My Unrevised Sermon for Sunday, 21 September 2008 – On Not Getting What We Deserve

This is my unrevised sermon for tomorrow.  I am, even now (well, not right this instant, but you know what I mean) revising it, and will post the revision on my blog Word and Table (see link in the right sidebar) later tonight.  If anyone has any comments or suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment below.  I would greatly appreciate any feedback! 

The text for the sermon is Matthew 20:1-16.

———-

We have an amazingly gracious God.
I think we can all agree on that.
One of our favorite hymns is, after all, Amazing Grace."
And all of us would agree that God’s grace is amazing.
The way God welcomes all, forgives all, loves all.
God’s grace is amazing.
But if we are honest,
we would also have to admit that there are times when God’s grace is also exasperating and unfair.
There are times when God’s grace doesn’t feel that gracious,
times when God’s grace burns us up and offends our sensibilities.

And at these times,
the offense of grace is not in the treatment we receive,
but in the observation that others are getting more than they deserve.
Forgiveness and generosity do not seem fair.
As Matt 5:45 states,
God sends sun and rain on the just and the unjust,
the good and the bad.
And Luke 6:35 tells us that God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.
That offends us, most of us, at least.
The generosity, the grace of God quite often cuts right across our cold calculations of who deserves what.
For all our talk about grace,
we still have problems with it.

I’m reminded of a story told by the writer Frederick Buechner that is amazingly similar to the one from Matthew’s Gospel.

Buechner writes,
You are students on the first day of class.
The professor says,
"Now students, I have this complicated, very complicated, math problem for you to solve.
Your answer to this problem, and only your answer,
will determine your final grade in this class.
I giving you this problem now at the beginning so you all can start work immediately,
and I do urge you to begin now if you want to pass the course.
I want you all to make A’s.

Well, you want to do well.
So when you get the problem,
you get right to work.
You go to the library.
You begin your calculations.

But to your surprise, you notice that,
even after a month,
only a few of the other students have started to work on the problem.
Well, you say to yourself, they’ll be sorry in the end.

The week before final exams finds you proudly putting the finishing touches on your paper and the solution to the problem.
You overhear some classmates tell each other that if they work hard over the next few days,
they might get their problems answered.
And you also note that there are still others who haven’t even begun,
even now.
But, again, you say, that’s their problem.

Finally the last day of class arrives.
You have finished with time to spare.
You proudly come to class with work in hand,
but to your surprise,
everyone else has also finished their problems.
How did they do it?
You soon learn how.

"Professor Smith, thanks for helping me figure this out last week.
Why, without your help,
I never would have gotten it finished,"
you overhear one say.

"Well, here it is," says another,
All done, thanks to your kind assistance yesterday, Professor."

And no sooner have you heard this,
than another voice speaks up,
"Thanks for coming by my dorm last night to help me."

By now, you are furious.
No wonder they finished their work.
While you were hard at work,
figuring it out all by yourself,
this professor, if that’s what she really is,
has been going all over the campus spoonfeeding everybody the answer,
everybody but you, that is.

When you are finished giving Professor Smith a piece of your mind,
she asks you,
Why are you so angry?
The goal of the class is to get people to finish the problem.
You were able to finish it on your own.
Fine.
Others needed a little special attention.
You get an A.
They get an A.
What’s wrong with that?

What`s wrong with that?
Why everything, that’s all.
It’s unfair,
it’s not right.
They got more than they deserved.
You leave the room,
not happy at all about the situation.
You grumble and mumble all the way back to room and for days,
even weeks to come.
The nerve of that woman to treat you all the same way!

If you understand this,
then you don’t have any trouble understanding why the people who worked all day in the vineyard did not leave the farm with a song in their hearts and a dance in their steps.
Their grumbling and complaining is perfectly understandable.
Grace is fine, up to a point.

We expect the owner of the vineyard to be gracious,
but not too much so.
One or two trips back to town to find workers,
well, that’s fine,
but not this constant back and forth,
wear down the tires on the truck,
all day long search, for God’s sake.

And perhaps giving a bit more than expected to the late-comers would be alright,
but not this everybody makes the same wage regardless of how long they worked socialistic, communist stuff.

It’s curious how the grace shown to me doesn’t seem so gracious when I compare it to the grace shown to others.
It’s curious how the more amazing God’s grace becomes,
the more frequent and louder the grumbling and complaining that it evokes.
This passage of scripture shows just how unfair God’s grace can be,
and just the kind of reaction that it can provoke.

John Wesley, the founder of our particular denomination, knew all about the dangers of preaching on God’s grace.
He once wrote to a friend after being physically ejected from a church pulpit one Sunday.
Wesley’s topic:  the grace of God.
Wesley wrote afterwards,
"There is no Christian Doctrine more repugnant than the affirmation that we are saved by the grace of God through faith.

And the reason it is repugnant?
It is repugnant because deep down we believe that we control our destiny.
That we save ourselves by what we do.
We believe that if we serve God all our lives,
with all our minds and souls and bodies
(although most of us don’t come close to this level of service),
we believe that in the end God will reward us.
we believe that our pious activities,
our acts of service,
our work for the Lord,
will bring us salvation.
We believe that if we do the right thing,
we will have eternal life and the joys of heaven in the world to come.

And that is why we are here.
To set ourselves straight about the rules,
and then to get the motivation necessary to obey the rules.
As another preacher has said,
we gather on Sunday and go down our checklist.
Racism?  I’m okay on that. Check.
Materialism?  Hmm…. Okay, Check.
Envy?  Got a little more work to on that one next week…."

