Sermon from 5th October 2008
Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker's sermon is based on the gospel reading from Matthew 20: 1-16
I'd like to begin, if I may, with a quick straw poll. Put your hand up, please, if you agree with any of the following statements:
“You get what you pay for ...”;
“There is no such thing as a free lunch ...”;
“No pain, no gain ...”;
“You must claim what you are entitled to ...”;
and, “You get what you deserve in life ...”.
Thanks for co-operating – and wasn't that interesting! It wasn't surprising, though. So your responses encourage me to tell you a true story that I read this week. It's about a brave preacher who rewrote another parable Jesus told, the one (wrongly) known as the Prodigal Son. Hopefully you know this story, about the young man who demanded his inheritance from his father? To keep it short, he went off and blew it all on high living, and landed up quite literally in a pigsty. Then he realised that he'd be better off if he was his father's servant. So he hurried back home – where he was greeted like royalty by his father. His older brother wasn't very impressed, you may recall – and he let their father know about it in no uncertain terms!
Well, this preacher made some changes to the end of the story. As he told it, when the younger son got home, his father agreed with him! He didn't deserve to be treated any better than a servant. So he wasn't! And his first job was to wait on his well-behaved older brother for the party that his father then threw for him. In this version, it was the older brother who was given the new clothes and fancy ring. And as the preacher said that, someone in the congregation began to applaud. And then they called out, “Quite right: that's what should have happened!”
And if we're honest there's probably part of us that agrees with that person. Why should that younger brother have been treated any other way after he had behaved as he had? He didn't deserve to be welcomed back, did he? Of course he didn't – which is precisely the point that Jesus wanted to make by telling that parable, of course! And it's not very different to the point that Jesus wanted to make by telling the parable that we've heard today either.
Before we get to the details of this particular story, let me say bit a more about parables in general. We have covered this ground here before, not least because Jesus told so many parables. It was, in fact, his most favoured method of teaching. The 4 gospels record no less than 34 different parables of Jesus, told in some 55 settings. Jesus told parables to his disciples, to huge crowds, and even to (or against) his opponents. Jesus always had a good story to tell. It was usually based on every-day life, even if the details were often deliberately exaggerated. But that story invariably turned life as people understood it on its head. Of course Jesus' hearers could simply take the story at face value, and walk away unaffected. But if they thought about what they had heard, they soon realised that it shook the very foundations of their world-view.
That is certainly true of today's parable too; but there are a few more general points that I still need to make. The first, and most important, is that Jesus' parables were usually about the Kingdom of God. That's how today's parable began, you note: “the Kingdom of Heaven is like this ...”. We know – or we should do by now – that the focus of Jesus' ministry was to teach and show the Kingdom of God. That is why he was born – so that people could see and know what life is really like when God's in charge. And, above all, Jesus came to die so that people like us can enter the Kingdom of God now, and live there eternally. So it's crucial that we grasp just how differently the Kingdom of God works.
That's where this series began, you may recall. It started with the need for us to change our whole outlook on life. As Jesus said, we must become like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of God. In very real way we need to be completely re-educated if we are to grasp and understand God's ways. And the method that Jesus used to do that was by telling parables about how the Kingdom of God works. So that's the point that we have to look for when we study any of Jesus' parables. What does this tell us about the nature of God's Kingdom? We can afford not to focus on the detail of the story itself – and indeed sometimes it's better not to!
That's very much the case in this parable too. What kind of businessman so badly under-calculates the amount of labour that he needs? And, even if we are not business people ourselves, we know that the economics in this story just plain don't work! It would be madness to pay people a full day's wage for just an hour's work! So we'd quickly get ourselves into trouble if we saw this as Jesus trying to teach God's view of employment practices! That wasn't what he was trying to teach, though. Mind you we do have to work a bit harder to get Jesus' real point here than we sometimes do – because of our own world-view.
That's what I was trying to get at at the start. Most of us do actually think that we get what we deserve in life. We like to think – and often with good reason – that we earn what we get paid. We're skilled people; we've trained; we work hard; we give a lot of time and effort to our jobs: our pay is our reward for that – and it should include bonuses, holidays, and the occasional perk. We're entitled to those, we think. That makes most of us rather like the workers who were hired first in Jesus' story. OK, they might have been unskilled labourers, who didn't own their own land. But they got themselves to the market-place early so they could be hired. They took the work that was on offer, even for minimum wage. And then they did put in a full 12-hour day in the hot sun. In short they had earned those wages: they were entitled to them because of their efforts.
