Sometimes Grace Stinks
A Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16 by Nathan Nettleton, 22 September 2002
© LaughingBird.net

Message
God’s grace is so extravagant that it will offend us as long as we are measuring our worth in comparison to others.

Sermon

By nature, I am a success junkie. Succeeding at what I undertake, or at least maintaining the appearance of success is far more important to me than is really healthy. To those of you who know me well, this is not news at all, and those of you who don’t, well if you were to come across a book on the Enneagram personality profile and look up “type number 3”, I’m a classic case. All is well in my little world if I am achieving goals and being applauded for my accomplishments. Unfortunately, the applause matters. I have trouble enjoying my own achievements without the recognition of others. I have a hunger to be patted on the back and told that I’ve done great and told how much my contribution is worth to everyone else. I like to be singled out for special thanks and commended from outstanding achievement.

So the parable we heard from Jesus in tonight’s gospel reading gets right up my nose. It rubs me up the wrong way. It offends me. And of course it was supposed to.

You don’t have to be a success junkie like me to be offended by this parable — it is actually capable of offending most people who have been reared on the values of our society — but as a success junkie, it strikes close to my most vulnerable and sensitive spot. It tells me that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I achieve, and no matter how spectacular my accomplishments, God will regard deadbeats and layabouts and losers as being worth just as much as me. There will be no extra bonuses, no special commendations, no citations of special merit. I will enter heaven to no greater applause than those who scraped in by the skin of their teeth and never put in a hard day’s work in their lives.

I could translate the entire Bible into idiomatic Australian and cause a revolution in Biblical awareness among the Australian people, but in heaven I will still be ranked equal with the idiots who think the King James Version was God’s final and perfect self-revelation. I could renew the practice and integrity of worship across the entire world family of Baptist Churches, but in heaven I will still be ranked equal with those who gladly hold worship services without bread and wine and scripture readings but would have no idea how to worship if the electricity went off. Even if I was to single handedly turn the tide of public opinion on the compassionate treatment of asylum seekers and proper respect for the culture and rights of marginalised minority groups, in heaven I will still find myself ranked equal with people who supported and implemented mandatory detention, the removal of aboriginal children from their families, and the bombing of Iraq back into the stone age.

There will be no additional reward, no place of special honour, no elevation to the roll of renown. And I have to confess that I can’t quite share Paul’s eagerness to depart and be with Christ without delay (Philippians 1:21-30), because I am still a long way from coping well with the prospect of being an eight hour worker and seeing the one hour workers treated as my equals. Were it to happen tonight, my lack of special rewards would leave me feeling ripped off. I would arrive ungratefully and with my nose as much out of joint as the whinger at the end of the parable.

I suspect I’m not alone in this. You don’t have to be a success junkie to have people who you would be horrified to see treated as your equals. We have all been raised in a society that is forever ranking people in order on some criteria or another and rewarding those who come out ahead, or punishing those who fail to meet a certain standard. It is so much a part of our normal way of thinking and doing things that we take it for granted and do it without even thinking about it. We aspire to achieve the standards of those ahead of us, and console ourselves with the knowledge that we have never stooped to the depths of some of those behind us. Much of our image of ourself is bound up in where we see ourselves positioned in the pack; that is on comparing ourselves to others. And we are used to the world reading us the same way and rewarding us accordingly. Those who put in the most effort and produce the most receive the promotions, the accolades, and the bonus cheques. We know that the world does not always work that way, and it grates on us. We regard it as an injustice. Nurses should make more money than stockbrokers. We live in an economy where everything and everyone is given a monetary value and people are supposedly paid more or less depending on what they are worth, and we are so accustomed to thinking in these terms, that when Jesus tells this story to explain that the Realm of God is not like that, it sounds like a monstrous injustice and we want to call the unions in.

No wonder the idea of Purgatory became popular in the middle ages. We want those who were not as dedicated and conscientious as us, and those who did appalling and evil things which we would never have dreamed of doing to be made to pay for it before they are welcomed into the Realm of God. But that’s not the way it will be according to Jesus. Everybody who makes it into the Realm of God, will be welcomed with open arms and be equally rewarded. All will be treated as being of equal worth. The good conscientious churchgoers, and the tireless human rights workers, and the teachers who keep doing their best as their resources are cut to the bone, and the office workers who cheerfully do unpaid overtime when things are tough to help the company through, and the rich kids who’ve run off with their inheritance and are seeing out their days smoking dope on the beaches in Bali, and the corrupt executives who bankrupt billion dollar public companies and while paying themselves million dollar bonuses, and the politicians who whip up racist sentiment and demonise refugees for electoral gain, and the paedophiles who silently repent with their dying breath leaving a trail of human destruction in their wake. How could this be? What kind of God is this who would treat us all as being of equal worth? Where is the justice? Where is the good news?

Well actually, if I stop looking behind me for a moment, this is incredibly good news. Unbelievably good news. So long as we can get out of our life-time habit of needing to be recognised as more worthy than others, then this is mind-bogglingly good news. You see, in the story Jesus told, the workers who put in the full eight hour shift did not have their pay cut to make them equal with those who only worked an hour. Those who only worked an hour were paid as though they had done the lot. And I don’t know about you, but I know that on any scale of worthiness, I’m not at the top. I may not be a one hour bludger, but I’m not the greatest saint since mother Mary either. And so what this story is actually promising me, is that I am going to be treated far far better than I deserve. It is telling me that God is so gracious that I will be received into heaven with all the applause and reward due to a Desmond Tutu or Dorothy Day or John Saunders. You and I will be welcomed as though our lives were worth as much as those of Mary of Magdala or Francis of Assisi or Brigit of Kildare. We will be rewarded as richly as if our godly achievements had been the equal of those of Hildegard of Bingen or Oscar Romero or John Bunyan. In fact, having been baptised into union with Christ Jesus, we will find that we are joint heirs with Christ, and receive the reward due to one who laid down his life for the world.

At this table we join hands with the most extraordinary saints and the most appalling sinners, to be reshaped as the one body of Christ. And if we can just get over our hangups about being seen as equal members of one body with the appalling sinners, we might be overwhelmed with gratitude and able to really let our hair down and celebrate the astonishing grace, the outrageous generosity of God, that allows us to stand in the Realm of God as the equals of history’s most extraordinary saints.