Grace: Amazing and Unfair
Scripture Reading: Matt. 20:1-16
It may have been a while, but think back to your school days. Did you have a favorite teacher? I certainly did. When I was in high school, my favorite teacher was Mr. Rooney. Mr. Rooney taught chemistry, which wasn’t exactly my favorite subject. I was much more of a humanities person. English and history were my thing. I remember almost nothing of what I learned about chemistry, but I have many indelible memories of Mr. Rooney, whose teaching methods and grading could be…unconventional. He’s retired now, which is probably a good thing, because he’d likely be fired these days for doing some of the things that he did with my class in the late 1980s.
There was the time he was handing back graded homework assignments. When he had finished and my friend Dave had not received his, Dave asked, “Where’s mine? You didn’t give me back my homework.”
“That’s because you didn’t hand it in,” Mr. Rooney answered.
“Yes, I did,” Dave insisted.
They went back and forth like this a few times before Mr. Rooney eventually gave in, sort of, and offered Dave a deal. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Although you didn’t hand in the assignment, I’ll give you a 75.”
Now, Dave was the top student in the class, and a 75 was well below his average, and so he refused the deal. “Alright,” Mr. Rooney said, sounding like he was about to raise the ante in a poker game. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll flip a coin. If you call it correctly, I’ll give you a 100. But if you call it incorrectly, you get a zero. Or you can take the 75 with no risk.” Mr. Rooney had become Monty Hall playing Let’s Make a Deal with Dave’s homework.
Dave was willing to take his chances, and so that day’s chemistry lesson was paused while the entire class gathered around Mr. Rooney’s desk. He showed Dave the coin and told him to call it in the air. We all watched with anticipation as the coin sprung from Mr. Rooney’s hand and flipped in the air like an Olympic gymnast. “Heads!” Dave shouted. The coin fell to the floor, bouncing a few times before coming to a rest with the silver head of George Washington facing upward. Mr. Rooney, looking more impressed than anything, gave Dave an exuberant high-five.
There’s more. A portion of our grade was based on our lab reports. A lab report is merely a record of an experiment. There’s no creativity involved and no independent calculations to be made. Lab partners—and Dave was my partner—submitted identical lab reports. But Mr. Rooney always graded me one point higher than Dave. Our lab reports were graded on a scale of 20, so if Dave got an 18, I would get a 19. If Dave got a 19, I would get a 20…without fail. The only difference in our lab reports was our handwriting, and we were not graded on penmanship. Mr. Rooney just wanted to have a little fun at Dave’s expense. And Dave, to his credit, never got upset. Except once.
It was during the midterm exam. As much fun as we often had with Mr. Rooney, several students were struggling to pass chemistry, including all three girls in the class. That’s why, in the middle of the exam, with protons, neutrons, and electrons swirling in our brains, Mr. Rooney announced that he was adding some questions for extra credit…but only for the girls. At first we thought he was joking, but knowing Mr. Rooney, of course he wasn’t.
While most of us accepted the unfairness or generosity of it all, depending on your perspective, Dave would not. He could not. He was outraged. “You can’t do that!” he complained. “It’s not fair!” Dave is my best friend. I have known him since first grade. He is the most even-tempered person I know, and this is the only time I have ever seen him upset.
But as upset as Dave was with Mr. Rooney, so was Mr. Rooney with Dave. He was not about to let some sixteen-year-old kid tell him how to run his class. And Mr. Rooney was not a small man. When his dander was up, he could be intimidating. With his hands gripping the edge of his desk and his barrel chest aimed in Dave’s direction, Mr. Rooney ripped into Dave with all the fury of an Old Testament prophet confronting an idolatrous king. “What is it to you if I give extra credit to the girls? It doesn’t affect your grade. I’m not taking points from you. You’ll still get the grade you deserve. If I want to be generous to the girls, that’s my right!”
I don’t remember when exactly it occurred to me—if it was in the moment or sometime later—that Mr. Rooney was essentially paraphrasing the landowner in the parable that we just heard. And like I said earlier, I don’t remember much of what Mr. Rooney taught regarding chemistry, but I do very much remember his lesson on grace.
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, which is found only in Matthew, is my favorite parable, not only for the association with Mr. Rooney but because of how it highlights that the kingdom of heaven is a countercultural enterprise. As much as we expect and demand fairness, the kingdom of heaven is all about grace, and grace is in every way the opposite of fairness.