The same couldn't be said of those who'd been hired later in the day – not those taken on at 9; or at 12; or 3; and definitely not those employed at 5 o'clock! So we can understand the outrage of those who had worked all day. It wasn't fair! Yes, they were paid what they had been promised, and had agreed to. But if others were paid the same amount for doing so much less work, why shouldn't they get more? Surely they were entitled to more? That's what they thought – and so that's what they said to the landowner in Jesus' story. And most of us would, I think, stand right behind them too.
But the landowner saw things rather differently. It was his money; he could do what he liked with it: he wasn't being unfair, to any of the workers. He'd offered those who had worked all day the going rate; and they had accepted that. Then he had paid them that: “fair exchange, no robbery”, as the saying goes. All he'd said to those he had hired later was that he'd do right by them; and he had. They were not complaining about what they had got; and why should they? They'd done rather nicely, thank you. The problem, as it so often is, was in the eyes of those others. They didn't like what the landowner had chosen to do. And, as I say, we can easily understand that – because we are the sort of people who work hard all day long! And we don't like others getting more than they deserve if we don't!
As so often, Jesus' simple little story reveals what's in the depth of our own hearts. And that's not often a pretty sight – though you're free to tell me that I'm wrong about your heart! In this case it shows what we often really think about where we stand with God. Of course the landowner in this story represents God, and we are those workers. So it particularly speaks to those who've been Christians for a long time – and very specially to those in full-time Christian work. We can so easily slip into thinking that we are doing God this huge favour, for which he really ought to pay us rather well. It might usually be well hidden, but in our hearts there is this idea that we have earned what we get from God – like those who worked all day long. And nothing could be further from the truth!
The reality is that God doesn't owe any of us anything at all! If we focus on the workers who were paid what they were owed in this story, we'll have missed the point of it. The real point is made by those who were paid for a full day when they had worked so much less. The fact is that none of us could ever earn our way into God's Kingdom. It just isn't possible, not if we lived and worked tirelessly for God for a thousand years! Our entry into the Kingdom of God doesn't depend at all on what we have done for God. It depends entirely on what He has done for us, in and through the death of His son, Jesus Christ. The only way we can enter God's Kingdom is by receiving it as a gift.
The word we're looking for is 'grace'. It may not be a word that we think about very often – though if you listen out for it you'll hear it far more often than you may believe. Grace sums up what God has done for us by allowing us into His Kingdom at all. None of us, not one, deserve to be there; we haven't earned it; and we can't. It's God's gift to us, that costs us nothing at all – because it cost Him literally everything. And, by its very nature, “God's grace is given to people who don't deserve it – and I am one of those people”. That statement is true of me, but it's actually a quote from the best book on grace that I have ever read, by Philip Yancey: 'What's so amazing about grace?' It's easy to read, but is devastatingly direct about who and what we are, and what God is like.
All it takes is the sort of honest look at ourselves that this parable demands that we take. Whenever we start to feel smug about our own goodness, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. And then we will be reminded that we are who and where we are only because of God's grace. That's why I always use those words of invitation to Communion that so many of you have commented on. Each one of us can only come to the Lord's table, as we will do later, because Jesus died for sinners like you and me. No goodness, or hard work, of our own gives any one of us any right to come. We all come in weakness, not in strength, each one of us needing God's mercy and help. And it is by God's amazing grace alone that any of us are welcome, at his table or in his Kingdom.
That truth is to be at the heart of our lives, day in and day out. Don't ever lose sight of it, no matter how long you live the best life that you can for God. Of course that is what we are supposed to do – live for God. But keep reminding yourself that all that you do for Him is only in response to what He has already done for you. So don't ever allow yourself to slip into the kind of thinking highlighted in this parable – and please don't let me do it either! Instead, keep on thinking, “grace”. Keep on thinking about God's wonderful gift to you – and how it comes to you for free, at the cost of the life of God's Son. And so let's pray ...
