Sunday, September 20 - God's grace

This sermon was preached for a joint St. Andrew's - St. Michael's online service for Sunday, September 20. The texts for this sermon were: Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; and Matthew 20:1-16.

So I’ve spoken with some of you about this before but I don’t think I’ve preached on why I wanted to become a youth minister in the first place. When I was a teenager, I was part of my church’s youth group. And every Thursday night, we’d roll up to the barn, this old building in the back of the church property that was filled with dilapidated couches. And we’d walk in the door and one of the adult advisors of the group would come up and give us this huge hug. And in that hug was all the love and acceptance and grace that I needed and longed for as a teenager. 

What I noticed, and what I was fascinated and intrigued by, was that happened to every kid that walked through the door. Even the “bad kids”, even the kids with failing grades, and the kids who went out to sneak cigarettes and the kids who annoyed and put off all the other adults in their lives. At youth group, they were given the same hug, the same love, and the same acceptance. 

And I needed that as a teen. I needed to know that. I needed to know that if all my sparkling report card and my cross-country track records and my ability to please and obey every adults around me – if all that fell away, I would still be worth of love, I would still be accepted, I would still belong. 

At its heart, Jesus’ parable today is about grace. It’s about that grace that so generous, that’s so abundant and overwhelming and unconditional that it even angers the people around who see it. 

The kingdom of heaven¸ Jesus says, is like when a vineyard owner goes out in the morning and hires a bunch of laborers for his vineyard. And they come, and they do work, and they agree that they’ll be paid the usual wage. But the vineyard owner keeps going out and hiring more people. At nine-o-clock, at noon, into the afternoon…and even right before closing time, the vineyard owner goes out again. And he goes and hires the un-hireable. He hires the people who no one had wanted, who had stayed out all day and could not get a job. 

And who would that have been? The weak. The elderly. The people who spoke the wrong language. Who rubbed people the wrong way. Who had been incarcerated, or failed at another job. The vineyard owner hired them anyway, and brought them in. And at the end of the day, they were paid first and they were paid the same amount as everyone else.

And, man, were the other workers annoyed! Because—and I get it!—it’s unfair! It’s unfair according to every way we know the world works, according to capitalism, according to reward and punishment, according to how we motivate hard work in people, right from the beginning of their lives. Of course they cried out at the unfairness. 

And the vineyard owners says to them, “Are you envious because I am so generous? What harm does it do you that I pour out this love on the ones who were discarded and rejected and left behind?” And Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. 

Church, at its best, at its best, is a place where anyone can come and belong and be loved and accepted. Where you can show up 15 minutes late through the service and no one bats an eye. Where you can bawl in the pew and come back again. Where you can not come for years and then roll in the door. Where you can drop the ball on the things you said you’d do and the ways you thought you’d help out and you can still come back again and be welcomed and loved and given grace. 

And you know, sometimes that makes church a hard place to be when you have all your ducks in a row and all your stuff together and you’ve been coming on time this whole time and you’ve been paying your pledges. But the truth is that we need a place to encounter God’s grace, to feel a glimpse of God’s grace in this world – especially now. 

We all need to know—I think, deep down, inside of us—that when we were standing out on the street corner and no one would hire us and nothing was going right and we were rejected over and over—that God was still reaching out, still gonna show up and say, “Come on in. Come on in and I will give you the same love and grace that you long for, that you need.” 

In this time, in this moment, I feel a bit baffled about what church is, and church means, and church looks like, when we don’t have the physical metaphor of flinging open doors and handshakes and smiles and welcoming in. But as long as at our heart we have grace, as long as people still find a glimmer of God’s grace, when they come up, when they log in, when they listen, when they type little comments to each other, when they email, when they sit on porches with masks, six feet apart…as long as there are glimmers yet of God’s grace in this world, then we’re doing church. 

In this time, it feels like more and more of us don’t have our ducks in a row, like we’re just holding our head above water, like we’re hobbling along, like we are on that street corner. And maybe that’s not true for you. But know that someday it might be. And when you look around and you see grace being given, remember what that feels like, when you are welcomed in when you are so sure you do not deserve what everyone else is receiving.