Saying yes and saying no

Scripture Matthew 21:23-32

21:23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.”  27 So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

28 "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

********************************************************************************************

Message Saying Yes and Saying No

Good morning, or afternoon, or maybe evening - depending on when you are joining us for worship.  Whenever it is where ever you are right now, it is a perfect time to worship.  

When I select the Scripture reading for each Sunday I determine a focus for the message.  Maybe a particular verse captures my attention, or maybe a proverb or truism pops into my mind when I read it.  The reading and the focus help me select a hymn that reiterates my point - and helps Jordan select all the other music for that Sunday.  This way when the time comes to preach on any particular passage I have a good idea of where I want to go.   More often than not I will have come back to it a few times and jotted down a story or a point I want to be sure to make.  I did all that with this one but somehow my usual plan went sideways.  Apparently I was jotting down ideas based on the title instead of the focus.  And I have no idea what I was thinking when I chose the hymn.  Luckily Jordan chose lots of good ones, and the Quarantine Qrew’s singing always makes everything ok. 

The title is Saying Yes and Saying No.  And with a Presidential Debate coming up this week it was hard to get the idea of debating out of my mind.  I mean, yes, Jesus was engaged in a running debate with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  At every encounter he confounded them with his knowledge and his eloquence.  But the thing about debates is that they rarely change the mind of any one whose mind is already made up.  They might sway a person who’s kind of undecided, but the true believers already know what they know, and no amount of logic or eloquence is going to change that.   

A story my mother used to love embarrassing me with is about the day she walked into the room where my sister and I were supposed to be napping only to find us standing up in our cribs, one yelling yes and the other yelling no. No idea what that was about. But I suspect I was the No, because I tend to say no quickly.  Sort of like the character Jim on the Vicar of Dibley, who begins every sentence with “No no no no no no.” 

Jesus was teaching in the Temple, so the chief priests and elders wanted his credentials.  He wasn’t from one of the priestly families.  He hadn’t spent his life at the feet of a teacher in the Temple learning the Law and the Prophets.  So they asked, where do you get your authority to teach the way you do? Because, it really is different to what we are used to teaching.  And we don’t know you.  Jesus took the opportunity to ask another “Who do you say that I am?” question - where do you all think John got his authority to baptize?  Because everyone knew by this time that John had been talking about Jesus, so where ever John got the authority had to be where Jesus got his.  They had to say “I dunno” because no matter what they said, they were going to get themselves into trouble.   If they thought John, and by extension Jesus, was authorized by heaven, then they were clearly on the wrong side of the conversation.  But the people thought John and Jesus, came from God, so if the priests and elders said they didn’t, the people would turn on them.

Jesus knew why they answered that way, of course and declined to let them off the hook - or to answer their original question. Instead,  he tells a story of two sons whose father wants them to go work in the vineyar.  One tells his father he will not go work in the vineyard but does.  The other says he will but doesn’t.  The priests and elders agreed that it was the first who did God’s will.  Actions speak louder than words.  

Sometimes God calls us to something that we really don’t want to do.  Maybe we are comfortable just the way we are.  Or we have a zillion reasons why we can’t do it - maybe finances or lack of self confidence.  My experience has been that if God wants me to do something and I choose not to - there will be pain.  I have learned that it is better to just do whatever it is, because none of my excuses will matter. If God called me to it, God will lead me through it.  God will make a way somehow.  Even if, like the first son, you don’t want to do the thing, and say you’re not going to do the thing,  for whatever reason, but you go ahead and do it anyway even though you really do not want to, you are still doing God’s will because actions speak louder than words.

If, on the other hand, you say Yes Lord! but don’t make any effort beyond that . . .

Well, Jesus said to his disciples “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21).   Even if that one says “No” before saying “yes”.

