“Grace Is Not Fair”
Matthew 20:1-16
Today’s passage will make you want to shake your head and say, “That’s not fair.” It is because grace is not fair. God’s grace is indeed not fair. Grace means unmerited favor. It means extending favor to someone who doesn’t deserve it, who hasn’t earned it, and can never repay it.
The scandal of the parable is that God doesn’t give us what we deserve. God gives us what we need, whether we deserve it or not. The point of the parable is that God’s grace is amazing. That God’s grace is beyond our comprehension. That it encompasses everyone, welcomes everyone, forgives everyone, and loves everyone.
The second part of the parable is about us. If you observed the parable carefully, it was not the landowner who distributed the silver coins. He asked the foreman/worker to give the silver coins. The owner of the vineyard has selected you to dispense the silver coins. That’s what the parable is about. God wants you to dispense grace on God’s behalf. As God representatives, we are asked to show God’s grace to others. God calls us to enlarge the margin of grace in our lives. If our grace margin is small, we become exclusionary, judgmental and self-righteous. We become rigid, legalistic and impatient with others. But if or when our margin of grace is wide and big, we overlook each other’s mistakes. We begin to see our own weakness in other people’s failures. We don’t take things too seriously. Enlarge your margin of grace to accommodate people who don’t think or believe like you, people who are different from you. That’s the reason why we are show grace by God. Freely receive, freely give!
Tezenlo Thong, Pastor Simpson UMC
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