I want to share a story with you. It is a strange story, one that seems completely out of touch with reality, and yet at the same time is deeply in touch with a far stronger level of reality than any of us may first realize.
        See if you agree:

Can you see what I said about out of touch with reality?
Perhaps a nice story for a quiet gathering in a cozy church on a Sunday morning. But total disconnect with Monday through Friday.

Monday through Friday, you see, we live very much in the world of accountants.
        We all do a tremendous amount of adding and substraction, adding and subtracting according to the rock hard principle - "You get what you pay for."
        It’s a principle taught us from the earliest days – "early bird gets the worm. No pain, no gain. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Demand your rights."
                        Yancey "What’s So Amazing About Grace" p.64

When our efforts are sufficient, when the results hit pay dirt.....
        well, the rewards can be tremendous.

On the other hand......
        sometimes, even with great effort, we end up middle of the pack or lower, and the fruit can be bitter sweet indeed!
        You know the names of Anne Momine, Simon Whitfield and Daniel Ingali.
        But who are all the other players, the dozens and dozens who gave their best but didn’t quite get there?

It’s a hard principle, but it’s one that rules.
Reward comes to the ones on the top. Reward comes only with effort. Reward comes because of good results in what you DO.
        Do it right and you’re recognized.
                Maybe even a hero.
        Don’t quite get it right, or get enough, or whatever and you’re a nobody.

Measuring, checking, working.
        What you do...... what you do..... what you do.......
 

When you first meet someone -
        There is the requisite handshake, exchange of names, a bit of small talk, and then some questions are exchanged. Among them the inevitable:
                You know it: "So...... what do you....... do?"

The Hindus believe in a doctrine called karma. Your position in future reincarnations is dependent on what you do and how you behave this time round. You become what you.... do.
        North America, even though we may not say it out loud, pulls that same basic idea and applies it not to reincarnation, but to right now.
                Your resume is the rudder to your future.

Which is a huge weight to carry for just about everyone.
My worth, my future, my esteem, my hope –
        – my life – is tied up to high I succeed or blow it.

Which was something the son of a doctor in London came to realize. His father was world famous in a particular field – pioneer, researcher, active in practice recipient of awards and prizes, journal articles.
        His mother would often say to others, in his hearing, "If David becomes even just half the man his father is, it will be good."
        David went to medical school. Driven, he came out the top of his class. Did graduate work. Became recognized. Established a practice. Soon the word in medical circles was, "He’s almost as good as his father."
                Almost.
                ...........Almost.
                The words haunted him.
        Half the man his father is?? Hah!!! Way more!!!
        But not quite there. Need that last little bit.
        Driven – to a marriage breakup and heart attack.
                                    [adap. from Yancey Grace]

The accountant was always there - just around the corner in David’s life.
        There - and merciless.

The accountant was always there for Wayne, too.
        I knew Wayne some years ago. He lived near the inner core of a mid-West American city, a single fellow in his early 20's. For years his father had tried to toughen him up, make a hunter and sportsman out of him. For years Wayne couldn’t do it – no matter how hard he tried.
        For years Wayne’s father would tell queer jokes, blasting broadsides at the gay community. And for years Wayne desperately tried to shake off, ignore, and pray away this terrible attraction that developed in his early adolescent years – an attraction towards men. He went to confession. He tried bible study. He attended church. He fasted. Prayed for hours. Pleaded with God. Dated. But nothing changed.
        His father threw him out, reminding him that the door was always open...... just as soon as he would get his act together.
        Last I saw Wayne, he was in the alley just behind a downtown mission, sprawled out and drunk. I’m not sure if he’s still alive. He’s seriously attempted suicide several times. By now he may well have succeeded.
The accountant, you see, showed him in a deficit position.

"You are what you do."
"You’re worth what you accomplish."
        It is the very real rule, the brutal basis of accounting principles by which we measure and balance off Canadian life.

I spent some time at Princeton Seminary 3 years ago with a group of church leaders from around North America. Conversation turned to exactly this topic. And stayed there. The group leader wouldn’t let it go. Within a few hours, several grown men - some in their 50's and 60's - were crying. Some shaking. One vowing to make a pilgrimage to a Denver graveyard. Why? This one in particular, but the others, too, realized that they’d been running their whole lives to try and please their fathers.
        Even when the fathers were dead.
        They were shackled, dominated by it.
        The karma-like accountant had a grip on their soul.

I think a lot of you sitting here this morning know exactly what I’m talking about.

Any wonder, then, that these words from Matthew 20 seem so strange?
        It just doesn’t add up.

Any more than the story represented by Rembrant’s painting.
Can you see which parable of Christ is depicted here? It’s from Luke 15.
        [pause]
A son..... DOES, with full knowledge, full control, and deliberate willfulness,
        everything possible and conceivable to destroy his relationship with family and father. Everything.

I won’t retell the story. We spent two weeks in a row on this passage some months ago. The messages are available on Calvin’s web site if you’d like to revisit them.
        The return of the prodigal son is pictured in wonderful, warm detail.
        A broken, shame-filled son.
        A father’s face rich in compassion.
                Hands spread in protecting, embracing way over the slumped, ragged shoulders.
                        Bystanders not quite sure what to make of the whole thing.
                        Because, here too, it doesn’t add up.

