THIS SUNDAY 20th SEPTEMBER- LIVE ON ZOOM AND ON FACEBOOK

The Scandal of Grace – Workers in the Vineyard

I’m surprised how popular the Buddhist idea of “karma” is these days. Even quite non-religious people, people who would have very little idea of the teachings of Buddhism will say “That’s karma”  when something bad happens to someone they feel has been living the low life. Karma is the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Or more simply “what goes around, comes around’. We like karma for other people, but we prefer grace for ourselves.

Throughout the New Testament, one of the most important themes is that of God’s grace. His unmerited love for us. We don’t get what we deserve. It’s a story that is told many times and in many ways throughout the Old and New Testaments.

Mostly we like it. We like grace, especially for ourselves. 

In Matthew 20: 1-16 Jesus tells an elaborate parable about a vineyard owner and his workers at harvest. This is one of Jesus’ more provocative parables. It continues the subversive themes of the gospel:

• The least is the greatest
• The seemingly upright are degenerate
• What seems to be too little is more than enough
• The outsiders are really the insiders
• The first shall be last, the last first.

I like this parable not just because I have a vineyard and have at times, when there is a crop to be urgently picked, gone out at midday and knocked on the door of a couple of guys who were sleeping in their van by the side of the road, begging them to “come and work in my vineyard”.

But I love it because it exposes our ambivalent attitude to work. Is it a blessing or a curse?

It’s essentially a similarly constructed story as the “Prodigal Son”, which we like, because even if we have lived fairly conventional lives, most of us can twist ourselves into believing that we are the wayward child welcomed back by a loving father. But in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard most of us identify with the people that get criticised. We are the hard working, early risers, who have been in this for the long haul, we are the ones who deserve more.

I love this parable because it is confronting. It reveals our ambivalent attitudes to work, our harsh attitudes to other people, and alerts us again to the dangers of comparison.

But most of all, I love this story because it is a story about grace. We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we need. We are all 11th hour labourers, blessed abundantly by God’s grace, loved and called to transformation.

Join us this Sunday as we celebrate this great truth of our faith, even if it makes us squirm in our seats a bit.

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