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Sermon - September 21st, 2008
Irrational Grace
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16
A man owned a vineyard. It had been an excellent year and the grapes were rich and full and ready for harvest. So Mr. Schwarzenberg got up early, showered, shaved, and drove his pick-up to find some farm-workers, day-laborers to pick his grapes. He picked up the most eager-looking people, promising to pay them the minimum wage plus a dollar for a total of about $80 for a 10 hour day. He knew that it was better than most the vineyards around. And he knew these people needed the work.
He headed back to the vineyard. However, the harvest was so good and the grapes so exactly ripe, Schwarzenberg saw that he needed more workers. Back he went at 9 a.m. to get some more farm workers. He went back again at noon for more, and again at 3. He told them all the workers he would pay them what was fair. Just one hour before quitting time, he saw that the job still wouldn’t get done without all the hands he could find so he went back one last time. He found some guys just hanging around the employment office. He asked what they were waiting for. They said, “No one has hired us all day.” Schwarzenberg took a good look at them: the dark clothes, the baggy, saggy pants, the tattoos, the piercings. Not his first choice, by all means, he thought. They didn’t look like they wanted to work at all. But he said, “Come with me to the vineyard and I’ll give you some work for a fair wage.” The guys looked at one another, said, what the heck, something is better than nothing, and they got in the pick-up.
So what do you think happened in the work field when Schwarzenberg dropped off each successive group of workers? Don’t you think they started talking to one another? Probably. Especially that last group. They asked the first group—how much are you gettin’?” $80. They asked the noon group. Oh, about $40. So, they managed to do the math and figured out that they would go home with eight bucks. Better than nothing.
At the end of the day, Mr. Schwarzenberg was very satisfied. The grapes were safe in the vats. He was feeling good and started paying everyone, beginning with those loser-types who got there for the last hour. The first guy opened his pay envelope and… inside was a check for $80—a whole day wages for one hour of work. Did he turn around and say to his boss, “Excuse me, sir, I think you made a mistake, I only worked for one hour.” No, he picked up his stuff and got out of there. But, not before checking with the other guys, especially the ones who got there first. He asked them what they got, maybe they got $800. No, they got exactly the same as he did. Everyone got paid the same, no matter if they had sweat the whole day, half a day, or for only one hour. Everyone got $80.
So, what did the first group of workers do? Did they pick up their stuff and get out of there. No, they turned right around and complained, “What’s the big idea, Mister? Is this the way you run your vineyard? Is this the way you treat all your workers? You paid those guys over there $80 an hour when you only paid us $8 an hour—that is not fair!”
And Mr. Schwarzenberg replied, “Look, pal. Who made you chief bookkeeper? You agreed to work for $80, didn’t you? If I want to give some guy with baggy pants and a tattoos the same as you, so what? Why is your nose out of joint? Here at my vineyard there are no early insiders or late outsiders. Here, everybody gets the same. Did I break the law? Isn’t it my money? Or are you simply filled with envy because I have been generous?” End of the parable.
This parable is like a dose of cod liver oil. You know that Jesus is usually right, you know it must be good for you, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. It is like the story of the Prodigal Son, who left home with a lot, lost everything, and then came home to a loving, forgiving father, who instantly threw a party for him, no questions asked. Today’s parable has so much grace in it, it’s offensive. It is like the story of Zaccheus, a nasty little man who was short in stature and in morals, who climbed a tree hoping to get a glimpse of Jesus. He had probably defrauded every good person in town and they weren’t about to make room for him on the sidewalk. Yet Jesus stopped, reached out through the crowd and said, “Zach, come on down. I’m going to dine at your house tonight.”
Jesus is scrambling the usual order of things, challenging the sacred assumption by which most of us live our lives, namely, that the front of the line is the place to be, that the way to win God’s attention is to be the best person, the hardest worker, the first one into the vineyard in the morning and the last one to leave at night. According to this parable, where that will get you is nowhere, those at the end of the line will not only be paid as much as those at the front; they will also be paid first. It is just not fair.
John Wesley, the founder of us grace-loving Methodists got in trouble in an English pulpit for saying something like this, “There are few matters more repugnant to reasonable people than the grace of God.” For those of us at the front of the line, this parable is about repugnant grace of God!
Something that often helps in understanding a difficult story told by Jesus is to see where it fits in the life of Jesus. Where is he? What is he doing? To whom is he talking? What has just happened and what happens next?
