Grace Notes: Part II, New Math Exodus 16:2-15
Matthew 20:1-16
You're an hour into a trip down the interstate. There is a detour. Traffic is lined up for a couple of miles. You're stalled for at least 45 precious minutes. Just as you come to the turn off, someone comes flying up the berm with his or her top down enjoying life. A driver two or three cars in front of you lets the person in and they speed on their merry way. The light changes and you have to sit another five minutes contemplating that driver in the convertible and the one who let her in. Grace, it's a gift. It's unexpected and it confounds us. It is undeserving and perturbing when we are not the recipients.
“Grace notes” are not essential but rather a composer's addition in order to add flourish to music. Play any Sonata by Schubert without the grace notes and the tune will still be there, but what a difference. The grace of which we speak this Lent is essential if we want to understand the difference in life as God intends it to be. “By grace we are saved.” We can't earn God's love, only receive it. We don't deserve it no matter how hard we try.
Our world, on the other hand, would have us believe we are “persona-non-grata,” persons without grace, because grace flies in the face of what we've been taught in life from our earliest days. In nursery school we learn, “the early bird gets the worm.” “No pain, no gain.” “There's no free lunch.” “You get what you pay for.” But if you listen closely to the gospel, the “Good News,” there is a very loud whisper that says, “None of us get what we really deserve!”
The Bible is filled with the mathematics of God's grace that never add up. Luke tells of a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to search for one stray. A nice thing for animal lovers but what if a wolf had gotten into the pen while the shepherd was off on his animal welfare mission? A woman takes a pint of oil, a year's worth of wages, and dumps it on the feet of Jesus. Do you have any idea how many people the revenue from the sale of that oil could have helped? Some have suggested it's what pushed Judas over the edge. After watching a poor widow drop two measly coins in the church coffer, Jesus belittles the big givers. Not a good way to increase the Sunday offering. And then there is this morning's account. It flies in the face of every union worker and manager's understanding of fair employment. It would confound any boardroom and initiate a stockholders revolt for incompetence. For sure, that kind of business practice would lead to bankruptcy. But the gospel seems obsessed with this strange kind of math.
The account of the vineyard workers was scandalous when it was first told. It has always challenged the moral landscape of what is right and fair in life. There was a Hebrew account of the tale that the workers of Jesus' time were probably familiar with. In that version, the workers hired last are so energetic, so industrious, that they impress the boss, and therefore they get the bonus. But Jesus says the last workers were the ones who sat kibitzing at the well. They didn't even try to get a job. What boss, in his right mind, would hire that shiftless lot for a day's work? And with only a few hours left in the day, what would you think of that boss if you had been out in the hot sun all day and that Johnnie-come-lately arrived during the afternoon break?
Trouble is, God's grace doesn't seem to be about finishing any job first or last, it seems to be only about being counted. The boss didn't cheat the all-day workers. Their discontent comes when the others get what they got. But the day workers got what they were promised, so what's the problem?
How many Christians see themselves as those all-day workers? Yet, as one commentator puts it, “If the world could have been saved by good bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses.” Peter understood the math as it should be, “How many times do I have to forgive someone, seven times seven?” No, Peter, 70 times 7, 490 times and more. It's absurd; no one has time for that.
I wonder what Peter thought when he heard Jesus say to the one thief on the cross next to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The crook probably never attended church, read the Bible, confessed his sins except on his deathbed, and he surely never apologized to those he had hurt with his life of crime. Don't you wonder what Peter thought after his years of devotion? As guilty as Peter must have felt after his denial, there's always room for recrimination.
C.S. Lewis wrote; “To be Christian is to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” The math of grace is “atrocious” by all the human standards we value. It is that simple, that amazing, and that incredible!
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous first went to a prominent attorney with their 12-step program. He had flunked out of eight previous detox attempts. When they told him about their own addictions and their new hope in a “Higher Power,” the attorney replied, “it's too late. I still believe in God but I know God doesn't believe in me.” How many of us, no longer believe in ourselves? How many people have pulled a shell around themselves? How many people, like an abused child, turn away from the freedom offered by a loving God?
My mother, who is not normally a sports addict, has somehow gotten hooked on “March madness,” that playoff time that tries to sort out the best college basketball team in America. She loves the little teams, the underdogs. So, don't count on her to cheer for Ohio State.
Almost always, the winner gets decided with no time left on the clock and one lone youngster standing at the line for a free throw. He dribbles the ball a couple of times and thinks. He knows that if he misses he will probably be in therapy for the rest of his life because he missed the one chance at fifteen minutes of fame.
My mother tells about one year when watching just such a drama play out. How the shooter's knees quivered, fans cheered, people tried desperately to distract the youngster, and then, ...her phone rang.
When she returned, the TV showed the same young man being carried to the hoop on the shoulders of his teammates. He didn't have a care in the world. She had missed everything in between. Yet, between those two frames of time was all of life and in between those two frames of time is the difference between grace and our lives lived without it.
Our world runs on a grace “less” path most of the time; everything is supposed to depend on what we do. But God's math adds up differently! Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more! There is nothing we can do to make God love us less! And if you don't believe that, look at the Bible and see who God picks to tell God's own story.
God uses a murderer and an adulterer named David, making him a king and the progenitor of Jesus. God takes a fanatic committed to terror and torture named Saul of Tarsus and uses him to spread the “Good News” throughout the world. And what of that motley crew called the disciples? There is not one person in scripture who deserves the place God gives, except perhaps Job. And poor Job, after all he suffers, says, “I (still) know that my Redeemer lives.” But friends and family are convinced otherwise and in today's society, they would have him committed some kind of stress related syndrome.
We listen to the grumbling of the people in Exodus and we understand their fear. “Would that we were back in the fleshpot, back where we understood the way the world works. It may not have been a good place but at least we knew the rules. Now we find ourselves in the wilderness and we have to depend on God. We have to live by faith. It would be better to be back under Pharaoh's heel.” Is there a person here that doesn't understand that?
A recent Christian Century article titled What Would Jesus Say? reports that a Baptist church in Australia posted a sign reading “Jesus loves Osama.” There was quite a stir. Even the current prime minister offered his displeasure saying, “I hope the church understands that a lot of Australians, including Christians, will think that their prayer priority could have been elsewhere.” A spokesman for the church replied, “All we're doing is sharing the Gospel.” Sharing the “Good-News.”
In the film, “The Last Emperor” the child ruler of China lives a life of luxury with over a thousand servants. “What happens when you do something wrong?” asks his brother. “Someone else gets punished,” says the boy. He demonstrates by breaking a jar and a servant is beaten.
Jesus Christ, revealing what God truly is, truly like, reversed that pattern. When the servants mess up the king gets punished. “By his stripes we are healed.” Grace is free because the giver has already paid the tab. It doesn't add up; it never will add up. But that's God's math not yours, nor mine, and clearly not the world's.