God’s currency is grace

Speaking at St Polycarp’s, June 23 2024

Matthew 20:1-16 – the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Morning everyone! It’s lovely to be with you this morning as we continue in our 4 week series about giving.

Last week, Fintan spoke to us about how God gives generously to us. We looked together at Luke 12, which says, “Be on your guard against all forms of greed; life does not exist in an abundance of possessions”. All of us in this room will have had that experience of wanting for something more than we have. Or the inverse, we have had the experience of actually having things, and then thinking about how it is that we can preserve them and hold onto them. Which means that collectively, we know exactly what greed feels like, and we know what it is for the things we have and do not have to start to hold power over us.

So Fintan challenged us to remember that God gives generously, but not always in the ways we think. Receiving generously from God doesn’t mean receiving an abundance of possessions. Because as Luke tells us, life does not exist in an abundance of possessions! Receiving generously from God means receiving life, and learning that life does exist in living in the midst of the generosity of God.

When Fintan was speaking last week, he asked – “How can we make sure that, rather than being a cul-de-sac, hoarding God’s blessing into a dead-end of our own, can we instead join in with God’s blessing, letting the blessing of God flow out from us and onto others?”

Today’s Passage: God’s currency is grace

Today we’re going to pick up on that question. And we’re going to go with spoilers early doors – the answer – to how we move from greed to generosity – is to learn that the currency of God is grace.

And this passage of the parable of the workers is one of the best illustrations there is that the currency of God is grace. It’s a parable, i.e. a story, that pictures for us what the kingdom of God is like. In fact, it starts “The kingdom of God is like…”!

I really love this passage. And that’s because it’s so compelling – it manages to divide me in two different directions at once. On the one hand, it calls out the very best part of me – that longs for God’s generosity and wants to be part of it. But it also calls out another part of me – the part which hates that grace means that we get what is undeserved.

And so this morning my hope is that you too will find yourself both compelled by this story and its picture of grace, and challenged for what it means for you as you seek to live generously – and we’ll think particularly about that and how it applies to the way we spend money.

The Kingdom of God is…. Unfair?

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard tells us the story of a landowner who hires workers at different times of the day to labour in his vineyard. The workers, they’re out in the heat, in this vineyard, toiling away. The landowner, he’s going into the marketplace through the day, finding workers, bringing them back. We’re all good with that.

And then, something unexpected. Despite the varying hours worked, at the end of the day, he pays each worker… the same amount!

Just by a show of hands, who feels like, if they had been one of those workers who started out at the very beginning of the day, watching others being paid the same for less work, that they’d be feeling pretty grumpy at this point?

[It turns out that everyone would in fact be feeling pretty grumpy!!]

Right? We’re there with these workers. They complain, they say, “you’ve made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day”. And as spectators in this passage we sympathise, we’re really very inclined to think they have a legitimate point!

In fact, if I was there, I’d be wanting to take the landowner aside and tell him very firmly that he really needed to sort out the frankly shambolic HR and recruitment practices athis vineyard! And I’d also be giving word to the workers… and telling them to pre-empt the labour movement and to unionise!

Something that I really think adds insult to injury, is that this landowner seems to be on some sort of power trip! He runs his payroll backwards! He pays the ones who have worked the fewest hours first! What a way to rub this in the faces of those who have “borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day“! Has he not read any books about employee retention?

And so it is that this parable is confronting. This is an unfair situation! And this is what the kingdom of God is like? Count. me. out.

The big problem with grace: you cannot claim your entitlement to it

Now this is so very, very clever. Because this story pinpoints in us our sense of entitlement. We want to be paid according to what we deserve. And, actually possibly more importantly, we want everyone else to better also be paid strictly according to what they deserve too.

But God’s currency is grace. And you cannot claim to be entitled to grace. So this parable confronts us with the difference between our point-scoring entitlement and a grace that is freely given.

Let’s now read the landowner’s defence to the angry workers. He says –

“‘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?’

Instinctively, as the worker he is speaking to, I hear myself respond -“Too right I’m envious!”

