Continuing the series, "The Greatest Stories Ever Told"
Based on Matthew 20:1-16
The Season of Pentecost – June 28-29, 2008
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Palatine, Illinois
Pastor John E. Glover, Jr.
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A team of 60 Britons spent 24 hours in 1973 pushing a baby carriage 319 miles around an oval track. A Texan named Plennie Wingo used a year-and-a-half of his life walking backward from Fort Worth Texas, to Istanbul, Turkey. Joe Gagnon of Everett, Washington, ate 437 clams in ten minutes. Michael Gallen of Cairns, Australia, used his ten minutes eating 63 bananas. George Grogniet of Belgium took 30 minutes to eat 44 boiled eggs, which inspired David Taylor of Sussex England, to eat 16 raw eggs, including shells, in only three minutes and twenty seconds. On October 17, 1971, Frank Freer sat down in Wolcott, New York, and spent the next eight hours peeling the skin off an apple into a continuous strand 130 feet long. And, here is one I like, in 1955 Clinton Locy of West Richland, Washington, delivered a 48-hour nonstop sermon. Only eight listeners lasted through to the end. If you have nothing better to do, rank the preceding accomplishments in order of uselessness - most useless first. Why do people do these things? People want to be recognized and noted for their efforts, especially when they are considered above and beyond the usual effort of others. These way out examples show how achievement conscious people are. Somehow, we have in the back of our mind that the very doing of something gives merit. And the more we do, the more merit we should receive. We also become irritated when our hard effort is not rewarded to a greater degree than the fellow next to us. I think of being in school. Often there would be Maybe you have known what it is like. There is a final coming up Monday. You study all weekend, reread the material, outline it, review it. You stay up half the night studying Sunday. After the test is over, you explain all this to the person sitting next to you. He answers, "Oh, I didn't think it was bad at all. I didn't even look at it till 10 o'clock last night--and I was asleep by midnight." Later the grades are posted and you both get a B. You knocked yourself out, it all came easy to him, and you both got Bs. OfteOOften the woudld be aOa final coming up on Monday. I would study all weekend, reread the material, outline it, and review it. I would stay up half the night on Sunday studying. After the test was over, I would commiserate with the person sitting next to me. He would answer, "Oh, I didn't think it was bad at all. I didn't even look at it till 10 o'clock last night - and I was asleep by midnight." Later the grades would get posted and we both get an A. I knocked myself out, it all came easy to him, and we both got "A’s." Of course what bugged me was the human sin of envy. I envied the fact that he got the same reward, so much more easily. On the flipside I do remember having a little laugh over a classmate who showed up for a class, and did not realize that we were having a test that day. My friend Andy got in the face of this nice guy and said slowly and deliberately, "Dave, don’t you know that we have a test today?" (Both these pious conversations took place in the pious halls of my seminary). Yes, our sinful selves want to see more stories in which our pompous and haughty neighbor, through very little effort, acquires the latest high tech entertainment equipment, suddenly destroyed by fire, lightening, or flood. Maybe all three at once. There was once an eighth grader who commented on this text from Matthew this morning. He said, "If the grape pickers who started at dawn had not known the salary given to those at the eleventh hour, they would have gone home happily. Why is it that some people's happiness depends on feeling better off than others?" Well, perhaps because our idea of justice is confined to contracts and exact measuring, and looking over our shoulder. Look at what we see in the newspaper every day. We sit down to read the paper, turn on the news, and open the sport's page. We look at who's on top today in polls and standings, who’s on the bottom. Grading. The "pecking order." Ratings. So much of life is looking at who is ahead and who is behind, who deserves and who doesn't, who's more valuable and who's less valuable. Who's the first and who's the last? The anger of the twelve-hour laborers came out in one very telling statement. They say, "you have made them equal to us." EXACTLY. That is what is really galling. It goes down like Gatorade for the last bunch hired, like dishwater for the next-to-the-last, like vinegar for the almost-first, and like hot sulfuric acid for the first-of-all (Robert Capon Parables). At a conference I attended years ago the speaker talked about the challenge of being a church in the future, and what it will require. To attract members, it will take years and years with people who are spiritually like babies. They will take and take and take without giving anything back, even less in the offering plate. Will we grumble when we have toiled, sacrificed, and volunteered for years saying that others aren’t pulling their weight, or their full share? There have been some first class church fights grounded in unfairness. Sometimes it is a group of spiritually aware folk trying to guide the life of a congregation in a more "holy" way. And they feel they are not treated fairly in the decision-making. Sometimes it is a group of long time church members who have labored long for the sake of the congregation and they feel they are excluded from decisions about congregational life by a newer group of members. Sometimes there is even conflict between the clergy and laity. Frequently all of these problems are identified as "fairness" problems. Jesus invites us to move beyond fairness and into boundless love. The kind of love Jesus calls us to is grounded in, and in fact is, His own sacrificial love. This love was won on the cross. There is no "first class" in the realm of God. No one gets seated at the head table. It's not some are seated in front row center and others at the back of the balcony. Everyone is equal. The equality of God's grace can be a two-edged sword. Those who think they are undeserving get more than they expected; those who believe themselves more deserving get less than anticipated. No one is graded, or rated, or considered more valuable. No one gets ahead of the rest. There are not four-star or one-star Christians. We are men and women and children accepted into God's great love. Grace is the end of any mathematics. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. Many Christians identify themselves as employees who put in a full day’s work, rather than the add-ons at the end of the day. God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us get paid according to merit, for none of us come close to satisfying God’s requirements for a perfect life. In the play Amadeus, the devout composer Antonio Salieri wants to create beautiful music, but he can’t. It infuriates him that God has instead lavished the greatest gifts of musical genius ever known on an impish pre-adolescent named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Why would God "reward" an undeserving brat? Grace to many seems unjust. Having talked to some Jews and Muslims, some find this to be one of the most scandalous aspects of Christianity besides our understanding of God. How can God conceivably extend grace to all, even those who have committed the most unspeakable crimes against men, women, and children? Is this not the Biblical pattern? Jacob the conniver, over dutiful Esau? Samson got supernatural powers of strength, yet was erratic. A rusty shepherd boy becomes a man after God’s own heart, yet can be aptly labeled an adulterer, murderer, traitor to those who knew him. Solomon is endowed with superior wisdom, yet is the result of a liaison. Jesus’ parables and life embody this upside down world of irregular mathematics. A shepherd rescues one sheep, and leaves the ninety-nine. He commends a widow’s offering vis-à-vis the hefty contributors. "Look, Pal," he says. (Incidentally, the Greek word is a distinctly unfriendly word for "friend"). "Look, Pal," he tells the spokesman for all the bookkeepers who have gagged on this parable for two thousand years, "You agreed to $120 a day, I gave you $120 a day. Take it and get out of here before I call the cops. "Are you Salieri, envious because I am generous to Mozart? Are you Pharisees envious because I open the gate to Gentiles so late in the game? That I honor the prayer of the tax collector above a Pharisee’s, that I accept a thief’s last-minute confession and welcome him to Paradise - does this arouse your envy? Do you begrudge my leaving the obedient flock to see the stray or my serving a fatted calf to the no-good prodigal?" (Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, 61-62) The parable in our text ends with the evening paycheck. Some have seen it as a reference to the end of time, when all will get their wages. How will we feel at the great quitting time, at the end of time? Will we be eager to hear that whistle blow early, and celebrate with all the many who got to party with us, or will we grumble that we should have gotten more, and they less. I think we will be so happy that it just won’t matter. AMEN |