The chief priests and the elders held positions of importance among the Jewish people.  They were community leaders.  They had important jobs.  They upheld tradition. They had said yes to God, but they only did the things they had always done the way they had always done them. They believed they were doing right by God and the people.  They were used to things being a certain way, and being taught a certain way.   And Jesus was turning their world upside down.  They were teaching the way things had been taught for ever and Jesus shows up with the Common Core.  They were not ready for this, and they were not sure what to do about it.  They found themselves on the defensive.  And so, when asked where John’s authority derived, they had to say, “I don’t know.” 

And Jesus said to them, you may not want to believe, or to admit that you believe, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believe.  Even the people you won’t allow in the Temple to worship, people who aren’t good enough for you to sit down and eat with, those people whom you despise are being saved before you, because they are saying yes where you are saying no.  They aren’t letting preconceptions or antiquated traditions get in the way of hearing God’s call to change their hearts and lives.  They are not as afraid of change because the traditional ways of doing things aren’t doing them any good.  Doing things the way we have always done them only helps the folks already in positions of power.   And they will do anything to keep from losing that power.

The chief priests and the elders didn’t know Jesus because he was not one of them, he was not one of the people in power. Jesus came as an ordinary man, not a royal prince, not a member of the priestly families.  He walked among the poor, worked among them, he WAS one of them, he knew their lives as well as they did, because this was his lived experience.  He knew society from the bottom.  He knew what it was to be the object of prejudice, to hear people say, “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” Jesus preached from a position of solidarity with the people who most needed him, against oppression, against focusing on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the Law, against people in positions of power who chose not to help the people who needed their help the most.  Jesus spoke for the poor, the hungry, the helpless and the hopeless, the lost and the last.  He spoke for justice with mercy, for compassion, for love.  He told the story of a man who did not want to serve God when called, but went to work in the vineyard anyway.  And the one who talked a good game, but chose to do nothing.  

We are given the choice every day between saying yes, and saying no.  When you hear God’s call, which will you say?

Reaching Consensus

 

Scripture.   Matthew 18:15-20. NRSV

18:15 If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

**************************************************************** 

Good morning!  

As usual, I selected the scripture reading for today months ago. You may remember that I swapped the Laborers in the Vineyard parable with another so I could use that one on Labor Day Sunday.   This is the other.   

A lot of what Jesus taught to his followers was simply how to get along with other humans.  We’re rather good at not getting along, and indeed, he seems to take it as a given that members of the congregation will come into conflict with one another.  I do want you to know that I disagree with the way a couple of words were translated. First, the word translated from the Greek as church in verse 15 is actually adelphos, (ᾰ̓δελφός) which means brother, so that’s just inaccurate.  That verse might more accurately be read as “If a brother sins against you...”  Then, an entirely different Greek word is translated as church in verse 17 - Ecclesia (ἐκκλησία).  It means assembly, or even congregation, and although over time it did come to mean church, so that by the time the Bible was translated into English this would have been an accepted meaning, in Jesus’ lifetime there was as yet no church.  This is a specifically Christian word.  And there were no Christians yet.  And while I realize that this may just sound like semantics, we need to remember that Jesus was a Jewish teacher and healer.  He might speak of the Temple or synagogues, but not church.  When he used the word ecclesia he would have meant the assembly of Israel, all Israelites. 

And I know you probably don’t care about the Greek, well some of you might, but it is important to know what the original meaning or intent of a passage was, and to do that we sometimes have to look back to the original language.  I try not to do this too often because when I was at Chapman the pastor of the Disciples Church I attended spent quite some time every Sunday waxing eloquent on the original Greek or Hebrew of that day’s reading - and it really annoyed me.  Today it fascinates me, but I hadn’t studied Greek yet at that time.

Today our nation grieves the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who sat on the Supreme Court for 27 years.  She was the second woman ever to serve as a Supreme Court Justice and was a fierce advocate for gender equality. Hundreds of people gathered Friday evening at the Supreme Court building, leaving flowers, weeping and even singing - America the Beautiful, the Beatles’ Imagine, and Amazing Grace.  She will be missed.   The Supreme Court has seven members so that if there is ever a tie in a decision, the Chief Justice can cast the deciding vote.  That happens more often than we might hope.  But that’s the way our system works -  one more than 50% is a majority, and majority rules.

