Fair go and grace

The text for this sermon is Matthew 20:1-16, and you can find all the texts from Sunday here.

I like this parable. For me, it has always sounded like good news. But I know that’s not the case for everyone.

I remember when I was an intern, listening to my mentor minister, Alf, telling a story about this parable. He’d started his career as a policeman in Liverpool, back in the day when coppers walked the beat. After his ordination, and some parish ministry, he worked for some years as a prison chaplain in Wellington. All of which is to say, he’d seen something of life and he was pretty canny. So when he read this parable to the prison inmates at a chapel service one day, their reaction took him completely by surprise.

You might think that they, of all people, would get what this parable is about. You might think that they’d be relieved to hear that you can come late to this party and still get in, never mind get paid a whole day’s wage for one hour of work. But no. They were outraged. They were disgusted at how this parable is not fair. The latecomers clearly don’t deserve what they are given. The ones who have worked hard do deserve what they are given, but in light of what the others have got, they now clearly deserve more.

In the prison world, it is like saying to the ones who have served 19 years of a 20 year sentence that everyone with a 20 year sentence can get out at the end of the year – the ones who have just begun are let off paying the price, and the ones who have spent that time inside have had the weight, the worth of their loss reduced. It makes sense that there’d be an outcry about that. When the system is supposed to be just and fair, it’s deeply disruptive to bring in grace.

I wonder if you have heard this parable as good news?

I suspect that it depends a lot on who you identify with most in the story…

If you feel you are most like the vineyard owner, the one who goes out and brings people in, the one who looks out for those who might need a bit of extra help…the one who sees the potential even in those who are too old, too tired, too weak, too disabled to work hard….if that’s who you identify with, then this parable seems very validating.

But if you feel you are most like the active, able and hardworking folks who were up early, keen as mustard, fully responsible, doing the right thing and making sure that your family is going to eat at the end of the day…if that’s who you identify with, then this parable seems disruptive.

And what if you identify with the ones who only work an hour? What do they experience when the manager hands out their pay? Do they get their wages and stare at it in disbelief? Surely that’s a mistake. Maybe they consider making a run for it…or trying to slope away before anyone notices that they gave you the wrong coin and it should have been a penny in your hand and not a denarius?

Do they protest, and try to give it back, saying ‘I can’t take this. I didn’t earn it?’

Does that denarius tell them that their one hour’s work is still worthy? Does it tell them that they are not measured by what they can do?

Does it assure them of their dignity as human beings made in the image of the creator?

Or does it feel somehow patronising? Does it feel like it says, ’You can’t really contribute anymore, but we’re still going to pretend that you are worth something’.

When my father retired, he said he felt like he’d been thrown on the scrap heap. His work made him feel useful. It gave him a sense of worth and significance and without it he believed he had no real value.

Do you remember that sermon I preached a few weeks ago about if someone in the church hurts you, go and talk to them? And I said, that’s a good thing to do but only, ONLY when you have taken the time to check your own story first.

Well, I bet that everyone who received the daily wage in the parable had a story about it, although we only hear what the full day labourers think about it. Their story is, “It’s not fair.”

They are saying, ‘my sense of worth is threatened – I have earned this by sweat and industry, and grace cheapens my efforts, makes my work insignificant’.

But it’s just as likely that for the end of the day labourers, their story would say, “I have not earned this, and grace rewards me as if I had a significance that I do not feel.”

For the first, their sense of worth is threatened. For the last, their sense of unworthiness is threatened. It may seem strange to you that anyone might be attached to a sense of their unworthiness, but actually this is a powerful story and it’s woven into a lot of Christian thinking. For centuries, guilt and shame have been used as strong motivators for keeping people in the straight and narrow path of religious observance.

You might be able to spot it more easily among our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, since they have a history of making confession to the priest and then doing penance by offering set prayers, making special payments, or otherwise offsetting their sinful emissions. But our Reformation forebears leaned in heavily to guilt and shame as levers to improve behaviour and increase devotion.

Guilt and shame keep us coming back to confess and be forgiven again and again in a cycle that somehow doesn’t quite manage to lead us into freedom and inner peace. And the story of God providing manna in the wilderness tells us that it has always been so. Every time God meets us with grace, we have trouble receiving.

That old story, that idea of justice, of deserving or not stops us from accepting grace, and often stops us from offering it or allowing others to receive it.

So, I’d like to invite you to close your eyes. Breathing in and out through your nose, if you can, take in a few deep, belly breaths. And move your hands to rest in your lap, palms up.

Into your open palm, Jesus places a coin…a daily wage….all you need for today….pressed into your hand, tenderly but firmly, with love, with a smile of recognition.

Maybe he says a few words to you….maybe he says something like: this is for you…there will be another tomorrow, I promise. No questions asked.

Will you trust me?

Maybe you say something to him. Maybe you have a question.

What’s it like for you to receive this? Is there something you need to let go of first? What’s the story you tell about it?

Take a moment or two now, to tell God what is happening for you, and to listen for the Spirit’s response.