 ST. PAUL’S UNITED CHURCH Petrolia, Ontario |
Giving with Gusto A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Robert M. Gibson © September 21st 2008 Pentecost 19 Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 Make known what God has done. Philippians 1:21-30 For me, to live is Christ. Matthew 20:1-16 Daily wages for the laborers; what is fair? |
When I was 13, my mother brought me a pair of brown insulated winter boots. I loved those boots. The thick black soles provided lots of traction in the snow. The shinning brown leather repelled the snow and salt. The soft white wool lining inside kept my feet and toes warm and toasty.
I kept those boots downstairs in a corner of the basement, until my old snowshoes wore out. The day came when water trickled into through the seam of the old boots. Now I could proudly wear my new boots.
I went down to the basement to get my new boots.
I looked at the spot where I had put them. They were not there. I searched in every nook and cranny for the boots. No luck. Finally, I ran upstairs and asked my parents if they had seen my missing boots.
To which my mother responded: “Yes I saw them. I gave them to your Uncle Georgie” George was my mother’s only brother among six sisters. George was married with six kids. It was tough for him to make a living to feed all these kids.
Often Georgie would come to visit my Mom, have a cup of a tea and a piece of cake and talk, sometimes in Gaelic.
One day on one of Georgie’s visits, my mom noticed his winter boots had a hole in the soles and the lining inside was worn. Noticing the condition of this boots, she went downstairs, found my new boots, brought them up to him and said try these on. They were a perfect fit.
My mother looked at me in the eye and said: “Bobbie I gave them to him because he needed them. Of which I asked” How could you. How could do such a thing.
It’s not fair…. Grumbling under my breath, I ran to the bedroom, stewing and pouting about what my mother had done.
It’s not fair.
There are things done to us or events, which happen to us that, are not fair.
To a 13 year old it did not seem fair my mother gave my boots away.
Listening to the Parable of the Vineyard workers, you get the impression life is anything but not fair to some workers.
Jesus tells the story about farmer at 10 in the morning going to the marketplace to hire migrant workers to pick grapes. He sees some guys hanging around at the unemployment office. He tells them, “Come to work for me, I’ll treat you right. I’ll pay your fair” They go to work in the vineyard.
At noon, he is back down town. He finds a couple of unhired workers who are not very strong and look like they could hardly handle working in the field. Nobody has hired them but he says, what the heck, come to work for me and I will treat you right. I’ll pay you a fair wage. They say, well we have nothing to loose, and they go to work.
At three in the afternoon, heat of day, he’s back downtown. Low and behold, he discovers a couple of guys still hanging out on the corner, sharing a can of Coke. They look like unreliables and undesirables .Come to work. I’ll give you a just wage. And they do, for where else have they got to go.
At five o’clock, one hour before quitting time the farmer goes back down town in search of more help. He stops a couple of men, sitting on a park bench. They tell the owner they are there, because nobody will hire them, they are undocumented workers. The owner tells them he will hire them and give them a fair wage even if it is for one hour. They think he is nuts. They agree to go to work.
At the end of the day, all the workers line up to receive their wages. The owner says to the foreperson” Line them up in reverse order of how long they worked beginning with the ones hired at five o’clock. Pay everyone the same wage, starting with the ones who came last.
There is grumbling among those who worked from sunrise to sunset. They organized a delegation and approached the owner to lodge a grievance over the Johnny come lately who got the same wage as those who worked all day. The invaded the owner’s personal space by getting in his face complaining, “It’s not fair”
Treating everyone, the same when they are not the same simply is not fair.
Equal pay for equal work is fair.
Equal pay for unequal work is not fair.
Most of us like those workers know life is not fair.
You have heard the stories.
A man takes his elderly mother into his home when she becomes too frail and is unable to get into a nursing home. His two brothers and three sisters who he rarely hears from, call occasionally to tell him how grateful they are he is looking after their mother.. But none offers to help either by visiting or providing some financial assistance. His mother tells him : “They are so busy. They have so many problems of their own. I just thank God for you. Than she dies, and the family comes together grieving as if they had been there along to help look after mother.. At the lawyer’s office, they all appear and wonder what mother has left them in the will. The son who looked after his mother has had to dip into his savings to help look after his mother sits and listens to the lawyer read the will. He cannot believe what he hears. I leave my estate to be divided equally among my children because I love each one of them the same. It’s just not fair.
Is God Fair?
Although life is not fair, we believe God is supposed to be fair. We cry out for God to be fair only as long as it means giving the other person what they deserve. God’s fairness looks different when we are on the receiving end
Is God fair?”
