Grades or Grace?

Luke 14:15-24
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Greeley, Colorado
May 16, 2021  

Matthew 20:1-16. “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

 “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

 “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

We are concluding our series of Stories of Hope as we look at the parable of the vineyard laborers, clearly one of greatest message of grace from our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we will reflect on receiving the gift of grace and next Sunday, God-willing we will explore how we can share with others the gift of grace.

When it comes to understanding world religions and why Christianity is different from them, we should understand two facts at the beginning of our conversation.

First, the world’s religions do not teach the same truth or worship the same God.

It is popular today to say that the various religions are just different roads up the same mountain, that they all worship the same God in their own way. But none of the other religions believe that.

Muslims are convinced that Allah is the only God, and that the Qur’an is his full revelation to mankind.

Jews believe in the Old Testament but not the New Testament and reject the divinity of Jesus.

Buddhists and Hindus reject the concept of a personal afterlife in eternity, believing that we will eventually be absorbed into reality and cease to be.

If anyone is right, the others are wrong. They do not teach the same truth.

Second, Christianity is not a religion.

In essence, a religion is our attempt to find God. For instance, the Muslim seeks to obey the Qur’an; the Hindu obeys strict ascetic teachings and expects multiple reincarnations; the Buddhist tries to observe the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

Religion is our effort to climb up to God or the afterlife.

Christianity is God’s decision to climb down to us. God’s Son became one of us so that we can be one with him. Christianity is not about a religion of rules and regulations but a personal relationship with our Creator and Father.

We do religious things such as attending worship, reading the Bible, and praying, not so God will love us but because he already does.

Our faith is not a religion we must practice, but a relationship we experience.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Ephesians 2:10, “For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.”

Growing up in the Roman Catholic religion, the   concept of grace was non-existent. Our constant battle was, “How can I atone for my sins?” Surely, there is something that I can and must do to receive God’s forgiveness. My Catholic friends seek to obey the commandments, participate in the sacraments, go to church, pay the debt of sins by penance and purgatorial sufferings, give alms, recite prayers and so on, to merit salvation. In its official writings, the Catholic Church teaches that faith is important; but it also insists on the necessity of good works to merit eternal life. That is Rome's salvation by works!

Our Jehovah’s Witness friends teach that salvation is a “gift” but is given conditionally to those who must still prove themselves worthy. Only those who use and proclaim the name of Jehovah, accept the direction and teaching of the Jehovah’s Witness leadership, are baptized (as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses), observe the organization’s rules, and faithfully engage in the preaching of the Watchtower’s message of the kingdom are true Christians today and have the hope of being saved.

Our Mormon friends teach that Jesus’ atonement provided immortality for all people. Exaltation (godhood) is available only to Mormons through obedience to Latter Day Saint teachings including faith, baptism, endowments, celestial marriage, and tithing. “Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God-Wherefore, all things are theirs” (Doctrine & Covenants, 76:58-59). They say, we believe the Bible, but also the teachings of prophet Joseph Smith who at the age of 24 was visited by Angel Moroni and led to the publication of the Book of Mormon and on April 6, 1830 organized the Church of Latter-Day Saints. 

John Claypool was a favorite preacher to many of us. He was a broken man, including experiencing the death of his daughter to leukemia in 1960. John wrote 11 books including, “Tracks of a Fellow Struggler: Living and Growing Through Grief.” When I was in seminary in Fort Worth, I visited his former church many times and could feel the grace and gentleness of this man as I thought of his ministry. In one of his other books, “The Preaching Event” which I donated to our church library, John describes the preacher as a “gift-giver,” one who gives to others the fits the has received from God. The gift we have received is grace. The gift we ought to give is grace.

Unfortunately, many of us do not open the package. Claypool described himself during his school years as “a nobody who had to compete and out-achieve all others in order to become a somebody.” Even in seminary, his problem with self-esteem persisted and were made worse by the institution he attended. Perceptively, he calls his theological alma mater “a community of grades rather than a community of grace.”

I can relate to John’s sentiment and so can you.

A vast majority of American seem like John Claypool. We live with perpetual self-doubt and self-esteem problems. Most of us feel deeply inadequate. We do not want you to know who we really are because we are afraid that, if you do, you won’t like us very much.  So, we create what psychologists call an “idealized self,” the person we wish you to see. It is a mask we wear. And we are never without it.

