Gracious to the End

 The scriptures referred to are Matthew 20:1-16.

In 1991 serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and charged with 15 murders. Beginning the next day he confessed to detectives his history of homicide, cannibalism and necrophilia. Shortly after his 60 hour confession he asked a detective for a Bible. Eventually he embraced Christianity and was baptized in May 1994 in the prison whirlpool. The Church of Christ minister who performed the baptism and visited Dahmer weekly believed that the conversion was real. In November 1994 another prisoner beat Dahmer to death.

So...is Jeffrey Dahmer in heaven? With Jesus?

Regardless of your theology, I'll bet that question bothers you on an emotional level. We are uneasy with the idea that people who do real evil, deliberate harm to others, can nevertheless repent and be forgiven. It seems that our list of unforgivable sins is a lot longer than God's. And it is particularly upsetting when the person accepts Jesus shortly before dying.

At least David Berkowitz, the infamous Son of Sam, who killed 6 people and wounded 7, has been doing prison ministry since 1987. He has written a book about his changed life as well as numerous essays on faith and repentance for which he receives no royalties. He wrote the preface to one of the Bibles I distribute in our jail. He refuses to ask for release at his parole hearings, saying, “In all honesty, I believe that I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life. I have, with God's help, long ago come to terms with my situation and I have accepted my punishment.” It may be unsettling to think of him going to heaven when he dies, but at least he put in the time working for God.

In today's parable, Jesus describes a situation that, at first, would be familiar to his audience. When it was harvest time, a vineyard owner needed lots of workers. He had no labor saving devises to pick the grapes and he had to get them in at just the right time. So starting early in the day the landowner keeps going to the marketplace and hiring day laborers to get the harvest in. And he agrees to pay them the standard daily wage. He even hires a group of people at 5 in the afternoon, when there was only a hour in which to work. That's a bit unusual but maybe the landowner was desperate to get the harvest in.

Where things gets weird in Jesus' story is when the owner pays the laborers. The last minute hires get the standard daily wage. That's surprising but that gives the guys hired at dawn expectations of getting proportionately more pay than they had agreed to. But no! They get the same pay. And so they grumble.

But the landowner points out they got the standard daily wage, as both parties agreed. He wasn't cheating them by paying the latecomers the same thing. He was just being generous.

When psychologist Jonathan Haidt was studying the foundations of morality, he didn't have any problems formulating 4 of the values and their antitheses: care and its opposite harm, authority or respect and its opposite subversion, loyalty and its opposite betrayal, and sanctity or purity and its opposite degradation. He also had an pair he called fairness and its opposite cheating. But he found out that fairness meant different things to some people than it did to others. When we are talking about fairness are we saying that everyone gets the same things or that some get more or less in proportion to the effort they put in? To some, not recognizing the different contributions that different people made was seen as unfair in the sense of it being a disproportionate distribution of assets. Some even saw this as a restriction on their freedom to do as well as they could and enjoy the benefits. Haidt came up with a new category called liberty with its opposite being oppression.

The issue is called the free-rider problem, the idea that some people use resources that they didn't earn or pay for, especially public goods or services. It can apply to everything from hopping the turnstile to avoid paying subway fare or using a song you didn't buy the rights to as the background of a video you made. Of course, those things are against the law. But what about things that by their very nature you can't exclude people from using? Like a lighthouse, built by a coastal community, but used by ships from all over the world as an aid to navigation. Or a road which can be used by those who didn't pay the taxes that built and maintain it. Or when a union negotiates a fair wage, hours and benefits for its members but then can't require dues from workers who aren't union members but who enjoy the same benefits.

That sounds a bit like the issue the workers have in the parable, except there was no formal group negotiating the terms for just their people, nor dues required. These are all independent contractors. And Jesus' point wasn't about anyone getting cheated. The landowner is being unfair in a sense but on the side of generosity. He is not giving people less than a fair daily wage; he is just giving it to everyone who worked for him, regardless of how long. It is his right to be free with his money.

Of course the parable is not about human economics but about God's grace. God has the right to forgive whomever turns to him, whenever they do so, and reward them with eternal life. It's not like lifelong Christians are being cheated; it's that God is more gracious than we can imagine and often more than we'd like him to be.

After all, Paul persecuted the church before he became an apostle of Jesus. But afterwards he worked hard for Christ and got beaten and stoned and imprisoned and martyred for serving him. So we don't hold it against him that Christians were arrested and executed during the years he opposed the church. (Acts 26:9-10) He paid for what he did.