This morning the words of Jesus issue an invitation to us.
        An invitation to put away our calculators and balance sheets by which we measure the value of so much in life – ourselves included.
        An invitation to a different way of living.
        Not karma.
        No - a different word to live by.
                Grace......

Grace - looking beyond earning, working and doing.
        Looking beyond what we do to what we are.

Grace - the amazing mystery of God which flows His riches into our lives, which welcomes us into His home, which holds and protects us with strong heavenly hands, which looks at us with a face rich in compassion and mercy
                even
                        when everyone else is shaking their head.

Grace - the mystery of God’s deep, relentless love; a love willing to pay the price of death on the cross;
        the death of a son to reclaim the life of some in-the-ditch paupers.
                the mystery of love for beggars who have nothing to offer.

Grace, which tears up all the balance sheets......
        ..... except one.
                The balance sheet of Jesus, great enough and rich enough to cover us all.

Grace, which welcomes us home.

Grace - the incredible idea that there’s nothing we can do, or not do, to make God love us more...... or less.

G – R – A – C – E
        God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.
        The great bible word which we are invited to live by.

Can we, perhaps, make the room to see ourselves this way?
        Not by how much we’ve done for Jesus.
                How far we’ve sacrificed for the Lord.
                        Or how badly we’ve screwed up.

But with the eyes of grace - be it 9am, noon, 3pm, or 5pm in our lives.
Whether we’ve come crawling in, or have an impressive resume.
        Simply being able to say, "I am the one Jesus loves."
        That’s all.
        And that’s more than enough.
        "I am the one Jesus loves."

"Jesus loves me, this I know...."
        Why?.........
        [invite congregation to say it with me] for the Bible tells me so.
                Not because I’ve said enough prayers.
                Not because I’ve stayed out of jail.
                Not because my children grew up to get good jobs.
                Not because I didn’t get my girlfriend pregnant.
                Not because I’m straight.
                        Just because.
                        And that’s what the Bible tells me.

Can we treat ourselves with the grace that God dispenses to us?

AND

Can we share that grace with others? Treating them with it?
        There is so much un-grace, as Philip Yancey calls it, floating around Ottawa-Carleton. It is like a virus easily spread, quick to take root, and widespread in the damage it causes. My friends, we have the anti-toxin here today in the grace of God fully and freely available to us through Jesus Christ.
        Can we dispense it?
Or will we insist on living by the balance sheet?
Will Matthew 20 never make sense?

It sneaks up on us, ungrace does.
When we find ourselves quietly putting qualifiers into who we will see or be seen with, or give time to, or welcome into our home.

It screams out, sometimes, in the way we view people whose lives are challenged by struggles with sexual orientation, or marriage breakup, or addiction.

It slips out when, in fear of the unknown, we erect fences of rules and codes of conduct of what we will and will not accept – demanding conformity in certain ways and patterns.
        When what we do manages to slip back into the equation.

It’s right there, front and centre, when we’ve been wronged and forgiveness becomes an issue. For there, perhaps more than ever, we talk about sharing what is not deserved.
        The other person may not make the first step.
        The other person may deserve a terrible fate.
        The other person may thoroughly deserve to live with the fallout.
        But instead – despite what the accountant of justice would tell you is your due, despite the direction in which the scales of justice are leaning,
                despite all that
                        you hand the villain – release.
Forgiveness – where we come to see that grace, while totally free on the side of recipient, is incredibly costly on the side of the one granting it.
        Can you hear the echo of this bible verse?
                God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us (2 Cor 5.21)

There is no logic.... no mathematical logic in all this.
Just as there is no clear, human logic at all in grace.
And yet....
        yet.....
                without this divine gift, received into our lives and shared with others -- there can be no life.
                        there can be no sure future.
                        there can be no eternal peace.

My friends - Forget what we DO. What ARE we?
        Children of God.
        That is what we are! (1 John 3:1)
        Absurd though it may seem – as absurd as the subject of this painting.
        As absurd as the wages in that vineyard.

Releasing us to live in absurd ways, grace ways,
        with our children,
        with our parents,
        with those whose lives are one struggle after another
        with the clod at work.

And beyond that, perhaps, in how we work for social good.
        Think of the issue of jubilee, releasing people from debt, and the call of Canada’s finance minister to release 3^rd world countries from their crushing burden. Should you, perhaps, send him a letter of support, or is such a policy too absurd?
        There are voices in our nation calling for alternative models of justice, some under the banner of restorative justice, moving away from punishment and vengeance. Absurd, perhaps, but......

Friends -
        Grace is given to those with empty hands.
        If we open our hands, cup them open wide, God’s accepting love will pour into them.
        But if we clench them tight into fists – fists of rage, fists determined to get our way, fists that bang the table and demand an accounting......
                .... there is no place for the grace to pool. It can only splash over and drip off.... and away.

If we open our hands, cup our hearts as it were, to receive what Jesus offers us, we’ll have plenty for ourselves...... and more than enough to share with others.
        Life will be new.... a whole lot lighter.
        Burdens and tensions a lot less.
        A miracles of healing in places we never thought they’d bloom.

Can you hear it?
Can you accept it?