"And in the End..."

"And in the End"--November 22, 2016

"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?' Take what belongs to you  and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed do do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last." [Matthew 20:8-16]

I don't often say this, but it is unavoidable in this instance: the Beatles were wrong.

At the tail end of the last album they recorded together, Abbey Road, after a brilliant two minutes of volleying guitar licks to lead up to it, the Beatles offer this lone couplet: 

"And in the end, the love you take

Is equal to the love you make."

This is another instance of the life-principle "Don't believe something is true just because it rhymes."  How much bad theology has been done over two thousand years just because some writer's-blocked pious poet reached for an easy rhyme rather than thinking out what he or she was writing? Well, same thing here: if we are to believe Jesus (and I believe he is indeed the authority on the subject of... anything), the way God runs the universe is decidedly NOT to only reward people based on what they have put in.  The economy of God is, from start to finish an economy of grace.  And therefore, in the end the paychecks are given out not based on who sweated the most during their shift, but based on a commitment from the landowner that everybody should be able to feed their kids the next day.

In the end, it would seem, the love you take is always way beyond what you deserved. Always.

Now, as long as I am the one receiving the windfall, that will sound pretty good.  But we humans have a way of getting envious of when someone else receives a gift that puts them on equal footing with us.  We have a way of getting angry, upset, and bent out of shape when someone else is given the same amount we have--we start fussing about what is "right" and what is "just" and what's "fair" because we feel threatened.

And that's the thing--to the ones with more than others, any gracious gesture to put people on equal footing feels like a threat. 

So here's a quick rule of thumb: if I find myself getting all bent out of shape with anxious indignation because someone else has been given a leg up so that they are at the same starting point as I am, I am probably unaware of just how privileged I have been all along.  It's funny--in that way things that are awful can also be funny--how when I look at my own life, I have a tendency to assume that I am entitled to all the advantages I have... but when I look at someone else's situation and see that someone has given them grace, I can start bemoaning them as undeserving and unworthy.

The good news in all of that (if you want to call it that)--I guess I should realize I'm not alone in that.  The workers hired first in Jesus' provocative story here are lodging the same complaint.  "You have made them equal to us!" That's their problem.  They wouldn't have minded the last ones getting an inflated paycheck so long as the first hired workers got their own paychecks pumped up--so they could still see themselves as "better."  To the ones first hired, it's fine if the next guy gets a bonus, as long as mine is bigger--that's how I compare myself to them and tell myself I'm better than all of them, after all. 

But when they see that the landowner has treated them all the same--paid them all the same amount--they get upset.  Turns out they and I are kindred spirits sometimes.  And you, too, I'll wager.  We who fancy ourselves the "first hired" have a way of forgetting that we have been graced, too--we forget that someone reached out to give us a leg up, and that we didn't earn the good in our lives, either.  The talents you were born with--grace. The family that taught you, supported you, and encouraged you--grace.  The wealth that gave you the creature comforts you assumed "everybody" had growing up--grace.  The conveniences and advantages we have had, some of which you and I don't even recognize we have--guess what, grace!  It has all been grace, all along.  The whole universe is run on God's irrepressible itch to give out good things to people who didn't do a thing to deserve them first. 

So one day, Jesus' parable hints, we will all stand before God and realize that everything in this life has been a gift all along.  The privileges I have had in my life were not something I "deserved"--they were there already before any talk of my "working" for them.  But God chose, not only to give me blessings and benefits in this life, but also to grace other people, too--and that means that God reserves the right to lift people up and fill their empty hands with good things the same as me.  If I am still stuck in the old thinking of earning and winning and climbing over top of everybody else to get to the top, I am going to feel threatened and insecure when God blesses other people. 

Today is the day for you and me to see things differently.  Today is the day for us to see the end of the story--the end of all things in this life and this world--and how, all the way to the very end, God has a way of blessing the people we deem least deserving.  And then we can begin to realize that there is surely someone who looks at me and has decided that I am least deserving of grace, too--and yet, that doesn't stop God from lavishing grace upon grace on me... on you... on a whole world full of the last-picked and seemingly least-deserving.

We can either rail against that divine economy of mercy in this life--we can pretend that we are more deserving of what we have, and keep on feeling threatened when the group that came at noon, or the group that came at three, or the group that came just a minute ago, have good things provided to them so that they can care for their families, too--or, we can see that this is the logic of divine grace at work.  We can see that "they" and "we" alike have been given all we have as a gift of God, and that means there is no room for me to fuss that someone else got a handout... when I have been living off of divine handouts every day of my life, too.  We can let of our awfully smug "I did this all myself" attitudes and instead see that we have all been graced beyond our deserving.  And when that dawns on me, then a windfall for you doesn't have to feel like a threat to me.  You getting to have equal standing and footing with me doesn't have to scare me anymore, because I realize we have both been placed at that point by a goodness we did not deserve.

In the end, the love you take... well, turns out always to have been the love that God has given us freely, way beyond what any of us made or deserved or earned.  The whole ride has been grace, all along.  That's how the story will end when our labor for this life is done, and that's how God runs the show right now.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to love your gracious giving to others, and to see ourselves as people who have been graced and blessed beyond our earning.