But there is a better way. Living by grades is a sure road to frustration and despair. We can never do enough for long enough. There is always someone else to impress, another way to perform. We’re only as good as our last success.

By contrast, living by grace is the sure road to joy and mind and peace of soul. It is the only way off the roller coaster of good days followed by bad. It’s a road available to every one of us. And it’s a gift everyone we know needs to receive.

If you want to make an eternal impact on your culture learn how to experience and share true grace.

Today’s idea: Accepting the grace of God.

We meet the hero of this parable early: “The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”

Remember, in a parable about the kingdom, the hero is the King. In this chapter’s guise, he’s a landowner with a vineyard. He owns the vineyard and all it produces. He can hire workers or not, and as many as he wishes, whenever he wishes. Anything the pays them is by his choice.

And so, all is grace.

The first group of workers agreed to receive a denarius, the typical working man’s wages, worth around seventeen cents today. And they began working in the owner’s field.

Around the third hour, he found a second group of workers. They agreed to work for whatever is right and joined the first crew. At the sixth hour and the ninth hour, the vineyard owner hired still more workers, who agreed to work for whatever compensation the master determined to give them.

Up to this point, the story is all routine. The Jews divided the day, from sunrise to sunset, into twelve equal parts. Thus the sixth hour was always noon, and the third and ninth hours would correspond roughly 9am and 3pm (the hours would be longer or shorter as the length of the days changed).

A man not hired at the first hour of the day, 6am, would wait for work in the marketplace, the place where prospective employers and employees met. These were day laborers, who were in the most precarious position of anyone in ancient Israel. Even slaves belonged to their master and his family, and they would not starve unless times were at their very worst.

But a day laborer was hired for a day at a time. He made so little that he could save nothing. To go a day without work was to go a day without food for his family.

Given that the workers were sent to a vineyard, we know that this was the time of the grape harvest, toward the end of September. The fall rains would arrive shortly. If the harvest were not gathered before the rain broke, it would be ruined. Each year’s grape harvest was a race against time. So the master would need all the workers he could get, whenever he could get them.

As a result, even at the “eleventh hour”, an hour before sundown and the end of the day’s harvest, the vineyard owner found and employed still other workers. These men had spent the day looking for work to no avail. Now, a man is willing to hire them at day’s end. They cannot expect to receive much compensation, but anything is better than nothing.

So far, so good. No surprises, except that a landowner would hire men for so little time and that workers would accept what they could only anticipate as the smallest of wages. Now comes the twist, the turn which changes everything: “When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius”. This was twelve times what they deserved or expected.

Imagine their surprise and delight at the generosity of their employer. This is a gift not earned, payment not deserved. It is compensation chosen by the owner of the vineyard in his sovereign will. This is amazing grace.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a woman dressed as a male page and hid in the queen’s bedroom, waiting for an opportunity to stab the queen to death. But she was found by the queen’s attendants and dragged before Her majesty. Realizing that her case was hopeless, she fell before the queen’s throne and begged for grace.

Queen Elizabeth looked at her coldly and quietly said, “If I show you grace, what promise will you make for the future?”

The woman looked up from her knees and said, “Grace that hath conditions, grace that is fettered by precautions, is not grace at all.”

The Queen was surprised. After a moment’s reflection, she said, “You are right. I pardon you by my grace alone.”

And they led her away to freedom.

Historians tell us that, from that moment on, Queen Elizabeth had no more devoted, faithful servant than the woman who had received her grace.

Such gratitude is the true and best motivation for service in the King’s vineyard.  Not so we will be reward, but because we are. Not so we will be people of worth, but because He has made us so.

Not so he would love us, but because he does.

The world’s religions know little of this grace. Prometheus gave fire to men and was punished by the gods for his “man-loving disposition.” Whether we seek to climb up to God on the Buddhist ladder of the noble eightfold path, the Hindu pathway to karma, or the Muslim or Jewish rope knotted with laws and regulations, the work is ours- the way of grades.

Christianity is different. During a British conference on world religions, experts began debating what, if any, belief was unique to our faith. None could be found. Others had various doctrines of incarnation, resurrection, and revelation. Then C.S. Lewis wandered into the room and asked what the controversy was about. He was given the question and immediately responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.” May the grace of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you always. Amen.