Lord, it's not fair!

²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” Luke 15:25-35

 

 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

⁹ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Matthew 20:8-16

 

 

Any preacher is bound to enjoy preaching about the prodigal son (Luke 15) – the beautiful story of how he went away from his father and ruined his life; but then, having completely messed up, how he had a change of heart and came back home, hoping against hope that his father might take pity on him and take him back as a servant – only to receive an extravagant welcome as his father, throwing dignity to the winds, came running to fling his arms around him.

The father, of course, represents God; the son represents sinful humanity in general, but especially, at that time, the wayward people of Israel.

But there is another character in the story who it’s easy to overlook. The older brother, who has been completely loyal to the father throughout his life, resents the welcome given to his wayward brother, and tells his father so in very clear terms: “Here you are throwing a big party for this prodigal son of yours [note that cruel ‘son of yours’, not ‘brother of mine’]… well, what about me? I’ve been a model son. Don’t I deserve even better?” The father gives him a little lecture – albeit a loving lecture – obviously sad that the older son is not rejoicing like him: “I have always loved you, and always will; so come on, come and join the party!”

It’s easy to write the older son off as just a rather crabbed, sour-faced, mean-spirited individual. Whether or not he did indeed soften his attitude, put a smile on his face, and join the celebrations Jesus doesn’t say, nor does it particularly matter. We might sadly shake our heads and say, “Oh well, he’s the only loser in the end! Perhaps he mended his attitude with the passing of time; let’s hope so”.

But I remember the first time somebody came to me at the end of a sermon and said, “Actually, I can’t help feeling that the older son had a point. Was he really so unreasonable to feel aggrieved at the father who seemed unappreciative  of his faithful son”.

The standard answer to that (surely also the correct answer) is that it misses the whole point of the story. Jesus is wanting to get across the fact that there is no way anyone can earn or deserve God the Father’s love. The lost son is welcomed back not because he has made amends (he hasn’t), but because, quite simply, the father loves him. The great Bible word for this is “grace”, which means God’s undeserved favour. Not even the very best and most upright of people can merit God’s forgiveness: certainly not me; not you.

There are people who think of their standing with God as like a credit/debit balance. They seem to think “Well, I just hope that when I stand before God on judgment-day my good deeds will outweigh the bad”. But no! That just isn’t possible. A price has to be paid, and none of us can pay it. So we can only thank our loving heavenly Father that he has done so himself, through the cross of Jesus his Son.

Song-writer Graham Kendrick captures it perfectly: The price is paid./ Come let us enter in/ To all that Jesus died to make our own./ For every sin/ More than enough he gave/ And bought our freedom/ From each guilty stain.

Exactly the same truth is taught in Matthew 20:1-16, the parable of the workers in the vineyard - this time not in the warm context of family life, but of what we might call in today’s parlance, “industrial relations”.

A rich farmer is keen to get his grape harvest in in the short period the weather allows. He heads off to the market-place, which in effect functions as the labour exchange, and hires some of the men waiting there. He agrees to pay them a certain price for the day’s work, starting at 6 in the morning. The experts tell us that the other hours mentioned equate to 9, midday, 3 and 5 in the evening.

There are two very surprising features to the events.

First, the farmer keeps coming back at the different intervals, right up to 5 o’clock, when the day was starting to draw to an end. That was how keen he was to get his harvest in. And it speaks of how keen God is to demonstrate his love to his people; it must have got pretty wearisome to keep coming back to try and hire an ever-diminishing group of workers.

But even more surprising is that when it came to handing out the pay, everybody got the same amount, those who started at 6 in the morning, and those who started just an hour or so before evening fell.

Here, of course, is where we see the comparison with the older son in the other story. Like him, the early starters in the vineyard felt hard done by: “Those who were hired last worked only one hour… and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day”. How can that be fair?

How indeed? But as with the prodigal son, it’s not a matter of fairness and unfairness: it’s a matter of kindness and generosity: a matter, in fact, of God’s grace.

The message for those of us who are Christians today? Never begrudge God a moment of your time, however many late-comers may seem to have come, jumped the queue and “got a better deal”. There is no deal! However hard your service may have been; however many sacrifices you may feel you have made; however much you may feel you have suffered for Jesus’ sake… it’s all to do with love, and nothing can bear comparison with that love.

Father, in the light of this fallen world it’s easy to understand the grievance of the prodigal’s older son, and of the early starters in the vineyard. But thank you that salvation isn’t a business deal. Please help me to keep firm hold of the pure unadulterated love which sent Jesus to the cross, and to rest and rejoice in it alone. Amen.

