perhaps they have been away. Or some life event or change in circumstances has taken place. They feel different as they return. And sometimes they are seen as different. The very real, painful possibility of gossip arises.
My answer has been, “Well, there’s much more interesting stuff than your story to gossip about, so I wouldn’t worry about it, and I would come back to church.”
And the church member answers, “But what if I cry? Or what if I’m still wearing my biking shorts, and sweaty? Or what if I’m still wearing my scrubs from the night shift at the hospital? Or what if I have to leave because I get emotional?”
I still answer, “Just come; God won’t mind how you look or if you cry.”
My encouragement is only partly successful. Some people do come. Others do not. And sometimes people do talk about them, even if there are more interesting, more compelling topics at hand.
Gossip does have a power all of its own. For some of us it does keep us from coming to church, because we are afraid we might weep and be seen, or we are afraid we might laugh and be judged for not weeping. For others of us it does keep us from trusting each other with our stories, because we are afraid we might hear them again from strange places.
And gossip serves several other social functions as well. As it is depicted in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Pirates of Penzance, it keeps people busy. Perhaps in not-so-useful ways. In this play, the maidens find themselves up late at night, fussing because their father can not sleep. They sing to themselves about this unusual thing, their father with insomnia, and they make it very clear how remarkably captivating it is to talk about someone who is unfortunate.
“Now, what is this and what is that and why does father leave his rest,
at such a time of night as this so very incompletely dressed.
Now, father is and always was the most methodical of men.
It’s his invariable rule to go to bed at half-past ten.”
Gossip, in this case, may be self-regulatory, to remind the community to go to bed on time. And yes, it keeps people busy. In one sense, I guess it is nice to be busy, but there are food pantries that need volunteers, and there are wars to be protested, and there are locally-grown vegetables to be canned for the winter. It may be that gossip keeps us distracted from our real work.
Certainly, Jesus was no stranger to gossip. He found some saying he was a winebibber and a drunkard, and others saying he was an ascetic, and still others not liking the friends with whom he kept company. In these cases, gossip performed the function of self-regulating the community and keeping people busy. It also had an element of control in it as well. People wanted to control Jesus by gossiping about him.
Gossip has at least two sides, two points of view, and two sets of experiences. As the Pirates of Penzance maidens above illustrated, one part of tale-telling is the experience of the gossiper. Like the maidens, when we gossip, we focus on a subject that does not merit the time, attention, or effort that is used to fuel it. In fact, gossiping probably harms our well-being. Gossip definitely ties up the speaker with an energy that can feel all-consuming.
On the other hand, part of what happens when we gossip is the experience of the gossippee. Gossip can engulf the person being spoken about. If we are gossiped about, it makes us feel that we should change what we are doing. It makes us worry. It makes us preoccupied. It may make us feel out of control or sad.
The classic song from American popular culture about the experience of the gossippee is the Motown classic, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, made famous by Marvin Gaye and also Gladys Knight and the Pips, in 1968 and 1967. The song was written by Norman Whitfield, who died this past fall. Whitfield had a colorful, complicated life himself, and he certainly got gossiped about. He talks about how painful it is to learn difficult news through gossip.
Ooh, I bet you’re wondering how I knew
About you’re plans to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before.
Between the two of us guys
You know I love you more.
It took me by surprise I must say,
When I found out yesterday.
Don’t you know that…
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I’m just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
Whitfield created a song that spoke to the heart of the human condition. It spoke about the preoccupation of learning something sideways, rather than directly from the source. It spoke about the pain of betrayal, made doubly awkward by its indirectness.
When gossip came up for Jesus, he surely had the experience of sorrow and regret that the singer of the “Grapevine” song presents so clearly. Yet he raised his head up above it. It probably hurt his feelings, but he carried himself with a sense of dignity, a calm, a confidence, that managed to float him through the hardest times. The harsh words seem not to have penetrated into his inner core. God got him through the gossip, and had confidence in him when it seemed that the community might not have had confidence.
In Matthew 20, Jesus tells a story about gossip in the marketplace. People come to the marketplace, looking for work, and the vineyard owner hires them. He seeks wave after wave of workers, making sure that everybody who wants to work has the chance. At the end of the day, the vineyard owner pays them all the same wage. This makes the workers who had the earliest start “grumble” against the others. In this context, we hear another setting of gossip, not against Jesus in this case, but this time against people who didn’t have the opportunity to work all day. It us gossip about those who were not seen to work as long and as hard as the first people laboring among the vines. It was a complaint against a perceived inequity.
