"No Apologizing for Grace"
September 18, 2005: 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, co-pastor
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.newlights.org

Scripture:
Matthew 20:1-16
[Then Jesus said,:]"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

Sermon: So it's a straightforward enough story. A landowner hires workers for his fields at six, nine, noon, three, and five and, when the end of the day comes, pays them all the same wage. A parable of grace. A description of the kingdom of God, clearly, where "the last will be first, and the first will be last." A picture of the radical equality of all persons before God, telling us that no matter who we are, no matter where we are on life's journey, God welcomes us in love. Which leaves us asking one question: Is Jesus serious?

Maybe this is just one of those ideas that sounds good in theory, but doesn't work out so well in practice, like those hot air hand driers they have in some restrooms. They're a good idea, well intentioned and all. They're supposed to save trees and be more sanitary. But in reality, they're noisy and you still have to touch them and they just don't work. You'd still rather have a paper towel, and in fact, in many restrooms they have both, making them a double waste.

Maybe this parable is kind of like that. Grace sounds good in theory, but it doesn't really work out so well in the real world. Think about it: What would happen if we went around telling people that no matter what they did, no matter what they believed, God would always love them? I'll tell you what. They'd run amok. Our entire society is based on justice, on a just system of rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad. It's the way we were raised. It's the way we raise our kids. Without the carrot and the stick, how would we ever maintain control? There would be mass chaos. Grace is nice in the abstract, on paper, in the Bible, but out here...? Not so much.

But to cut Jesus some slack, maybe we caught him in a moment of rhetorical hyperbole, you know, like that whole "turn the other cheek" thing; after all, it's a tall order trying to get people to be better, nicer, and to treat one another with more respect. He has to set the bar pretty high if he hopes to get us even half-way there. Maybe that's what's going on here. Jesus is using extravagant language to make a point. The landowner in the story treats all the workers equally regardless of how long they'd been working, but Jesus doesn't really mean God will treat us all the same. That wouldn't be fair. Or maybe he means we all start out equal in God's eyes, until we screw things up...?

Or maybe, just maybe, Jesus means exactly what he says. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of the heart of God, the heart he knew well enough to call God abba, father, daddy, well enough that we, the church through the ages, call Jesus himself the only begotten of God. Maybe we'd better go back and listen again.

This is a parable of the reign of God, the way of God's relating to world, to us. And it isn't a straightforward story at all. It bends and twists in our understanding. The set-up is simple enough: A guy who owns a farm needs some help around the place. So early in the morning he hops in his pick-up and heads down to that corner downtown where the day laborers hang out waiting for work. He points to a couple, they jump in the back of the truck, and off they go.

But then, strangely enough, he does the same at nine and noon and at three and even five o'clock, each time sending more workers out into the fields. Finally, come sundown, the workers head up to the big house to be paid. No one minds when he starts to pay the last workers first. They think he's just getting them out of the way. And even when he pays them the same wage he promised those who've been laboring all day, they assume that means they'll be getting more. After all, that'd just be fair, wouldn't it?

Guess again. It turns out the farmer pays all the workers exactly the same amount, regardless of when they started work. Sitting there in the half-dark, the morning crew begins to grumble, "Now wait just a minute...!"

"What? Is there something wrong? I gave you exactly what I promised you this morning. I just happened to give everybody else the same thing. And there's nothing wrong with me doing what I want with what's mine, right? Or is there something else?"

Well, of course there's something else! It's just that... it's all wrong! This is not the way the world works, or even the way it should work. It's not "equal pay for equal work." It's not just. It's not fair.

Exactly. It's also not a story about economics. This is a parable of grace, and grace, by its very nature, is not economic. There is no "if this, then that" about grace, no wheeling and dealing, no earning, no losing. It is not a purchase, a punishment, or a reward. Grace comes as a gift, or not at all. This is a parable of the kingdom of God, clearly, where "the last will be first, and the first will be last," a picture of the radical equality of all persons before God, of God's grace toward all of God's children, no matter who they are or what they've done. Sinner or saint, the parable says, whether we come to God early or late or even ever, God loves us all the same, with the same extravagant love.

Which makes no sense to us, none at all. In the world in which we live, what is fair and what is just is not actual equality, but the ideals of equal opportunity and equal application of the law—and law, as we all know, is a far cry from grace. But we have lived this way so long, encouraged by dreams of reward and goaded by threats of punishment, by visions of prosperity and prison, of heaven and hell, that grace—true grace—seems absurd, obscene. How can grace be godly?

But because God is God, God doesn't have to apologize for loving us so much. God is love, and being love means never having to say you're sorry. God is love, and so God can spend the love of God's heart on us as foolishly as God sees fit. God can send rain on the just and the unjust alike. God can love the sinner as the saint, out of all proportion, and without any apology. And according to Jesus the Christ, whom we revere as the face of God turned toward us in love the "true light which enlightens everyone," the one "in whom there is now no condemnation," God does.

If we choose to believe this, if we choose to receive this grace and, in turn, act gracefully in the world in imitation of Christ, two things are apparent. First, we must be prepared to be called absurd and obscene and ungodly ourselves—and, sadly, most often by others who claim to be followers of Christ. If we choose to center our faith in the graceful love of God in scripture, if we choose to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves and let the rest of scripture be weighed against these two great commandments, we must recognize that there are many churches that read very differently. Many Christians believe that God has established this world for the purpose of sorting all of God's children into two columns, the heaven- and the hell-bound, and they read scripture through that lens. To people who believe this way, a church such as ours that preaches a God whose love may be neither bought nor lost is not only misguided but misguiding—dangerous not only to ourselves but to others, because we might tempt them away from the true path and so lose them their chance at eternal life with God. If we choose to follow the way of grace, we first must acknowledge that we will never be very popular. We will be an outcast church, made up largely of outcasts.

Secondly, and also in imitation of Christ, we must make no apology for grace. If we believe we have received love from God that we did not earn, if we have received truly amazing grace in our lives, we are obligated to share this good news with others. Despite the volume of voices arguing against it, we must proclaim this come-one-come-all, come-just-as-you-are invitation to the wider world. Like the landowner in the parable, we must go out into the marketplace not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. We must reach out not only to the easy target early-adopters but to the skeptical, the idle, to those who have been picked over, those who have been left out at the end of the day. "You! You there! Have you heard? This invitation is for you.... and for you... and for you! I know it sounds silly. It's embarrassing enough for me to say. But God makes no apology for loving you, and neither do I. Come! Come sooner, come later, but come and enjoy the grace God has prepared for you since before the foundation of the world."

The world doesn't run by grace now, this we know. And none of us know what it would look like if it did. But we are called by God to put the unwieldy theory into practice and imagine that world into being, one open hand, one open heart at a time. We are called to build a community without the usual walls, where people, all people, are treated as equals in God's eyes and ours, based on a story, a dream, the dream of grace.

So we strive to be a Peace-With-Justice church, because we believe God loves Americans and Iraqis equally, just as they are. So we strive to be an Open and Affirming church, because we believe God loves straight and gay people equally, just as they are. So we strive to be an environmentally sensitive church, because we believe God loves human beings and the rest of creation equally, because God created them all. So we speak up when we see that the overwhelming number of faces of those waiting for rescue from Katrina's rising waters are dark-skinned, because we believe God loves all people equally, without regard to their race or ethnicity or economic standing, or political affiliation, because the God we know in Jesus is a God of outrageous, extravagant, exorbitant grace. For this, in the eyes of the world, we are a silly little church, and a dangerous one. And God willing, may it always be so.