Another method of decision making is consensus.  According to Merriam-Webster consensus is a general agreement, or the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned, or group solidarity in sentiment and belief.  Consensus means generally accepted opinion. One example is most people believe that it is wrong to kill another person (YourDictionary.com) 

Consensus means every one is on the same page. Sounds easy enough. Unless, of course, you and a group of friends are trying to decide where to go for dinner, or what movie to watch.   (Vocabulary.com).   Jesus was aware of this, as well, which may be why he said, “if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” thus encouraging us to come to a place of sufficient agreement that we are in one accord about how to go forward. 

I remember the years of peace talks around ending the War in Vietnam.  Ten Weeks! were taken up with arguing over what shape the table they used for meetings should be.  They had to reach consensus, because if everyone could not come to an agreement the Peace Talks would not go forward.  It took another five years before all the parties involved could reach an agreement.  And although not everyone was 100% satisfied, they were sufficiently in agreement that the Accord could finally be signed.  That’s what consensus takes - unless you are Quaker.

Quakers, known as The Society of Friends, do consensus. 

Quaker decision-making is grounded in the belief that when several people come together to labor in the Spirit they can discern a truth that exceeds the reach of any one individual. In making decisions Friends do not simply vote to determine the majority view, rather they seek unity about the wisest course of action. The goal is "unity, not unanimity." (The Disciples goal is unity, not uniformity, which is very similar.). Over time Friends have developed ways to conduct meetings that nurture and support this discernment process. Ensuring that group members speak only once until everyone who wishes to speak has been heard encourages diversity of thought.  Respecting the opinions of others is critical.  Listening is crucial.  Looking at each other - Quaker meeting houses often have rows of seats facing each other.  When you look someone in the face while they are speaking, you can hear what their heart is saying better. It is not an easy process.  I have read accounts of meetings that go on for a very long time until that one last hold out agrees that, while not 100% satisfied, he can live with the decision.  Unity, not unanimity.  

Don Shelton was the Regional Minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the Pacific Southwest for 12 years.  I heard him say more than once that if a congregation’s decision about pretty much anything was 50% plus 1 vote, it would probably be wise to take that particular issue back for re-consideration until consensus could be reached.   Don’t give up on whatever it was, but work hard to come to an agreement.  Whether it is the color of the new carpet, the calling of a new pastor, or the decision to become Open and Affirming, if more than 10% of the members are in opposition, there’s a fairly good chance it will not go well.  

Now, I have heard a lot of horror stories about Church Boards - no matter what title that group has. I bet you have too.  I’ve heard of Boards keeping secrets about their financial condition, one family running the congregation for decades, feuds between different factions of the Board . . .  Church politics can get pretty ugly.  I have attended a lot of Church Board meetings, and maybe I’ve just been blessed, but what I see more often than not is a serious attempt to reach consensus on every issue.  Most Boards, and especially this one here at First Christian Church in Selma, are willing to continue discussing any item until reaching a place where everyone can live with the decision they make.  Yes, Board meetings often take a long time, but the reason for that is that the people who serve really care about what is best for the congregation, so they want to make sure that any decisions they make on behalf of the congregation will serve God and the church the best way they can determine. We can do that same thing outside of Board meetings. (By the way, Board members - we do have a meeting today at 2 pm on Zoom.  See you there. Except maybe Dave, who is visiting his son).

Our world is far from peaceful right now, but we can make it so.  If we, as church and as individual children of God, seek to really listen to each other, to respect the other’s opinions, to look at each other so we can hear what their heart says, then no matter what the topic, we can start the work of reaching consensus . . . agreement . . . peace.  God’s gift of peace is precious, and we can have it if we truly want it. It will take very hard work, but it can be done, if we don’t give up, if we keep seeking ways to agree instead of ways to disagree.  All we have to do is reach consensus, for Jesus promised where two (or lots) agree on what you are asking, it will be done for you. 