I don’t know if you can think of examples that have made you feel angry because it has felt like someone, just like the workers who joined at the end of the day for the full day’s wage, has gotten away with something that wasn’t possible for you, or they’ve managed to land on their feet unfairly. It might be that someone seems to have just ‘got it easy’ with a job or a house. Or it might be that you and a friend both park on a yellow line and only you get a ticket!

This parable uncovers something really quite uncomfortable about us. Our record-keeping of having been wronged, or the wrong-doing of others, is strangely much more diligently kept than the record-keeping of our own wrongs. I know that I am much more ready to accept grace being extended to me, than watching grace being extended to others.

And because this is the case, when I was preparing this, I found it possibly too easy to think of examples of others being let off the hook vs. thinking of examples of when I had been let off the hook. Thankfully, however, I have 3 younger brothers. I messaged them to ask whether or not they could think of a time when I had been let off the hook. My brother James replied (very quickly!) to say that I “never cleaned an inch of the house in my memory” He then quoted my parents: “It’s because she’s working really hard for her exams James”, and said “Did I get let off cleaning when I was revising? Nope 👎” (with that big thumbs down emoji!)

I really appreciated James’ response, both because it reminds me of grace which has been extended to me, and also because he replies with the strength of feeling that this passage evokes in us too. When we feel like something is unfair, we feel it keenly!

Let’s return again to the landowner. The landowner of this parable says “I am not being unfair to you friend… take your pay and go” and “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?”.

The landowner is using the currency of grace. I don’t think that the landowner pays those who have worked all day because of their merit, but those who come later he pays out of grace. I think none of the workers are being paid according to their merit or entitlement, they are paid in the currency of grace. Every worker is paid in full. They all receive what they need – a day’s wages. And that”s why the workers complain. They would much rather be paid according to their entitlement than be paid in grace and be made equal to others.

And this is the central question of the parable to us: do we like that God pays us in the currency of grace?

Are we able to enter into God’s generosity, knowing that it means we can lay no claim to what we see as our merits and entitlements and instead enter only into grace?

Grace, by definition, is undeserved. I’ll say again, grace is undeserved. Some of us here this morning think that we are at least partially deserving, and – at very least – that we’re definitely more deserving. than someone else. But, “all have fallen short of the glory of God”. We are all undeserving of the grace of God. And yet God offers to pay us in the currency of grace…

To truly give, we must first accept God’s currency of grace.

You might be thinking at this point ‘wow, I really thought we were in a series about giving – but all we seem to be talking about is entitlement grace’. And you’re right, and you’re wrong! The thing is, we will not ever be properly generous if we think that it’s up to us to be generous.

We give, because God has already given to us. When we consider giving, we are to give using the currency of grace, already centred in the riches of God’s grace to us. But it’s very easy to find that we are giving from a place of greed, or from a place of insecurity and anxiety about what we have. It’s easy to find that we are still trading in our own sense of entitlement and merit. We can think of the things of we have as being things we have earned, which we deserve, which we are entitled to. We think of them as ours to give. And so when we give, our giving inadvertently becomes about us, because, thinking of ourselves as deserving, we seek credit for the things we decide to give.

What is the legacy grace has left in your life?

You might have in your head a little narrative of the things you are proud of, the things you have worked for, the things you have contributed to. Set those aside. Today I want you to compose a different narrative. Think of the million small kindnesses that underpinned who you are are where you are now.

In a moment, I’ll ask you to share with the person next with you, a time when you received generosity or grace that has formed part of the legacy of grace in your own life. But first I wanted to share a few of those things from my own life:

Our neighbours growing up were Mr and Mrs Niaz, who would cook the most amazing rice and curry dishes. And you always wanted to be the one who returned the dish, because invariably they’d tell you hold your hand out, they’d go and rummage in a cupboard, and then they’d stuff sweeties onto your palm and close your fingers around them. And that feeling, the feeling of magic, is the feeling of grace to me.

A different form of generosity and grace was shown to me by Chris. She taught me to cook, invited me around and let me loose on her copious art supplies. When I was an insecure teen, she made me feel like I was a great person to hang out with! Her generosity showed me the depth of impression that committed grace can make on someone’s life.

More recently, my house now is a testament to grace. When I moved, it was having been put up by the Deane’s for months as an interim. Many people in this room came and prayed in my house, did tip runs, gifted me furniture, and even helped me wedge a washing machine into the gap in my kitchen by jamming it in with bits of wood from the kitchen skirting! That was a picture to me of the way that church, when it operates in God’s currency of grace, can really enrich each of our lives.

