There are certain parables and stories in the Bible that can really irritate people. We love to love Jesus when he’s calling out the hypocrites. Or when he’s talking about going and finding the lost sheep when we feel like we’re the lost sheep. We love Jesus when he feels like he’s on our side.

But there are other stories and parables when we wonder whose side Jesus is on anyways, because it may not feel like ours. Over-functioning worker bees like myself often feel personally attacked with the Mary and Martha story. The most responsible folks among us also dislike the Prodigal Son parable. Afterall, the faithful son, who always did the right things, wasn’t even told about the party until his work for the day was done.

The worker bees, the responsible ones, the ones who’ve worked hard, got the grades, and put in the long days don’t like these parables generally and they super don’t like this one. In America, we tend to really believe in meritocracy, as in our effort and achievement should be rewarded and mean something in society. And for many things, I agree. I want the cream to rise to the top, too. For example, if I needed brain surgery, I’d want to know that the person doing that work was really skilled, really smart, and had to demonstrate that many times over before my skull is opened up. I don’t want the guy whose been sleeping through class but somehow still passed.  I think that’s pretty reasonable.

Parables, particularly the annoying ones, are typically not making surface arguments. They are meant to stop us in our tracks and think a bit deeper. What truth is Jesus pointing to?

Well, here’s one truth that I think we can all agree on and that is that humans are pretty basic and it’s not hard for us to get confused. In particular, we get confused about how our worthiness and how we know we are worthy of love and inclusion. How do we know we’re ok in the world? This is one place humans get confused. Way too often we think our productivity, our status, our demonstrated and acknowledged abilities and capacities define our worthiness. But God does not agree. God does not love us because we did our neurosurgery fellowship at Johns Hopkins or whatever. God loves us because we are God’s people, whether we have achieved some sort of greatness in the world or we are day laborers who live in financial and social and perhaps even legal precarity.

We get confused about that.

In God’s eyes, we are all beloved and worthy of love. To make the point in the parable, the laborers who are still hoping for any sort of work, even at the end of the day, the one’s who had yet to earn a penny to sustain basic life and dignity, were paid a full wage. They were paid the same as the ones who worked all day. There’s no difference in God’s math, but to drive the point home, the people who came last are paid first.

Why is this so irritating? Why is it hard to see this sort of generosity and not be offended in some way? I wonder if it’s because we get confused about what makes us worthy and lovable. I wonder if we are stuck in the idea that somehow it actually is up to us to prove our worthiness.

The Bible tells us about God’s expansive love over and over and yet we seem determined to hold on to that idea, even if it’s subtle within us, buried in our psyches. Last week, we talked about how we’d never win the game of measuring up. Instead, God forgives an un-payable debt for each of us. This week we get a similar teaching that brings home the message that it’s not up to us to make the decisions about who is worthy and who is not, which includes ourselves along with everyone else.

Doesn’t it sound like good news to hear that we don’t need to achieve our place in God’s choir? It’s all given. We’re loved. We’re OK. Why is this hard to accept? Why do we stick to the lie that we are not fully worthy as we are? Why do we do the same to others, who we are likely quick to judge because we feel judged? If we believed Jesus, we could stop all this judgement … right?

I wonder if folks cling to this lie because we like to feel like we earned our place in the hierarchies we create. We like to feel powerful, right? It’s a slice of humble pie to acknowledge that we’re all in the same boat, the same glorious and loving boat, but still the same boat regardless of our status and all the things we imagine make us special.

I also wonder about what it feels like to receive grace. A lot of us folks carry a central wound in our hearts that sounds like, “I’m afraid I’m not enough. I don’t fit. I don’t belong. I’m not worthy of a place at the table without some sort of hustle.” That’s what it sounds like, but what it feels like perhaps is a burn or an ache in our hearts. Well, when we have a wound and we go to put medicine on it, that doesn’t always feel good. It can burn or ache all the more for a bit before it gets better, right? The gospel is like that, if we let it deep into these wounds. It can ache, it can burn in a good way, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes hurt!

If we have yet to really be healed of that essential wound in us that is our fear of being unworthy, unforgiven, unlovable, or broken, we may indeed struggle to extend that grace to others. We may resent grace being given to others who haven’t been hustling as hard as us because we’re in pain and God knows we’ve been trying. Again, it’s an unwinnable race because everyone has already won.  

Let’s pretend the workers in the parable who started in the morning know deep in their souls and in their bones that they are deeply worthy of love, they live in dignity, and receive enough provision for the labor they do. They are deeply OK. If this were the case, we could imagine this parable going in a different direction, no? I think we could imagine them celebrating with the ones who worked the least, because they too received what they need and they too were deemed worthy and included, as well. That’s possible and I think it sounds like a nice way to be.

So, again, why does that wound persist? Why do we keep thinking these thoughts? Afterall, if that central wound of feeling ourselves to be unworthy were healed for everyone, the whole world of humans would feel a whole lot better. We would be a lot nicer to each other. Or at least we would stop running ourselves as ragged to prove we deserve to be loved or just avoid feeling blamed.

I know the gospel can heal this wound, but I also believe God will wait for us to get tired of carrying around such punishing beliefs about ourselves and others before entering in with the good, yet searing medicine of the gospel.

Truly I tell you, to borrow a phrase from our favorite guy, if you believe something about yourself that runs counter to the gospel, you are wrong about that belief. I’m not known for these sorts of declarative statements about how you should think, but I’ve got good standing on this. It’s time to set it down which is easier said than done, of course, but we can do it with help and some serious faith that God is more correct about us than our own critical, judgmental thinking.

The call of the gospel is always towards caring for the most vulnerable people and all of creation. The gospel is not just about ourselves, but perhaps sometime it needs to start with ourselves. After all, we will have a hard time living out the call of the gospel if we have yet to allow the gospel to enter our deepest wounds and begin its healing work.

People are often very generous even with strangers. Yet, we can be very ungenerous when we feel ourselves to be wounded and lacking somehow while others are “getting away” with shortcuts. If we notice this in ourselves, this lack of generosity, this lack of joy in how others receive, it tells us something about our own hearts and needs, does it not?

The fact that this is in the Bible, and it irritates almost everyone, doesn’t tell me that almost all of us resent God’s generosity or even that we’re necessarily greedy. It tells me that almost every one of us is wounded and confused about how our worthiness comes to be. It’s not our action. It’s not how we measure up, but we tend to think it is.

We are being asked to let those old stories, those old beliefs go. We are being asked to find the help we need to do so. We are being asked to be bold enough to believe that God does not need you to measure up. You are loved. You are whole. And you are worthy. And so is everyone else and that is worth celebrating for the sake of us all.

AMEN