September 24                        Lost and Found                                                 

         In the parking lot of Immanuel UCC in East St. Louis, a group of people meet each day, hoping to have the opportunity to work. Each day during the week, farmers come by with their pickups looking for farmhands to help them. Inside the church, there is a daycare for the workers children. It’s their mission to the community.

         As I read this weeks gospel lesson, I tried to imagine the worker’s experience in the reading, and I tried to think about what it would be to be one of those workers, waiting, hoping for work.

         It’s 5:30 am, and your standing in a parking lot with two dozen other workers, wondering if you there will be enough work for everyone, wondering if you will be one of the lucky one’s chosen. Lucky enough to earn a day’s pay, $80 to pay the rent, keep the electric on, buy food for your family, take care of your children. One farmer shows, then two, and another, one of them knows you, and signals for you to come to work. Today you will make earn money, you feel good, you feel grace.

         Around 10 am, you take your first break of the day, cool refreshing water a cinnamon roll in your lunch bag from the day before. The temperature is 85 degrees, it’s gonna be a hot day, but your making money. You see that the farmer has brought additional workers to the field. One of them in Juan, who hasn’t worked in two days, your happy for him, he just became a father again and needs the money. And you again have that feeling, of grace.

         At 1 pm, it’s time for a siesta, the work will start again at 4 pm. You sit under a tree beside the fields with your coworkers, some talk, others play cards, most eat the rest of what’s in their lunch bags. Sandwich, chips, veggies, packed by the church. It’s in the nineties, but in the shade it’s in the 80’s and there is just enough breeze to make you feel comfortable. Grace

          Work starts again at 4 pm, and you notice that the farmer has gone back one more time for workers, they must have been really desperate for work to hang around the church lot so long. But at least they will make something, maybe just enough for food the next day. There it is again, that feeling of Grace.

         It’s 7 pm, time to get paid, the farmer calls the workers up, starting with the last hired, they walk away with smiles on their faces, the next group, the one with juan in it, gets paid, he comes up the line and shows you $80 a full day’s pay! You wonder what you will get, $100 or more. You get to the front of the line, and the farmer hands you, $80, you walk away stunned. It’s unfair, you say, my work has been diminished, see if I work for that so and so again. As you walk away, you notice that you have lost something, something you had all day long, that sense of Grace.

         

         Now I have heard this gospel quoted as a justification for employers paying what they want. I have heard this gospel quoted by workers to point out the injustice of employers. I have heard this gospel quoted by people who say God is the farmer, but I wonder how God could be so unjust. And then, a few years ago, I read this story and noted, that Jesus doesn’t say that the parable is about God, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like…   

          You see, in the kingdom of heaven, there are people who come early and people who come late, all are paid the same, all receive salvation. Those who come early, know God’s grace in their lives, and are given life an strength by it. They are the fortunate one’s who get to be a part of God’s plan their whole lives. Those who come later, have been lost and anxious for part of their lives, but now they have found their way. Those who come latest, God has had the least impact on their lives, perhaps they have come to God, because their mistakes have piled up so heavily upon them. But all receive God’s grace. And God is not fooled, only those who come to believe, who come to work, are paid.

          I often have people question me about death bed confessions, and salvation, just like this story, I wonder if that doesn’t say more about their faith, than about the faith of the person they are questioning. Like the worker from my story above, believe in God’s love for you, believe in God’s grace towards you, be happy for those who come later to work, and be happy for those who have struggled their whole lives, but at last found God’s grace in their lives. If you can do this, than you truly believe, and God’s grace will never be taken from you, and that’s the good news of Jesus Christ!