I’d love to now invite you to reflect on a time where you have been in receipt of generosity or grace with the person next to you.

[Pause as people share]

An invitation to enter into God’s currency of grace

I don’t know about you, but when I think about the legacy of generosity in my life, I am – well – I’m just humbled. And suddenly I find it a lot easier to loosen my grip on ‘what I think I am entitled to’.

This is the freedom and the life, that God invites us into. It’s the freedom of the currency of grace.

The God of the heavens and the earth knows your pettiness, your heartache, your angst, the resentments you harbour and does not hold them against you. God does not love you for your brilliance, your usefulness, or the fact that you’re here this morning. God isn’t disappointed that you’re not someone else. God is not making a decision on you based on what you deserve. God is ready to pay you in full.

Some of us might sometimes feel like the worker who arrives first in the day. But when we arrive in the kingdom of heaven, goodness me, I’m pretty sure we’re going to meet some people who have put their whole lives on the line for God in ways we can’t even imagine. We will discover we were the workers kicking around in the marketplace at 5pm, but that God has paid us in full.

And goodness me isn’t that fun? What a joy to discover that God will not pay me, has not paid me according to what I deserve, but in the riches of his love.

Learning to use the currency of grace for ourselves

God’s currency of grace is what we must enter into before we give. We give because the kingdom of heaven is a generous place and we know a generous God. We look at the gifts we have, the money in the bank, and we think ‘Wow. I who have known such grace, well, I want to have my own fun and pay it forward’.

I know that money is a topic that for many of us is very emotionally charged, and one that we’d rather not talk about. But Scripture talks about it all the time. Matthew 6:24 says:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Isn’t that interesting? It’s not God and Satan. It’s God and money. Money is a source of power, which means it can enable brilliant things, but it can also lead us to feel greedy and to think more about our entitlement and merit and buying our own security. And if you’re led in that direction it’s going to be very difficult to set that aside and accept God’s currency of grace. And that’s why just before the parable we’ve explored today, in the previous chapter, it says –

“it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

These are very strong words! Here, God links our use of money to whether or not we’re able to enter the kingdom of God. How we use our money is a serious matter!

It might be that as you’re listening to this, you don’t feel rich. You might be in debt. You might be really anxious about money and making ends meet. It might be that you know you have more than you need. it might be that you don’t like thinking about money, so you’re actually a bit unsure about what your income is, and what you spend each month. Wherever it is you find yourself this morning, there’s something for us to think about as we consider that God’s currency is grace.

As a response to today I’d like to encourage you to set aside time this week to examine your how it is you use your money –

• Review your giving to church. Financial giving is just one way of giving to the life of the church, but it’s an important one. In fact, I’ve always found that a really good way to increase my prayer, is to give financially to something – it really increases your investment and your wanting to see things happen.
  • So, If you consider yourself to be a part of this church and give already, revisit your giving and commit to it as part of your worship to God. If you’re a member of this church and don’t yet give regularly, really consider doing so.
  • There might be things stopping you giving. If that’s the case for you, go and talk with someone you trust about it. Consider if it’s possible for you to give a symbolic token amount of £1 a month as a statement of your intention. And if money is holding you captive, find help.
  • [On a practical note – information about how to give]
• Review your giving more widely. I was once told ‘every time you spend money, you cast a vote for the kind of world you want’. If you got a print out of your bank statement or spending record and gave it to a stranger, what would they conclude about the things that are important to you? Are they the things you’d want them to conclude? If not, what can you do to bring what you spend into closer alignment with what it is that you value.
• If you’re part of one of the discipleship groups here, why not do this reflection together, and have a frank conversation about money? Keep each other accountable to whatever it is that comes up for you as you consider what we’ve spoken about this morning.

There’s a lot to think about here. We’ve spoken about the ways grace both compels and repels us. The demand that grace makes, that we leave our own merits behind. But we’ve also talked about the freedom that entering into God’s currency of grace can bring. And I pray that as you leave here, it is God’s grace that finds you and ministers to you wherever you find yourselves.