In this mind frame religion exists to assert the rules and give us the means to obey the rules,
and when we do,
religion promises that we will get what we deserve.

And what about those who aren’t here?
Those who haven’t haven’t figured out the Christian religion…
those who don’t have the correct or proper beliefs…
or those who haven’t straightened out their personal lives,
What about them?
Well, according to this world-view,
they are out of luck,
and it’s their own tough luck anyway.
They should be here in church with the rest of us,
here they could figure out the score,
get their cards punched,
their lists checked off,
and their lives in order.

If they would only see things our way,
then all would be well.
There would be tit for tat,
cause and effect,
rewards for the good,
punishment for the bad.
Yes, all would be well,
well, except for that irritating parable from th gospel lesson today,
well, expect for God’s amazingly naive and irresponsible grace.
When we run headlong into God’s unfair grace,
when we see that God’s way of doing things is so far removed from our way,
Then there is bound to be grumbling.

After all, if God is going to run a vineyard like the one in the gospel lesson,
if God is going to give everybody the same pay regardless of how long he or she has worked,
what’s the use of getting up early in the morning to work,
when you can wait till an hour before quitting time?
What is the good of sitting in church,
listening to dull sermons,
if these outsiders,
these johnny- and Jane-come-lately’s can waltz in here at the last minute and receive the same treatment as the rest of us.

How many of your remember the name "John DeLorean/"
Perhaps you recall that DeLorean was a millionaire who was acquitted of drug-dealing.
But did you know that DeLorean is now a Christian,
having come to Christ while in prison?

Or perhaps you have heard of Velma Barfield.
Velma, a resident of North Carolina, was convicted of poisoning her boyfriend with arsenic.
In case you don’t know,
arsenic poisoning is a horrible, slow, agonizing way to die.
After her conviction,
Velma was sentenced to die in the state’s electric chair.

But while awaiting execution,
Velma Barfield began writing to, of all people, Mrs. Billy Graham.
In time she accepted Christ,
became a "born again" Christian.
And Mrs. Graham in turn came to praise Velma as a
(now get this)
a "vibrant, new Christian with a beautiful witness to God’s grace."
Velma died by electrocution in the state penitentiary in Raleigh, NC.

And perhaps you didn’t know this either,
but while I was on vacation a while back,
I attended a worship service where it was reported that Jeffrey Dahmer, himself,
the mass-murdering serial killer and cannibal,
Jeffrey Dahmer,
asked Christ into his life while in prison,
and was baptized into Christ before he was murdered by another inmate.

What are we to make of such stories and such people?
These people come to God at the last minute,
and they expect to receive the same welcome we will get.
Many of us have been Bible-believing, church attending,
nose-to-moral-grindstone Christians all our lives,
and yet these people are just as loved by God,
just as forgiven by God,
just as accepted by God as we are?
Who do they think they are?
And just who do they think God is?

But perhaps the better question might be,
who do we think God is?
Who do we think God is?
My friend, if God is anything,
then God is gracious and loving beyond our own understanding.
If God is God,
then God’s grace is available to all,
no matter who they are,
where they are,
what they have done,
or the time they come seeking his love.
No matter what,
God will be there for them,
God will save them.

In England there is a tombstone which reads:
    "John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine,
    a servant of slaves in Africa,
    was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior,
    Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned,
    and appointed to preach the faith he had long
    labored to destroy."

John Newton wrote his own epitaph.
And what he had to say can be summed up by the word grace.
You see, Newton spent much of his young adult life as the captain of a slave ship,
which transported slaves from Africa to the shores of America.
And it was on one particular trip from Brazil that this young sailor began reading "Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a Kempis. 
On that same trip a vicious storm threatened to sink his ship,
and Newton in a moment of desperation became a Christian.

Now unlike many people who make promises when the going gets bad,
Newton kept his promises.
He resigned as a sailor,
and he began to preach the gospel.
And the theme he preached over and over again was about the unsearchable riches of the grace of God, through Jesus Christ.
It was in his later years of life that Newton took this theme and put it into the words of a song,
a song that has blessed the hearts of Christians since that day.

It was John Newton who wrote the words we will sing in a moment:
        "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
        That saved a wretch like me.
        I once was lost, but now am found,
        Was blind, but now I see."

It is this amazingly unfair and undeserved grace that offers us all salvation.
A God who would save even a wretch like a John Newton, a John DeLorean, a Velma Barfield, or even a Jeffrey Dahmer,
A God with that much grace and love
would save me and you.
A God like that would give me and you and the entire world so much more than any of us deserve.

I can affirm what another once said about God.
"Unjust?  Yes, thank God!
I, for one, am wonderfully content with a God who refuses to be just.
If God dealt with me just as my deeds deserve,
I’m afraid that I would never be able to enjoy his presence in eternity,
I would never be able to gaze at the face of Christ,
and I would never live the fullness of life eternal without tears or fears.
If one day Christ calls me home by saying,
"Come, blessed of my Father."
It will bot be because God is just,
but because God is good,
and because God is a God whose name is mercy,
and whose gift to all is his grace.

My friends, grace is what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.
It’s not about being decent.
It’s not about morality,
and its certainly not about our own goodness.
In fact the gospel isn’t even concerned about these except that they are by-products of sorts.
No, the gospel is about being our being steeped in and surrounded by the grace of God in Christ,
so that we, in turn, can show others this grace.
For grace is God’s extra.
It is the way God deals with us beyond what we deserve or feel we have earned.

May we allow God’s grace to so permeate our hearts and lives,
that we will have no choice but to give it to others as freely as we have received.