I'd like to begin, if I may, with a quick straw poll. Put your hand up, please, if you agree with any of the following statements:
“You get what you pay for ...”;
“There is no such thing as a free lunch ...”;
“No pain, no gain ...”;
“You must claim what you are entitled to ...”;
and, “You get what you deserve in life ...”.
Thanks for co-operating – and wasn't that interesting! It wasn't surprising, though. So your responses encourage me to tell you a true story that I read this week. It's about a brave preacher who rewrote another parable Jesus told, the one (wrongly) known as the Prodigal Son. Hopefully you know this story, about the young man who demanded his inheritance from his father? To keep it short, he went off and blew it all on high living, and landed up quite literally in a pigsty. Then he realised that he'd be better off if he was his father's servant. So he hurried back home – where he was greeted like royalty by his father. His older brother wasn't very impressed, you may recall – and he let their father know about it in no uncertain terms!
Well, this preacher made some changes to the end of the story. As he told it, when the younger son got home, his father agreed with him! He didn't deserve to be treated any better than a servant. So he wasn't! And his first job was to wait on his well-behaved older brother for the party that his father then threw for him. In this version, it was the older brother who was given the new clothes and fancy ring. And as the preacher said that, someone in the congregation began to applaud. And then they called out, “Quite right: that's what should have happened!”
And if we're honest there's probably part of us that agrees with that person. Why should that younger brother have been treated any other way after he had behaved as he had? He didn't deserve to be welcomed back, did he? Of course he didn't – which is precisely the point that Jesus wanted to make by telling that parable, of course! And it's not very different to the point that Jesus wanted to make by telling the parable that we've heard today either.
Before we get to the details of this particular story, let me say bit a more about parables in general. We have covered this ground here before, not least because Jesus told so many parables. It was, in fact, his most favoured method of teaching. The 4 gospels record no less than 34 different parables of Jesus, told in some 55 settings. Jesus told parables to his disciples, to huge crowds, and even to (or against) his opponents. Jesus always had a good story to tell. It was usually based on every-day life, even if the details were often deliberately exaggerated. But that story invariably turned life as people understood it on its head. Of course Jesus' hearers could simply take the story at face value, and walk away unaffected. But if they thought about what they had heard, they soon realised that it shook the very foundations of their world-view.
That is certainly true of today's parable too; but there are a few more general points that I still need to make. The first, and most important, is that Jesus' parables were usually about the Kingdom of God. That's how today's parable began, you note: “the Kingdom of Heaven is like this ...”. We know – or we should do by now – that the focus of Jesus' ministry was to teach and show the Kingdom of God. That is why he was born – so that people could see and know what life is really like when God's in charge. And, above all, Jesus came to die so that people like us can enter the Kingdom of God now, and live there eternally. So it's crucial that we grasp just how differently the Kingdom of God works.
That's where this series began, you may recall. It started with the need for us to change our whole outlook on life. As Jesus said, we must become like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of God. In very real way we need to be completely re-educated if we are to grasp and understand God's ways. And the method that Jesus used to do that was by telling parables about how the Kingdom of God works. So that's the point that we have to look for when we study any of Jesus' parables. What does this tell us about the nature of God's Kingdom? We can afford not to focus on the detail of the story itself – and indeed sometimes it's better not to!
That's very much the case in this parable too. What kind of businessman so badly under-calculates the amount of labour that he needs? And, even if we are not business people ourselves, we know that the economics in this story just plain don't work! It would be madness to pay people a full day's wage for just an hour's work! So we'd quickly get ourselves into trouble if we saw this as Jesus trying to teach God's view of employment practices! That wasn't what he was trying to teach, though. Mind you we do have to work a bit harder to get Jesus' real point here than we sometimes do – because of our own world-view.
That's what I was trying to get at at the start. Most of us do actually think that we get what we deserve in life. We like to think – and often with good reason – that we earn what we get paid. We're skilled people; we've trained; we work hard; we give a lot of time and effort to our jobs: our pay is our reward for that – and it should include bonuses, holidays, and the occasional perk. We're entitled to those, we think. That makes most of us rather like the workers who were hired first in Jesus' story. OK, they might have been unskilled labourers, who didn't own their own land. But they got themselves to the market-place early so they could be hired. They took the work that was on offer, even for minimum wage. And then they did put in a full 12-hour day in the hot sun. In short they had earned those wages: they were entitled to them because of their efforts.