And yet, who knows why some of those laborers in this parable came later in the day? Jesus doesn’t tell us, but he lets us know that they needed the work and the paycheck just as badly as the people who arrived first. And the ones who came late were called by the vineyard owner to work. When offered the chance, they did what they could — worked as hard and as they long as they were able despite the fat that they arrived later in the day — in order to earn to earn the wage paid by the vineyard owner.
How often have we heard such complaints about unfair situations? Injustices have been reported and repeated over and over in the media as headlines about financial bailouts and golden parachutes for CEOs contrasted with the downfall of companies, loss of jobs, and escalating rate of foreclosures among hard-working, everyday people. But sometimes they take other forms. Especially in times like these, when everyone is pinched and feeling the pressure, how often have we listened to commentary about the inequity of benefits and rights given to people who do not appear to have earned it?
In contemporary times, the marketplace gossip might also sound like this. “They do not have work because they are illegal immigrants; they should not be here anyway, taking good jobs from hardworking Americans.” “They do not have a good job because they messed around as teenagers; if they had not gotten themselves pregnant, they would not be out of work today.” “They do not have work because their lives were wasted on drugs and boozing; too bad for them.” Gossip in the marketplace can go on and on. It may self-regulate, it may keep people busy, but among other things, it also seeks to control and influence.
In the case of the marketplace in Matthew 20, gossip seems partly to control a situation. The people who worked the longest want an economic difference to be evident in the payments at the end of the day. They want themselves considered better than the others who have also worked in the vineyard. They want to be elevated above the people who were not able to work as much as they did. They want more money than the others. They might even settle for more respect, although their preference, as I read the scriptures, would be the cash.
At the end of the workday, when the denari have been paid. The vineyard and the marketplace are full of grumblings. What a rich verb: ‘grumble.’ You can hear a little earthquake in it. In that ground-moving bit of transfer of commentary, there is a huge energy in Matthew’s spare choice of words. They grumbled. They wanted to be better than the others. They wanted to control the esteem of others, as they were regarded. But it did not work.
The landowner responded to them, giving us a little window into what God might have said, in Jesus’ storytelling about the marketplace. “Friend,” the landowner calls the gossiper. “Friend, this is a rate you agreed to.” “Friend, I am doing no wrong.” “Friend, I am working with what belongs to me, and choosing how it should be spent.”
In other words, in Jesus’ great vision of God’s role in the marketplace, it is to bring calm, to treat the downtrodden well by lifting them up, and to speak respectfully to all, and to not be intimidated or controlled by people’s strong feelings.
Jesus presents God in the marketplace as completely disinterested in gossip. Gossip may be a strong social force: self-regulating, distracting people, and controlling situations. Yet in response, God, in the guise of the landowner, offers a perfect evenness. There is no judgment in God’s response to the gossip. Instead, God is neutral, loving the gossipers, and loving the gossippees. For example, God calls the gossipers “friend.” Further, God looks after the material needs of the gossipers and the gossippees. God wants all of them to have the income they need.
In the marketplace, God is not regulated by gossip. Neither is God distracted by it. Neither is God controlled. God is simply present as a hugely loving force, not even noticing the small distinctions that might make humans talk about each other. God is pure love in the marketplace.
In my hometown now, we have been through many changes. After a generation, there are new people with a bounce in their step, and new people clowning in the parade. There are some who are thinner and some who are fatter, but when I go back to the town marketplace, the predominant ethos of the community is gratitude, not gossip.
We are glad to see each other still alive. Sometimes when people return to church, after hesitating to step through the door for fear of people talking, they are greeted with a hug and the comforting words, “You’re home!” We know what people have been through: who has been sick, who has lost parents or children or spouses, who has struggled to find work. But we seem to talk more about the weather now than we did, and the war, and what is growing in people’s gardens. It may be the experience of common suffering. Or it may be the power of survival triumphing over the power of small words. Whatever it is, it is definitely the love of God in the marketplace, binding us together out of our isolation.