As much as we expect and demand fairness, the kingdom of heaven is all about grace, and grace is in every way the opposite of fairness.
Jesus launches into this parable after telling the disciples, much to their astonishment, how difficult it will be for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Then who can be saved?” they ask, bewildered and probably a bit agitated because Jesus has just cast doubt upon their entire worldview. You see, the disciples believe that riches are a sign of God’s favor, a reward for righteous behavior. If those whom God has favored, who have done everything they’re supposed to, are not at the front of the line, then who is? And what exactly is God up to?
Whenever I read this parable I think about Palisades Park, New Jersey, a town not far from Englewood, where Sandy and I used to live. Palisades Park is a majority-Korean town. Koreans make up 52% of the population. In addition to Koreans, there’s also a sizable community of immigrants from Central America.
If you walk down Broad Avenue in the morning, you’ll see dozens of Central American men standing on street corners waiting for work. They’re day laborers. They’re waiting for a contractor to pick them up and take them to a job site, where they’ll work as carpenters, painters, plumbers, and electricians. A day’s work earns them a day’s pay in cash. That’s all. No health insurance. No disability. No 401(k). No pension plan.
I can’t help but interpret this parable from the perspective of these day laborers in suburban New Jersey. With that in mind, picture a contractor pulling up to the curb in his pickup truck in the predawn hour and offering those already gathered an opportunity to work, with a promise to pay the going rate for a full day’s labor. However, because there’s more work to be done than workers to do it, he returns to the same street corner at nine o’clock and offers the same deal to those waiting. With still more workers needed, the contractor returns throughout the day—at noon, at three o’clock, and again at five o’clock. Each time he offers to pay “whatever is right.”
When six o’clock arrives, marking the end of many hours, or perhaps only a few hours, or even just one hour of labor, the contractor has the men line up to receive their pay. Curiously, he has them line up beginning with those who arrived last and worked the fewest amount of hours. When they receive a full day’s pay for only a few hours, or even just one hour of work, those at the back of the line anticipate the big payday coming their way. This looks like their lucky day. But when it comes their turn to be paid, they receive the same pay as those who worked fewer hours.
You can imagine how well this goes over with the men at the back of the line. “It’s not fair! You can’t do that!” they insist. (Where have I heard that refrain before?) “We busted our humps all day in the scorching heat while these guys over here showed up after lunch, and this other group came just an hour ago! But you’re paying them the same as you paid us!”
But the contractor calmly says to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a day’s pay? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last group the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
It’s that last line that hits home, isn’t it? Or are you envious because I am generous? That’s the whole ballgame. The currency of the kingdom of heaven is not fairness but grace. And when it comes to grace, God is a big spender, perhaps even generous to a fault, or at least generous enough to run the risk of appearing unfair.
The currency of the kingdom of heaven is not fairness but grace. And when it comes to grace, God is a big spender, perhaps even generous to a fault, or at least generous enough to run the risk of appearing unfair.
We like grace in the abstract, don’t we? As Christians, we’re all about grace! If you’ve attended church more than once or twice, you’ve no doubt heard many sermons about grace, sung many hymns about grace, and prayed many prayers asking for or giving thanks for grace. Grace is wonderful! Amazing even! (Hey! Someone should write a song!) Grace for everyone!
But when grace has a particular face, especially one that we regard as undeserving, we tend to care less about grace and grow much more concerned with fairness. It reminds me of that famous line from the noted social commentator Linus van Pelt, whom you might know from the comic strip Peanuts: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand!”
When grace is given to the undeserving—the faithless and the foolish, the untrustworthy, the ungrateful, and the unreformed—we act as if that grace comes at our expense, as if it somehow cheapens the grace that we have received…we who are also undeserving and just as faithless and foolish, just as untrustworthy, ungrateful, and unreformed. But we shouldn’t worry about what other people get because grace does not come at our expense but rather at the expense of Jesus, who paid for it all…yours, mine, and everyone’s.
And speaking of pay, I want to end by presenting for your consideration and your contemplation what I think is the key to this passage. In verse 2, the landowner agrees to pay the first laborers a denarius, the standard wage for a day’s labor. But in verse 4, when he calls the subsequent workers, no mention is made of a specific amount. Rather, the landowner promises to pay these later arrivals “whatever is right.” And what is right in the kingdom of heaven is not fairness but grace…aggravating, annoying, amazing grace.