Christian, think only the best!

Once when they [Elkanah and Hannah] had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. ¹⁰ In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. ¹¹ And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”

¹² As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. ¹³ Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk ¹⁴ and said to her, “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.”

¹⁵ “Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. ¹⁶ Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”

¹⁷ Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

¹⁸ She said, “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.

In my lifetime as a minister I have had plenty of reason to feel embarrassed and even ashamed. People I have let down, for example… situations I have misjudged… So I find it hard not to feel some sympathy for Eli the priest of God at Shiloh in those far off days of the Old Testament judges.

People often made a practice of going every year to Shiloh to worship God, and sometimes they would combine this with partying, and things would get out of hand. Eli would (quite rightly) have seen it as his responsibility to try and keep order, and this would no doubt be trying, and would tend to make him cynical. But that was no excuse for what happened one day…

A man called Elkanah has come to Shiloh with his two wives Peninnah and Hannah. (This kind of marriage arrangement was permissible under Israelite law, though far from ideal.) Hannah is childless, and a deeply unhappy woman, though she receives a lot of sympathy and understanding from Elkanah, who seems to be a basically good man.

She decides to go into the house of God to pray, and this is where Eli gets things badly wrong: watching her at prayer he sees her lips moving and her tears flowing, but all under her breath, and he jumps to the conclusion that, no doubt like many other people he has had to deal with, she was drunk. He rebukes her harshly: “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine”.

Hannah respectfully puts him right, and, to be fair to Eli, he accepts the rebuke and pronounces a blessing over her. And what had seemed a long-standing impossibility becomes a reality; a baby boy, Samuel, is born. In due course he was to became one of the giants of Israel’s history.

It’s a heart-warming story, viewed from the perspective of Elkanah and Hannah. But what about Eli? We read in chapter two that his sons Hophni and Phineas were “worthless men”, as one translation puts it, who “had no regard for the Lord”. This must have been a cause of great bitterness to Eli who, as the book unfolds, comes across as well-meaning but weak. (I wonder what had happened to his wife?) You can see why, as a pastor, I am inclined to come at the story from Eli’s perspective as well as Hannah’s. Some very obvious lessons stand out…

First, don’t jump to conclusions, especially about people you don’t know. Putting it another way, don’t be quick to pass judgment.

One of the personal incidents I had in mind at the start of this blog, where in fact I ended up making an apology (in fact, what I might call a full five-star grovel), arose from my listening to somebody who had a grudge against somebody else: a malicious gossip, in short. Foolishly, I swallowed it whole, only discovering later that it was totally untrue. (What made it all the more humiliating was that the person I had to apologise to was someone I didn’t really get on with too well: having to swallow one’s pride is never a pleasant experience, though no doubt “good for one’s soul”!)

Jesus tells us pretty bluntly: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged… with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1-2). Paul asks the Christians in Rome: “Why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt?” Why indeed! Have we ourselves got everything right? Oh, what fools we can be!

There are of course times when we have to exercise wisdom in our dealings with people, and we must be open to the possibility that they are indeed in the wrong, and need correcting. But let it be done with true humility and a prayerful spirit, and after proper investigation.

Second: always think the best of the other person, not the worst - unless you have a very good reason otherwise.

You may be an exception to this rule, so please forgive me if it doesn’t apply to you, but I suspect that for most of us one of the results of the fall is that we have developed a tendency to look down on others.

Perhaps we are, deep down, pretty insecure within ourselves, and it makes us feel a little better about ourselves if we can look at others with contempt. Or it may be something as sinful as plain racial prejudice: their skin colour is different from ours. Perhaps, though they call themselves Christians, their denominational loyalty or some other “theological” issue means that they are rather “unsound” (unlike us, of course). Or perhaps they strike us as just not very impressive, whether physically or personality-wise. They may have a habit or other mannerism that we secretly disapprove of – the way they dress or do their hair, even something as basic as the accent they have or their upbringing. Perhaps we just take a dislike to them for no particular reason.

Oh what fools we can be! How arrogant, how self-assured! Isn’t it one of the supreme glories of our faith that we worship as Saviour, Lord and King a man who was accused (yes, accused!) of mixing with tax-collectors and sinners, the very lowest of the low, with prostitutes and outcasts.

How then dare we, even in our most secret hearts, look down any fellow human being, however lowly and contemptible in our eyes? God, have mercy upon us.

Father, please give me Spirit-led wisdom to know when someone is false or bad, and to respond appropriately and humbly; but otherwise to always think the best rather than the worst of them. Amen.