Go out therefore,

to seek agreement, 

to seek consensus, 

to seek God’s will, 

to seek peace.

Love your Vegan Neighbor

 Scripture: Romans 14:1-12. 

14 Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2 Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3 Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.

7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
    and every tongue shall give praise to God.”

12 So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

*******************************************************************

Good morning.   As of Saturday afternoon, when I recorded this, 196,000 acres had burned in the Creek Fire which was 6% contained.   The air quality was terrible - probably still is on Sunday morning.  I hope you are all able to stay inside, away from the smoke. And that you are safe from the fires, and the virus, and all other dangers.  

Some years back I started having trouble with meat - all meat. It wasn’t a moral thing.  Meat just was not agreeing with me for some reason. So I was living as a vegetarian craving meat. After a year or so I started trying meat a little at a time and discovered which ones I could eat with no trouble, and which ones were still a problem.  *sigh*. Anyway, While living meat free I discovered a Vegan restaurant not far from my church. I tried everything on their menu and most of it was pretty good.  Not the hot dogs, though.  I discovered, much to my surprise, that Vegan ice cream is not only tasty but because it is not dairy, there was no grease stain left when I inevitably spilled some on the front of my shirt.  Which has nothing to do with anything, really, but. . . .  

When I was going to that restaurant regularly some of the servers were pretty hard core evangelistic Vegans.  You know the kind - the ones who want to convert the entire world to a totally plant based diet, who will go on at some length about the immorality of killing animals for food. Some even made a point of quoting Genesis, where Adam and Eve were told they could eat all the grains and fruits of the earth - but not meat.  Because I was sitting there waiting for my meal I was kind of a captive audience - it wasn’t usually really busy at the hour I went for lunch.  I must admit that I started only going there on the days those servers did not work, because you know, they were pretty annoying.  I like Vegan food ok, but I’m really happy that I can eat meat again.

Although, did you know that Oreos are actually made from vegan ingredients including pure cocoa (not chocolate) and “cream” made from soy, oil and corn.  So next time you eat a sleeve of Oreos in one sitting don’t feel guilty. Be proud of yourself for leaving your comfort zone and exploring Veganism. 

The congregations in Rome had a number of disagreements. One of them was about eating meat and drinking wine.  The Jewish Christians who followed Jewish dietary laws did not eat meat or drink wine that might have been sacrificed to one of the many gods worshipped in the Roman Empire before being offered for sale in the marketplace.  The Gentile Christians had no such concerns, and considered the Jewish Christians weak because of their lack of freedom in this regard, whereas the Jewish Christians condemned the Gentile Christians, the ones Paul refers to as strong, for what they considered to be an illicit use of freedom.  Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.  Likewise, Jewish Christians continued to observe certain holy days specific to Judaism which Gentiles did not observe, such as the Day of Atonement, and certain fast days.  Even which day was designated as the correct day to worship came under fire, as Jews wanted to continue to observe the Sabbath (Saturday) and worship on that day, whereas Gentiles tended toward worshipping on the Day of the Lord’s Resurrection (Sunday).  

Paul’s response to all of this was very much like the Disciples of Christ’s viewpoint - in those matters which are not essential for salvation, as long as one honors and thanks God in their observance, those practices that are different are unimportant.  Each must accept the other as honoring God in their own way, without requiring that all practice their faith in exactly the same manner.  “You must not pass judgment,”  Paul said, “for God has welcomed them.”  I can’t help but think of the story I told some time back, about the woman who proudly proclaimed that because she only wore long skirts she was a real Christian unlike those women who wore short skirts or pants.  How essential to salvation is what one wears, really?  Or whether one worships on Saturday or Sunday?  Or whether one drinks juice or wine at the Lord’s Table?  Or whether one eats meat or tofu?  “Why do you despise your sister or brother? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God.”   Truly I say to you, how you treat one another is far more important when it comes to matters of salvation than how you dress, or what you eat, or who preaches. . . . Or how you vote.   