In the 19th chapter of Matthew, Peter asked Jesus what he and the other disciples could expect in the way of a reward for their loyalty to Jesus. Peter reminded Jesus that they had given up everything to follow him. What will they get back? Jesus’ answer was: twelve thrones, a return of a hundredfold, and eternal life. “But,” he added, “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Then he told today’s parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
That’s what happened before the story. After the story, James and John’s mother approached Jesus saying, “Declare that my two sons will sit on your right and left in your kingdom.” Of course, everyone knew these were the best seats. However, Jesus let her know that she didn’t know what she was talking about. She didn’t know that throne would not be made out of gold and jewels but out of wood and nails, in the shape of a cross.
So, before and after the parable, the disciples were jockeying for the good seats in the house, competing with each other, trying to be first in line when the doors opened and the show began.
This parable is very challenging for us whose eyes are fixed on the accounts, who are always keeping score, keeping track of wrongs and rights, those of us who do that because we are doing well. Jesus is telling us that in his world, in his kingdom, books are not kept. There is only the book of Life and in that book nothing stands against us. There are no debit entries that can keep us out of the clutches of God’s love that will not let us go. There is no minimum balance. And there is, of course, no need for us to show large amounts of assets either. Because the auditor before whom we stand is Jesus, the Christ. No one else. Not me, not your neighbor. Not the watchmen in our midst. Not any self-proclaimed prophet. Not the District Superintendent, not even the Bishop. Only Christ is our judge. And Christ is the giver of grace. Irrational, unreasonable, offensive grace. The only way we make it in Christ’s eyes is if we accept the invitation to the vineyard. We do not make it because we work our way in.
Jesus words sound the harshest to the insiders, to those who presume themselves as the righteous ones. Remember what the father said to the elder brother who refused to go to the party? “Son, all that I have is already yours. Come on, get that envy out of your eye. Come to the party.” That parable ends with the lost son inside partying and the good, score-keeping, CPA older brother outside pouting about his father’s unreasonable, wasteful generosity.
God is not an accountant. God gathered up all our IOU’s and nailed them to the cross. After that, it appears, only the “winners” lose. Only the “losers” win. The first are last, the last are first.
Our world is defined by economics, it always has been. The world has a “you-get-what-you-deserve” value system. We have this innate sense of what is fair and what is not. Equal pay for equal work is fair; equal pay for unequal work is not fair. Rewarding those who do the most work is fair; rewarding those who do the least is not fair. Treating everyone the same is fair; treating everyone the same when they are not the same is not fair.
But we also know, we tell our children at a very early age, life is so often not fair. We have heard the stories. We have lived the stories. Life is not fair. That is why it seems so much more important that God is fair. God should be fair, darn it! God should be that one authority whom we can count on. Life may not be fair, but by God, God should be!
Not according to what Jesus is telling us today, though. What matters to us today is where we locate ourselves in the line. Isn’t it interesting that most of us hear this parable from the front-row seats? (Speaking metaphorically here, of course.) We are the ones who have gotten the short end of the stick. How dare some backward manager of a vineyard treat us just like the riff-raff who didn’t even get dressed before noon!
Let’s examine one more possibility here. Could it be possible that those of us who see ourselves at the front of the line are mistaken? Isn’t it possible that as far as God is concerned, we are halfway around the block, that there are all sorts of people ahead of us in line, people who are far more deserving of God’s love than we are, who have more stars in their crowns than we will ever have?
We are near the end of the line for all kinds of reasons. No one told us about it, for one thing. We did not know there was a line until late in the day. Even if we had, we might not have done much about it. We know all kinds of things we do not do much about. There are so many things we mean to do that we never get around to doing, and there are so many things we mean not to do that we end up doing anyway. Even when we manage to do our best, things get in the way: People get sick, businesses fail, relationships go bad. There are a lot of reasons why we end up at the back of the line, and only God can sort them all out.
Life is not fair. And you know what? God is not fair, either. For reasons we may never know. God seems to love indiscriminately, and seems also to enjoy reversing the system we set up to explain why God should love some of us more than others of us. By starting at the end of our lines with the last and the least, God lets us know that God’s ways are not our ways. If we want to try to see things God’s way, we need to question our own notions of what is fair. We will need to examine why we get so upset when our lines do not work.
God is not fair. This could be powerful good news, depending on where you think you are in the line, because if God is not fair, then there is a chance we will get paid more than we are worth, more than we deserve. There is a chance we will make it through the doors even though we are last in line—not because of who we are but because of who God is.
God is not fair. What God is, is generous. When we begrudge that generosity it is only because we have forgotten where we stand.
This parable reminds us in an offensive way that even in a world based on economics, God’s grace and God’s judgment is NOT. God is not a bookkeeper or an accountant, thank God!! God quit keeping score a long time ago.
Therefore, at the end of the day, when our work is done, and the steward comes to the end of the line to hand out the pay, there is a very good chance that the laughter and the gratitude with which he is greeted will turn out to be our own. Thanks be to God.
Amen.