“ No, God is not fair. God is not fair by human standards. Fairness, according to human standards, always derives from comparison! That’s why God comes across as being grossly unfair. God simply does not compare. God treats us all the same.
Is God fair?
No way is God fair. God’s fairness is giving with gusto to everyone, whether they deserve it or not. This is not what we bargained for. The owner points this out when he says:” Friend, didn’t I give you what you bargained for? What a bargain you received?”
Isn’t that the way we sometimes think about our faith. We think as a faith as bargaining chip with God. We figure when we cash our chips in at the end of our lives we deserve some kind of reward. We get baptized, get confirmed, do some good in the world, follow the Golden Rule, and expect because we have done these things that on our reckoning day we ought to given special status when we enter those pearly gates.
The disciples relied on special status and rewards for following Jesus. Just before the parable, Peter asks Jesus what reward he can expect for being loyal as a Christ’s disciples. Than after the parable, James and John mother makes a special case for her sons by asking Jesus to give them the best seats in the kingdom.
Friend, the owner says, I did you no wrong. Haven’t I given you what you bargained for?”
What a rip off even for us. This is not what we had bargained for. Being a good and faithful servant, does not necessarily mean rewards are yours. We scratch our heads and wonder this about God:
Is God going to give a reward to those Christmas and Easter folk who show up once a year?
How about God showering those with blessings who only come to church to get their kids done and marriage knot tied?
What about those teenagers skateboarding in the Shoppers Drug Mart , will they get the reserved seat that has our name on it?
Is God going to show the skid row drunk on the street corner begging for money, the same reward reserved for Billy Graham?
If God is not going to shower all these folks with blessings for their unfaithfulness, than surely God is not fair when it comes to blessing my faithfulness.
God is not fair. For reasons we will never know.
What we do know is God generously is divided out to us regardless of who or what we have done. God is a generous giver. That is not how we figured God to be.
God gift of grace is God’s generosity extended to us.
God’s generosity is difficult to phantom. Grace applied to us always seems nice and good and right.
Grace applied to other people disturbs us.
It is not fair.
It is difficult to wrap yourself around the concept of grace. When I ‘m feeling a little lost and confused about God’s grace, I find what others say about grace as helpful and hopeful for me. For example, one of my favourite theologians the late Lewis Smedes wrote in his eighties these words about grace.
Well, what's so terrific about grace? I’ll tell you. I'll tell you one thing: for me, it gives me courage and confidence to know that the Maker of the Universe is on my side and that the Judge of the whole world accepts me just the way I am. With all my blots and blemishes. The bad with the good all mixed together. He accepts me, all of me, with no strings attached.
Without the grace of God, I think I’d be haunted by a brooding, guilty conscience about some of the harmful things I’ve said and done in my lifetime. But with the grace of God, I can look myself straight in the eyes and say to myself: "Nothing bad you have ever done can get God to reject you." And nothing can get God to accept you more willingly than he accepts you right now.
Some days when we get sick and tired of trying to be good enough to be acceptable to other people, fed up with trying to make sure people like us and accept us, God's grace just may slip inside our ears and whisper to our hearts: "You are already accepted. You are accepted. You’re accepted. And you will never, never be rejected." That, that is what is so amazing about grace.
Here I am almost eighty years old and I’m still learning, still discovering that God's amazing grace really is the best thing in the whole, wide world.
In these words, I find comfort and peace in knowing this about God’s grace.
God the owner of the vineyard blows away our expectations on how things are done. God can do what God wants to do. God can do anything without having to check with us as to whether God is doing the right thing or not. God is different from any employer.
I think God is like my mother who sees the needs and responds to those needs with an outpouring of generosity
So where does this parable leave us.
I hope not whether I was left with my grumbling about my mother’s generosity. If anything, it has helped me to try to live my life living within the tension of bestowing generosity to my bothers and sisters. Almost like offering them, the generous gift of grace with no strings attached: spontaneous, beautiful, and underserved as work that Christ set out to do while he was with us.
We cannot be generous to the entire world. But we can do go is to be generous in the small corner of our world by being ambassadors of God’ generosity
Give an hour of your time to someone who needs you. Give an note of encouragement to someone who is down. Give a hug of affirmation to someone in your family
Give a visit of mercy to someone who has just been laid off from work. Give a meal you prepared to someone who is sick. Give a word of compassion to someone who has just lost a mate or spouse. Give a deed of kindness to someone who is slow and easily overlooked.
God is not fair. God is generous. When we murmur over God’s generosity, it is because we have forgotten to accept the generosity of God’s grace bestowed upon us.
Let the grace of God be within us
Let us know that grace within our soul;
And when we honor God in each other
We bring together one gracious whole.