If you pay any attention to the news, whether on the internet or on television or in print, you will most likely be aware that some Christians claim that you cannot be both Democrat and Christian, while other Christians claim that you cannot be both Republican and Christian.  I am quite certain that neither of those positions can find justification in Scripture.   Actually I am very well aware that both of those positions find much in Scripture to justify their points of view, but I would say both are wrong.  And I say that because these are judging each other in exactly the way that Paul says not to do. They are despising each other, quarreling over opinions.  Each chooses their position, selects portions of the Gospels or the Epistles or even the Old Testament that seems best to fit their point of view, and uses those verses as a weapon against the other side.  Just as the Jewish and Gentile Christians did back in the day.  “Look,” says one. “Jesus showed very clearly that those old laws don’t suit in these situations.  He healed on the Sabbath, and ate with lepers.  So we don’t have to worry about Sabbath observance or purity laws any more.” “Wrong,” says the other. “Jesus says he came to fulfill the law, and that until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is fulfilled.”    And Paul said, “Who are you to pass judgement?  It is before their own Lord they will stand or fall.”  As long as you vote your conscience, as long as you vote in the way that you believe best serves God and God’s people, as long as you believe your vote honors God, and you give thanks to God that you live in a time and place where you can vote, as long as you are fully convinced in your own mind, you will be upheld by the Lord your God.   Just please, vote.  Get registered if you aren’t already, and get informed, and vote.  

Whatever we do, if we are Christians, we should do it to honor God.  

And that includes honoring one another - accepting one another - loving one another -

NOT judging one another.  

Even though we all do things differently, each of us does what we do to honor God.   When we give, it is to honor God, even if we cannot give much.  

When we sing, it is to honor God, even if we can’t carry a tune in bucket.  

When we do our work, it is to honor God, no matter what that work is.  

All that we do in living, we do for God.    

In every thing, in living and in dying,

let us be accountable to God.

For we belong to the Lord,

who welcomes us,

and upholds us,

and gives us life,

It’s not fair!

 Scripture.    Matthew 20:1-16

20:1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.  2. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4. and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.'

8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.'

13 But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

*************************************************

If you are one of those people who will be attending several different worship services today and are interested in how different preachers treat the same passage - I am sorry to tell you that I am NOT preaching on today’s lectionary text.  This passage is scheduled to be read a couple of weeks from now, but it’s Labor Day weekend.  How could I not preach on the laborers in the vineyard?  

Labor Day is an important holiday for anyone who appreciates the 40 hour work week, weekends off, the minimum wage, safety standards in the workplace, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, retirement plans . . . and the freedom to join a union.  On Labor Day we celebrate all those who worked so hard to get these benefits for all workers.  My late father-in-law was a union ironworker.  His union book number was 21.  He had so many stories about what it was like in the early days, when they were just organizing the union, about the beatings they endured, and the dangers they faced so that his son and his grandchildren could work safely and for a fair wage.  I know that some of you are or have been union members, some have not.  But all of us get to thank those union organizers for the benefits we enjoy in our workplaces - and tomorrow is the day we set aside to do that.   So when you are enjoying whatever celebration you have tomorrow, given the constraints we operate under because of the coronavirus, remember those who went before.  Remember, and thank God for those who did the hard work so that we could have better lives.  

You know, I can kind of see why those first laborers in the vineyard, the ones who had been there all day long, got upset when the people who had only been there a short time got paid the same as they did.  I can imagine them watching as each group who had been hired after them got the same wage as the one before, and getting all growly about it, so that by the time the foreman was handing them their wage they had built up a pretty good resentment.  One might point out that the vineyard owner could have avoided all this by paying the ones who’d been there the longest first. Then instead of a story about resentment in the face of grace, it would be about gratitude.  But it had to go this way, because the whole point Jesus is making in this parable is the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.  And, we don’t get to tell God who to save, or who to call, or who receives grace.

It’s like the vineyard owner had an Oprah moment - you get grace, and you get grace, and you get grace. And none of y’all earned any more or less than any one else. Because grace is mine to give away as I choose.   Are you envious because I am generous?