The same couldn't be said of those who'd been hired later in the day – not those taken on at 9; or at 12; or 3; and definitely not those employed at 5 o'clock! So we can understand the outrage of those who had worked all day. It wasn't fair! Yes, they were paid what they had been promised, and had agreed to. But if others were paid the same amount for doing so much less work, why shouldn't they get more? Surely they were entitled to more? That's what they thought – and so that's what they said to the landowner in Jesus' story. And most of us would, I think, stand right behind them too.
But the landowner saw things rather differently. It was his money; he could do what he liked with it: he wasn't being unfair, to any of the workers. He'd offered those who had worked all day the going rate; and they had accepted that. Then he had paid them that: “fair exchange, no robbery”, as the saying goes. All he'd said to those he had hired later was that he'd do right by them; and he had. They were not complaining about what they had got; and why should they? They'd done rather nicely, thank you. The problem, as it so often is, was in the eyes of those others. They didn't like what the landowner had chosen to do. And, as I say, we can easily understand that – because we are the sort of people who work hard all day long! And we don't like others getting more than they deserve if we don't!
As so often, Jesus' simple little story reveals what's in the depth of our own hearts. And that's not often a pretty sight – though you're free to tell me that I'm wrong about your heart! In this case it shows what we often really think about where we stand with God. Of course the landowner in this story represents God, and we are those workers. So it particularly speaks to those who've been Christians for a long time – and very specially to those in full-time Christian work. We can so easily slip into thinking that we are doing God this huge favour, for which he really ought to pay us rather well. It might usually be well hidden, but in our hearts there is this idea that we have earned what we get from God – like those who worked all day long. And nothing could be further from the truth!
The reality is that God doesn't owe any of us anything at all! If we focus on the workers who were paid what they were owed in this story, we'll have missed the point of it. The real point is made by those who were paid for a full day when they had worked so much less. The fact is that none of us could ever earn our way into God's Kingdom. It just isn't possible, not if we lived and worked tirelessly for God for a thousand years! Our entry into the Kingdom of God doesn't depend at all on what we have done for God. It depends entirely on what He has done for us, in and through the death of His son, Jesus Christ. The only way we can enter God's Kingdom is by receiving it as a gift.
The word we're looking for is 'grace'. It may not be a word that we think about very often – though if you listen out for it you'll hear it far more often than you may believe. Grace sums up what God has done for us by allowing us into His Kingdom at all. None of us, not one, deserve to be there; we haven't earned it; and we can't. It's God's gift to us, that costs us nothing at all – because it cost Him literally everything. And, by its very nature, “God's grace is given to people who don't deserve it – and I am one of those people”. That statement is true of me, but it's actually a quote from the best book on grace that I have ever read, by Philip Yancey: 'What's so amazing about grace?' It's easy to read, but is devastatingly direct about who and what we are, and what God is like.
All it takes is the sort of honest look at ourselves that this parable demands that we take. Whenever we start to feel smug about our own goodness, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. And then we will be reminded that we are who and where we are only because of God's grace. That's why I always use those words of invitation to Communion that so many of you have commented on. Each one of us can only come to the Lord's table, as we will do later, because Jesus died for sinners like you and me. No goodness, or hard work, of our own gives any one of us any right to come. We all come in weakness, not in strength, each one of us needing God's mercy and help. And it is by God's amazing grace alone that any of us are welcome, at his table or in his Kingdom.
That truth is to be at the heart of our lives, day in and day out. Don't ever lose sight of it, no matter how long you live the best life that you can for God. Of course that is what we are supposed to do – live for God. But keep reminding yourself that all that you do for Him is only in response to what He has already done for you. So don't ever allow yourself to slip into the kind of thinking highlighted in this parable – and please don't let me do it either! Instead, keep on thinking, “grace”. Keep on thinking about God's wonderful gift to you – and how it comes to you for free, at the cost of the life of God's Son. And so let's pray ...
posted by Parish Administrator at 1:53 pm
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