A sermon for American Lutheran Church, Grundy Center, IA
This
past week, I got some great news. Maybe I shouldn’t say this because my kids
are here and I don’t want any of them to get a big head, but at the risk of
bragging, I just want to say that my kindergartener, Elias, got his first FAST
test results back and, let me tell you, he’s pretty smart. So, the tests
say. I started looking at early admission to Harvard and I don’t think he’s
quite eligible yet, but by his spring FAST test results, maybe he’ll be ready
to skip 1st-12th grade. And, yeah, sure, he just turned
five, but he’s on the fast-track to great things—the results say.
But
those test results—they’re a bit funny—because while they say he is doing quite
well in reading and math, they don’t seem to mention some of his best
qualities. I don’t see a single category for kindness or how well he cares for
his friends. I don’t see any measurement of his capacity for empathy or the joy
that comes from all the nonsense jokes that he concocts. I don’t see a single
thing about his goofy grin, his love of the outdoors, or even his excitement
about dinosaurs.
To
be fair, I don’t think any of these tests claim to say much about peoples’ best
qualities—whether FAST, or the ACTs, or your credit score—but it’s worth
noticing that how readily we are reduced to numbers when it comes to areas of
our life that are deemed valuable to society. There is always somebody ready to
assign us a value for how well we answer questions, or how we look, or how high
we can jump. And this may work just fine and dandy to power an economic system
that is built on merit, but according to Jesus in the parable we read today, it
is simply not the way that the kingdom of God works. The kingdom of God is a
kingdom of grace, which kind of stinks for me—what with such talented kids.
But then again, I have seen how they behave sometimes, too. I have seen how badly they need to be loved in and through their mistakes—how they need to be defined not by their worst moments but loved for who they are, even if it takes some time for them to become more who we would like—even if they are occasionally just awful to one another—even, in fact, if they never improve. It is for children like these that the parable of the vineyard is told. But, I suspect more than that, it is for we-parents who know how imperfect we are, who need to know that when everything goes to hell, God’s grace will catch us.
It just so happens
that grace is one of our six core values at Camp Ewalu.
Faith-Based—Community-Building—Hospitality and Inclusion—Stewardship—Leadership
Development—and Grace.
Of these values,
grace is perhaps the hardest to see day to day. We have a deeply engrained fear
of being taken advantage of—just as we have a deeply-engrained suspicion of
anything that is free. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” the maxim goes—the
implication being that everybody expects something in return. A free lunch will
require a lavish dinner in return someday down the line.
Grace
is foolish on the one hand and offensive on the other. Certainly, the laborers
who worked all day thought so. Not only did they work longer but they were paid
last of all. So, when they saw the folks who just got there leaving with a full
day’s wage, they expected that they must be getting paid more.
It’s
worth pausing for a moment to note that the landowner could have avoided any of
this frustration simply by paying those who worked all day first and then
paying everyone else in the order they arrived. If he would have done that,
grace would not have been so offensive because it would not have been known,
but the moment it became public, that’s when it became offensive.
Grace
is unfair. Like the prodigal son who returns home and receives the great party
that his faithful brother was never offered, those who show up last of all are
blessed with a reward they have done nothing to earn. The vineyard owner has
sent his bookkeeper packing and is no longer keeping score. Depending on where
you stand in the moment, this is either a tremendous relief or a terrible
offense. At varying points in our lives, it flips—we are offended sometimes
because of the work we put in and other times we are relieved because our
efforts were not nearly enough.
When
I say that “Grace” is a core value at Ewalu, I mean that we strive to live
after the kind of world that Jesus envisions in this parable—a world where our
campers are treated not as first picks or after-thoughts but as children of God,
one and all. The amazing thing about grace is that those after-thoughts receive
the greatest reward. The last are first—just as the laborers who showed up at
the dead end of the day got their pay in full and first of all. At Ewalu, we strive
to be a place where those on the outside are welcomed even before those on the
inside—where God’s love is evident for all the outcasts and the misfits,
because eventually, we realize, that is all of us.
And
you know what? At Ewalu, we don’t always do a great job of it. Living into
grace is hard work in a broken world full of sinners like you and me. This
parable shows us what the kingdom of God is like, not what we can ever really
attain. The best news is that God’s grace is for those of us who try and fail
to live as if grace is true, as well. God’s grace is for those trying to live like
the landowner, and God’s grace is also for the worker who works all day and
feels resentment to the one who works only in part. After all, that worker too
has fallen short, resenting grace given to another. Everybody in the parable is
valued not for the work they have done but for the work God has done for them.
This is a parable about our need for a Savior, since none of us can work long
enough to do it on our own.
Now,
it’s hard to tell sometimes how well we are doing when it comes to grace, but
at Ewalu, we have one strong indicator that folks who come to us see us as a
place full of grace. That indicator, of course, is that we attract folks who do
not care about the size of their paycheck.
And I say this
jokingly, but also quite seriously, because young adults who come to work for
us each summer could be making considerably more money in many other lines of
work or working internships on their way to much higher paying careers, but instead,
they come to us and work long hours with lots of responsibility for a pittance
of a wage. Seventeen years ago, that was me—working 23 hours a day, five or six
days a week for the grand sum of $175. Still, I look back on that time as the
most incredible, formative, faith-filled days of my life. For many reasons: Because
of the power of community, because of the feeling of joy watching kids come to
know they are loved by the God who created and called them by name. Because
grace is true. And it isn’t fair, because life isn’t either.
If
you strive in this life to make all the calculations balance out at the end of
the day, you will end up frustrated. Some will work more than others. Bad
things will still happen to good people. The powerful still stomp on the weak.
We cannot be naïve enough to pretend that people will not look out for
themselves, taking what they can and caring little for the beautiful earth
entrusted to us or all the people that God created and called “very good.” All
of us still keep tallies, and when it doesn’t add up, we assign the remainder
to karma, or assess that it is unfathomable and so part of God’s unknowable plan.
Not so, suggests Jesus. If this parable is any indication, God’s plan is
that all receive what they need. That’s what the kingdom of God looks like. Not
karma—not a great balancing act—just grace.
Ironically,
it’s those very same uber-talented kids of mine who have taught me so much
about grace, because there are times, I tell you, when they deserve to go to
their rooms not just for the night but well into adulthood. This past Thursday,
in the midst of what will forever-after be known as the great spaghetti
disaster, I briefly but seriously considered leaving the dog in charge because
he couldn’t possibly do more damage than had been done by three screaming
children with plates of spaghetti. Parents get these little reminders of our
need for grace all the time—both for our sake and for the sake of our kids.
Whether we spend the whole day working hard or show up last minute with
spaghetti in our hair, we need grace.
I
have the privilege at camp of seeing loads of kids like mine—and like yours—who
need that grace, and we, at Ewalu, have the great privilege of sharing grace
with them. It’s just a little taste of the kingdom of God. It is beautiful and
messy—that is camp. I hope you can experience it, too—in whatever way you
can—because grace is an amazing thing to behold, and we could do with so much
more of it in our lives. Thanks be to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment