Grace is such a nice word. We associate it with the goodness of God, and we like it in theory. But there is another side of grace that this parable highlights. If we look at it closely the grace of Jesus Christ can be a little disturbing. And if we`re honest, grace bothers us - at least a little. This parable scandalizes us. One of the stereotypes we have about being a Christian is that if you`re good, you`ll go to heaven, and that Jesus is fair, and he`ll reward us for our good deeds. I can`t tell you how many times I hear this even from people in the church who say,

"Well, I`ve been good so I know I`m going to go to heaven." But that`s not what Jesus says in this parable. Jesus says we go to heaven because of his grace, not our works, and because we know him. Nowhere does Jesus say he`s fair. He doesn`t say we`ll get what we`ve earned or what we deserve. He says he comes to bring grace, and grace bothers us because it`s not the way we like to do things. Our whole society operates not on grace, but on ungrace or non-grace. As Phillip Yancey points out: Tests come back with WRONG answers circled not the right ones. Corporations have org. charts so everyone knows where everyone else stands. Airlines make us earn frequent flyer miles; they just don`t give them away. The compensation package the landowner in this parable offers his employees wouldn`t fly in a global economy. Our whole culture functions on non-grace. And we like it that way, and if we didn`t, we`d change it. So truth be told as much as we are comforted by the idea of grace, Jesus` Grace also disturbs and challenges us. It does so for these reasons:

1) We don`t like grace because it makes us equal to everybody else, and we don`t want to be equal; we want to be superior. Notice the workers complaint in vs. 12 "you have made them equal to us." Isn`t it interesting that their complaint is NOT that they were underpaid? The wage was a fair wage and everyone was happy with it. Their complaint was that everyone has been made equal. They don`t want to be equal; they want to be superior. A lot of human happiness seems to depend on us having something that someone else doesn`t have.

My kids are a great example of this. If Holly has a toy and Jackson notices that she has something he doesn`t -- he wants that toy. It can be the stupidest toy in the world and he`s got to have it "NOT because the toy is great, but because his sister has something that he doesn`t have, he`s got to fix that terrible wrong. If ever you question original sin have children, and it will cure you of your bad theology. A lot of human happiness depends on us feeling like we have something that someone else doesn`t have so that we can feel superior. That`s why I went to school all those years because I loved getting grades. I thought grades were wonderful. I would work so hard to get an A because it was the highest grade, and by definition that meant I would be better than most people. I would have something that they didn`t have and that would make me feel superior, and I loved to feel superior. What this parable suggests is, that as sick as it sounds, we want heaven to be like school. We don`t want to be equal. We want God to give us grades so that we can compare ourselves to other people. In heaven we could way to each other, "God gave me an A today " what did he give you " ooh

sorry, must have been that thing with the IRS a couple of years ago " guess you`ll have to sit on the B- side of the galaxy. "There`s a part of us that wants God to work that way because then we can feel superior to others. Are there people that you do that to? Are there people that you place yourself above? We all do. We say things like, "I may be a sinner, but at least I don`t " or I may lie sometimes, but at least I`m not like " ''just fill in the blank''.

2) This brings me to the 2nd reason that grace challenges us, and it`s related to the first. Grace is too radical. Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. That`s bad news for an overachieving, eldest son, former Stanford student like me because I like to earn things. But the grace of God means something else. It also means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us less ''and for a wretch like me that`s good news''. You see, no one is first and no one is last; we`re all just saved by Jesus. That`s why Jesus uses such confusing language here about first and last. At the end of chapter Matthew 19 before the parable Jesus says, "first will be last, and the last will be first." But at the end of the parable in Matthew 20, he turns that around and says in reverse order "last will be first, and the first will be last." This is very confusing language - all those lasts and firsts; firsts and lasts just blur together as if in the Kingdom of God that was the point. Grace is not about finishing last OR first; it`s about not keeping score at all.

-- That`s radical. Jesus is more radical than Mao or Lenin or any of those revolutionaries. Those guys just wanted to put the workers on the top and capitalists on the bottom, but there`s still a top and there`s still a bottom. Jesus gets rid of top and bottom all together. And he says, "You can stop worrying about being first. You can stop being afraid about being last. Once you`re covered by my grace, you`re free from all of that - you`re free." Where are you competing with others just to feel like
you`re in first place? Jesus says if you know him, you don`t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. You`re loved no matter what you`ve done or haven`t done. That`s radical.

3) A third reason why grace challenges us: Because it`s unfair. The landowner`s grace means that those who worked longest got paid the same as those who worked only an hour - that`s unfair. Did you know this story used to be an old Jewish parable before Jesus picked it up? Only in the ORIGINAL version of the story did it say the workers who came last worked so hard that they were more productive than all the other workers put together. So they earned their wage even though they only worked an hour. Now that`s the parable Jesus SHOULD have told. That`s a good parable. But
he doesn`t, and you can just see the crowd as Jesus told this familiar story saying, "Oh, I love this one " this is a great story about working hard" until Jesus gets to the end and puts his twist on it -- and all the workers get paid the same.

Christ`s grace means that the worst villains in history - Nero, Genghis Kahn, any of those guys - if they had a deathbed conversion they`d go to heaven just like me. I`m not sure I like that. I might be in heaven and Genghis Kahn will come up to me and say, "Hey, Scott, you made it too; what a surprise." That`s going to get on my nerves. Grace has a scandalous, offensive side to it - it levels the playing field; it`s too radical; it`s unfair, which just proves that we didn`t make it up. This is not the kind of thing human beings come up with on their own; we come up with frequent flyer miles. But grace comes from only one place and that`s the heart of Jesus Christ.

Now I`m not saying that there are no consequences to our actions. Galatians 6:7 God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. If we sin, we will reap the consequences of that in this lifetime. If we spend our whole lives not knowing Christ, only to embrace him at the last minute, we`ve missed out on a lifetime of the joy of knowing Jesus, and we`ve ruined our lives with destructive behavior. So there are consequences in this life to what we do. But what this parable does say is that no matter how bad we have been, no matter how late we come, no matter what is in our past, whatever is in our present, we still have a future if we know Jesus Christ. That is the important qualifier - if we know Jesus!