September 24, 2023, Amazing Grace, Matthew 20:1-16 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ September 24, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is given below.

The readings for today bring us smack up against the grace of God. Jonah has been sent, kicking and screaming, by the roundabout journey through a whale’s belly, to prophesy death and destruction to Nineveh, a great and very wicked city in the Assyrian Empire. He goes through the whole city, a city that is so huge it takes three days to walk across, announcing the coming wrath of God. But when the people of Nineveh respond to his prophesying by repenting, fasting and mourning and wearing sack cloth and ashes – everybody from the king down to the cattle – God forgives them. And Jonah is left feeling like a right fool, angry and useless and resentful.

In the parable that Jesus tells, the workers who were hired early in the morning come at 6 p.m., tired and dirty and sweaty, to pick up their well-deserved paychecks, only to notice that the layabouts who’ve only been working since 5 p.m. are receiving the same wages as themselves. They’re angry and resentful, too; they feel un-appreciated; and really, who can blame them?

We know these stories; we’ve all heard them dozens of times. But no matter how many times we hear them, most of us, I think, find the grace of God challenging to our human sense of what is fair and what is right, especially when we consider where they lead us. How comfortable are you with the idea of God offering forgiveness and free grace to Adolph Hitler, for example? If Hitler, if Charles Manson, if your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, if they accepted Jesus on their deathbed, how would you honestly feel about sitting across the table from them at the wedding supper of the Lamb?

When we read these stories, we are forced to wrestle with our natural human resistance to the grace and abundant forgiveness of God. And that is a good challenge for us, an exercise in understanding what God really means when he tells us to forgive our brother or sister seventy-seven times. We sit with Jonah on that hill overlooking Nineveh, and we struggle to understand how God can have compassion on those who are truly wicked. We stand in line with the hard-working laborers in the vineyard, and we struggle to accept the grace of God that rewards the latecomers and layabouts just the same as those of us who show up early and work hard. That’s the way most of us have been in the habit of reading these stories, I believe; that is our common understanding of these two passages. But I want to invite you today to look at the grace of God from another angle.

What if you read the story of Jonah, and instead of seeing yourself seated on the hill with the angry prophet, overlooking the city, wrestling with your righteous indignation, suddenly you recognize yourself down in the dirty streets, walking among the wicked people of Nineveh? What if you hear the voice of Jonah crying out your own personal sins, your complicity with the systems of that evil city?

What if you read the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and instead of seeing yourself chatting with the hard-working laborers at the end of a long hot day, suddenly you recognize yourself – that’s you, standing awkwardly in the empty marketplace, embarrassed and unwanted, after all the good workers have been hired? What if you are the one coming to collect your wages with your head down, full of shame, knowing full well how little you really deserve?

What if you read Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, and instead of seeing yourself as the dutiful older brother, offended by all the fuss being made over your worthless sibling, suddenly you recognize yourself dressed in stinking rags, stumbling down the road toward home, overcome with shame, desperately hungry and cold and exhausted?

And what if you read the Passion of our Lord, and instead of seeing yourself sorrowfully standing at the foot of the cross with John and the faithful women, suddenly you recognize yourself hiding in the shadows, seeking a place, any place, where you can be safe, where no one will know you belong to that Galilean preacher? What if you hear your own voice along with Peter’s, vigorously denying Jesus, cursing in your panic, insisting you have nothing whatsoever to do with that man?

What if you suddenly hear your own voice above the clamor of the raging mob in Jerusalem; your own voice raised in anger and fear and hatred above all the others, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

What if we were to read about the grace of God, not as good people who have a hard time accepting the Father’s outrageous liberality – but as real sinners, helplessly flawed, foolishly rebellious, desperately in need of his forgiveness? Because that is the reality of who we are. That is the reality of who I am. That is the reality of who you are.

It is only when we honestly come face to face with the depth, and the persistence, and the shame of our own sin – not sin in the abstract, not the sin of others, but our own thoughtlessness and selfishness, our cruelty and dishonesty – it is only then that we will understand at last that the grace of God is not an offense at all – it is the breath of life to us. The unconditional and abundant grace of our heavenly Father is our only hope, our only light, and our only and everlasting joy.

Jesus ends his parable the way he often does, with this formula: “So the last will be first, and the first last.” One way we often hear this, I think, is that we think of ourselves as the first, and in faith we work to reconcile ourselves to God’s strange kindness, bringing in all those people ahead of us that we view as unworthy or unexpected.

But our whole universe shifts when our eyes are opened and we suddenly realize that the last and the least, the helpless and friendless, the sinner and the unworthy and the beggar – that’s us. That when it comes to the grace of God, there is no difference between us, washed and dressed in our Sunday respectability, and our most difficult neighbor, who has never darkened the door of a church. Jesus loves the wretched sinner, and that is only the most glorious news in the world to us when we realize that we are that wretched sinner.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! That saved a wretch like me.” We all love that hymn. But do we really understand the truth of what we are singing? Because when we do, and only when we do, then we see the grace of God for what it is. Then and only then can we really see the unmerited love of God not as an offense to our sense of fairness and righteousness, but as a lifeline, our own pearl of great price, our precious treasure whose value truly surpasses everything we hold dear.