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Silent witnesses

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb. Matthew 27:61

Can you picture the two Marys, as described in that little verse of Matthew 27?

Having soaked our minds this past weekend in the great truth of Jesus risen from the dead, I have been looking back a little on the immense sadness of the gap between his death on Good Friday and his rising again on Easter Sunday – not, of course, that we should ever allow the greatness of the resurrection to fade from our minds, but rather that we should always remember the wider context in which it is set: one of sorrow, pain and deep suffering.

It’s hard to imagine what that “Easter Saturday” must have been like for the followers of Jesus.

Where were the disciples staying in Jerusalem, a city they will have known only from occasional visits “up from the country”? How did they spend their time as the weary hours dragged by? What did they talk about? What in fact was there to say after the dashing of their hopes? I can’t help but picture them just sitting around in abject despair. Jesus had built up their hopes to such a pitch, and they had trusted him so implicitly, that they simply didn’t know what to do with themselves. “Stunned”, I think, is the word to describe their state of mind.

The closing verses of Matthew 27 in fact take us back before Saturday to the end of Good Friday itself. Joseph, “a rich man from Arimathea” who had “become a disciple of Jesus” has shown his quality of character by boldly approaching Pontius Pilate and making himself responsible for the proper disposal of Jesus’ body, and placing it in a tomb originally intended for himself. He reminds us of the good person who quietly gets on with doing whatever he or she can in a time of crisis. Thank God for such people.

But focus on the two women. They’re not doing anything – what could they do? No, they’re just sitting there, watching. But just like Joseph, they can speak to us. Two things strike me…

First, we are reminded in a general sense of the role of women in the life and ministry of Jesus.

We all know that at that time and in that social setting women were very much what today we might think of as second class citizens; it was “a man’s world”. But the Gospels remind us that the two Marys were just part of a group who, albeit in the background, contributed significantly to Jesus’ work.

Think, of course, of Mary the mother of Jesus. We can only guess what kind of things he learned from her as he grew up: can you imagine him as a young teenager (not that any such social category existed in those days)? Yes, she experienced extreme pain, including serious wobbles of faith, as the mother of God’s son. But can we doubt that she also imparted to him many precious things?

Mark, in his Gospel, also refers to the role of female devotees (chapter 15:40-41), who had “followed him and cared for his needs” (what a warm, homely expression that is!). Then there are Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus (John 11); and moving on into the later New Testament, the frequently mentioned Priscilla (whose husband Aquilla several times takes second place to her), and the quietly faithful Lydia (Acts 16). The part of the New Testament I like best in this regard is Romans 16, where Paul sends greetings to Christians in Rome whom he knew and particularly valued: out of a list of some twenty-five people nearly ten seem to have female names.

Paul has the reputation of having a down on women; but no, I don’t think so. Women played a full part in the lives of the churches he founded. But Paul was not a revolutionary - though he devoted his life to proclaiming the most revolutionary message ever heard, he was keen that the church should not transgress the ordinary social customs of the time and thus create an unnecessary stumbling-block.

Second, the two Marys sitting at the tomb on the Friday evening remind us that there are times when we can genuinely do nothing – but we can just be there. The male disciples had, perhaps understandably, gone to ground as Jesus was crucified, but the women were determined to be there. We perhaps sometimes talk jokingly of “offering moral support”, as if silently adding “even though I know that’s a fat lot of good!”. But who knows what comfort and reassurance our mere presence may pass on in various situations?

Among my best memories as a pastor are times, in the aftermath of a crisis, when people would say “Thank you for everything you did”. I felt like protesting “Well, thank you for saying that – but in fact I didn’t do anything! I was just, well, around”. A humbling situation to be in.

The poet John Milton (1608-1674) lost his sight in his middle years. He wrote a short poem beginning “When I consider how my light is spent…” (sometime known as “On his blindness”) reflecting on how he will never now be able to fulfil his full potential as a poet. By the end he finds comfort in the thought that “They also serve who only stand and wait” - as if to say “Yes, perhaps my days as a prolific writer are over, but I still, by God’s grace, have something to offer”.

Well, the two Marys, on that first Good Friday, didn’t “stand and wait”, but they certainly sat and waited. As models of loyalty and devotion – as models of love – what better examples could one want? We cannot know who, seeing them there, were changed for ever by their silent witness.

Christian, never say “I have nothing to offer”!

Lord, help me to understand that however limited my powers may be as  circumstances conspire against me, I still have something to offer for every day of life you give me. Amen.