Dahmer was attacked and killed but so was another inmate, who just happened to be cleaning the restrooms with Dahmer. Dahmer didn't suffer or die for his faith. He died because another inmate, also serving a life sentence for murder, decided to execute him for his crimes. Yet if his faith was genuine, Dahmer is just as saved as Paul.

If so, how can God be a God of justice? The problem with absolute justice is that if it were imposed no one would survive. Never mind murder; have you ever cheated on anything? Have you ever taken something that wasn't yours? Have you ever said something you knew wasn't true? Have you ever broken any laws, like speeding, or said defamatory things about someone (that's slander) or hit someone in anger (that's battery.) Did you get caught or punished in each instance? If not, you haven't faced true justice.

Leaving aside men's laws, how are you on God's laws? Have you ever insulted anyone? (Matthew 5:22) Have you ever looked at someone with lust? (Matthew 5:28) Have you ever done wrong to someone who did wrong to you? (Romans 12:19) Have you ever refused to forgive someone? (Matthew 6:15) Have you ever passed up the opportunity to help the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned or the immigrant? (Matthew 25:44-46) Have you always treated others the way you wish to be treated? (Matthew 7:12) Have you given to everyone who asks you for something? (Matthew 5:42) If God were strict in his justice with us, who would survive?

God is just but also merciful. As the psalm says, “He does not deal with us as our sins deserve; he does not repay us as our misdeeds deserve.” (Psalm 103:10) Otherwise anyone breaking his laws would be immediately punished. There would be no second chances, no appeals and no pardons. We'd be timid creatures, afraid to do anything lest we mess up. But that isn't the world he created or that we live in. Some of the consequences of our failures to live morally do come swiftly and some of the consequences injure or kill us but not the majority of them. And thank God for that! It gives us the chance to repent and to change our lives.

But God is not merely just and he is more than merciful; our God is gracious. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting all that we deserve. Grace is getting what we cannot possibly deserve. God does not just let us off easy when we deserve to have the book thrown at us. God doesn't just offer us a second chance but a new life, eternal life, his life. As Paul puts it, “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The word “grace” appears 133 times in the New Testament but only 4 times in the gospels and 3 of those are in John. Jesus never uses the word himself. Some think that therefore a doctrine that was of such importance to Paul that he mentions 85 times in his epistles was not of importance to Jesus. But in this parable we see an illustration of God's grace. The landowner gives more than they deserve even to those who come late to him. It is his gift to them. And that is what grace is: God's gift, his undeserved, unreserved goodness to us.

Why do we, like the people who worked all day in the parable, resent God being generous to others? I think it is the mistaken idea that we have some say in what God does for others or through others. But we don't. As Paul says, “Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” (Romans 14:4)

Jesus says it is envy. The workers in the parable were jealous of the generous deal the other workers got. And at times we get jealous, feeling that our heavenly Father is paying more attention to someone else and showing them favor. When the disciples said to Jesus that they saw a guy healing in his name and told him to stop, Jesus says, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:49-50) Obviously to do this the man had to believe in Jesus and was given the gift to heal, though he did not get it in the same way the disciples had. But he was an ally, a brother in the Lord. Again Paul says, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” (Romans 14:10) Again this falls within God's domain, not ours.

And by the way, Jeffrey Dahmer was not the first really bad person to turn to God at the last moment and receive assurance of salvation. On the cross, Jesus was flanked by two criminals. Mark calls them robbers, but the Romans didn't consider robbery a capital crime. Mark does say of the man pardoned in Jesus' place: “A man named Barabbas was imprisoned with rebels who had committed murder during an insurrection.” (Mark 15:7) So Barabbas was released but what about the murderous rebels he was imprisoned with? They were likely the men crucified with Jesus, because insurrection was a capital offense as was murder. That means Jesus was executed alongside two murderers. And while at first they taunt him as do the crowds, one changes his mind. And Luke tells us, “But the other rebuked him, saying, 'Don't you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.' Then he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And Jesus said to him, 'I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.'” And that murderer is the only person in the Bible to be given that assurance from Jesus' very lips.

God calls us and we respond. We are none of us worthy of his grace. We do not know if the time remaining in this life is long or short. We do not know the state of someone else's soul or where they are in their relationship with God. It is not our business. It is between God and that person. We can encourage them and help them but we must not condemn them. Jesus said, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) And as we've seen, we really do not want to be judged strictly by God.

As we saw last week, God is more forgiving than we can imagine. And he is more giving and gracious than we can imagine. It is not up to us to second-guess his grace. That would be judging God's judgment and that is arrogance. Our response to God's grace, whether to us or to someone else, must always be humility and gratitude. And rejoicing. After all Jesus said, “...there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7) Thanks be to God who is gracious to the end!