It’s easy to get upset when someone else gets the same thing we have worked hard for without having to do the same work we did.    At the 2009 General Assembly in Indianapolis, we passed a resolution making provision for some ministers to have their ordination recognized by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) without having to fulfill the same educational requirements as, say, me.   These were often immigrants who been serving as pastors in other countries and/or other denominations for decades.  I sat in on the workshop before the vote - mostly because Ben Bohren caught me in a hallway and said, “Hey Maria, help me with this workshop” and I did, because it was Ben and it’s really hard to say no to Ben.   I was totally in favor of this resolution, as I knew some of those ministers - and frankly how that whole thing works is pretty complicated and does include quite a lot of formal education (which I learned more about while serving on the Committee on the Ministry in the Pacific Southwest Region).  But y’know, I had moments when I looked back over the 8 years of college and seminary and the tens of thousands of dollars in Student Loans, and thought to myself, “this is not fair!”  Then I would remember this passage, and quite frankly, a lot of those pastors had been working in this particular vineyard far longer than I had.  They could just as easily think it wasn’t fair for my ordination to be accepted just because I had completed my Master of Divinity degree and other requirements for ordination, when they had been working in God’s vineyard for 20 or 30 years already and weren’t accepted in the same way.  

But fairness as humans understand fairness has nothing to do with God’s gift of grace.  Or God’s call to serve.  

Sometimes people come to me worried about a loved one who was ill or dying who had not yet accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior.  They worried about the soul of that person. They desperately wanted their loved one to be saved, and feared it was too late because it was impossible now for them to pray the Sinners Prayer, too late for them to accept Jesus in their heart.  I will usually talk to them about the thief on the cross, who came to believe at the very last possible moment and was saved, was seated with Jesus that very night in paradise.  We don’t know what happens at the very end.  We don’t know whether, in those last milliseconds between life and afterlife - which to someone facing God could be like a thousand years - if in between that final breath and whatever is next, that person looked at God and said, Lord, Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned and was then embraced by the Lord of all.  We have no way of knowing.  For that matter, we don’t know what is happening in the mind of a person in a coma, or in what we think of as an unresponsive state.  They could be talking to God the whole time, and we would never know.  But I think this passage might even be a stronger message about God’s freely and generously given grace even at the very last moment.  The laborer in the vineyard who was only there a minute, who accepted the vineyard owner’s offer of work even though it was the very end of the day, received the same pay - the same grace - as the one who had been there since dawn.  We don’t get to judge who gets what.  We don’t know what their relationship is with the vineyard owner, with God.  We just get to accept what we are given, gratefully!

Here’s the thing about judging others - about comparing ourselves to others - about thinking that we, humans, can determine what God will or will not accept, who does or doesn’t have Jesus in their hearts.  We don’t have that right.  We don’t have the power to know what is going on between God and some other person.  We don’t get to judge.

Paul talked about this, frequently.  He said in his letter to the churches in Rome, in Chapter 14, while discussing the matter of whether or not everyone needed to follow Jewish Dietary Laws, “Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. . . Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister?  Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?  For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” 

We, humans, think in terms of fairness and unfairness, in terms of what is acceptable and what is not.  We can be kind of rigid and narrow and shallow in our understanding of fairness and in what is acceptable.  God’s love is wider and deeper and broader than we can possibly imagine. God thinks in terms of mercy, of justice steeped in kindness. “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” God thinks in terms of welcome for the sinner, inviting the leper and the tax collector to the Table.  God thinks in terms of forgiveness - “go and sin no more”.  

God offers grace to the laborers he called first who have been laboring in the vineyard all day and to the ones who came at the last hour 

- to the disciple who has followed Jesus from the first day of his ministry and to the thief who accepted him in his last moments.  

For Grace is God’s and who receives it is God’s decision. 

And you get grace, and you get grace, and you get grace . . . all y’all get grace, 

because in God’s vineyard there is grace enough for all.