Stretched By Grace

Jul 12th - Stretched By Grace, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: More Than You Think: Discovering the Parables of Jesus A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 20.1-16.

Ever feel like life just isn’t fair, or like you’re always picked last or overlooked? This week we’re talking about a different kind of world, where worth is not something you earn and everyone gets enough, including you. A world where grace, not scorekeeping, has the final word.

You’re invited to explore that with us this Sunday, online or in person at First Presbyterian Church in Bend. Come as you are, bring your questions, and sit with a community that’s learning how to see and care for one another.

Join us each Sunday, 10AM at bendfp.org, or 11AM KTVZ-CW Channel 612/12 in Bend. Subscribe/Follow, and click the bell for alerts.

At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

Thank you for your support of the mission of the First Presbyterian Church of Bend. Visit https://bendfp.org/giving/ for more information.

Keywords:

Parable, spiritual path, imagination, God’s generosity, daily wage, landowner, workers, merit-based system, national policies, immigration, grace, belonging, hope, undeserved gifts, extravagant generosity., presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Sharon Edwards, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Whitney Higdon: 0:41

Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian Church in Bend, Oregon. My name is Whitney, and we are so grateful you've joined us. We are a community shaped by what we call spacious Christianity-a faith wide enough for difference, honest enough for questions, and kind enough for the full truth of our lives. Here, doubts are not disqualifiers. Questions are not threats. They're invitations into deeper faith and more authentic connection. Your story matters, and together we seek God with holy curiosity. So today, wherever you're coming from, know this: you are welcome, and your presence is a gift.

Steven: 1:19

Imagine a community where faith is about curiosity, not certainty; a journey, not a finish line; a practice, not a rigid set of rules; wonder, not fear; grace, not perfection; compassion, not exclusion; a seat at the table for all, where everyone belongs. That's exactly what you'll find at First Presbyterian. Join us. There's an old story about a man on his hands and knees under a street lamp, clearly for searching for something, a passerby stopped to help. What are you looking for? My keys, the man says. I lost them. Where did you have them last? Well, back there, he says, pointing towards a dark alley. Then why are you looking here? Well, because there's more light here, we like the light. We like the easy answers, the familiar ground. You know, we like the place where, where someone agrees with what we already think we know. You know, it's far more comfortable searching under the lamppost than entering dark alleys. The longer I walk the spiritual path, the more I discover how much I don't know. And Jesus, as a teacher, seemed almost entirely uninterested in in keeping people under the lamp post. He kept sending people back into the dark alley, not to leave them lost, because that's usually where the thing worth finding actually is, and that's what a parable does. You know, the word parable means something something thrown alongside, you know, not a fable with a neat moral kind of at the end, not an allegory decoding into a lesson that you can neatly tuck away. A parable is a ball tossed slightly off to the side of where you're standing, so that if you want to catch it, you actually have to move. You you have to stretch. Jesus didn't tell these stories so people would walk away with with the correct belief, the correct doctrine. He told these stories to stretch our imagination, to loosen our grip on what we're sure we already understand about God. So something wider, stranger, more more generous might slip in. Today's parable asks us, you know, to stretch further than almost any other parable Jesus told, a landowner goes out at dawn at sunrise and and hires workers for his vineyard, agreeing on the usual daily wage. And this landowner goes back at at nine in the morning, at noon, at three, and at 5o'clock nearly quitting time. And each time he hires more workers, telling them only,"I'll pay you what's right. When evening comes, the landowner pays them all the same-the same wage for 12 hours of scorching labor, and for one hour of standing around. Now, the ones who worked all day under that scorching sun grumble. This isn't fair, and it isn't. It isn't fair, and that's the whole point. Now, by the time Jesus tells this story, the you know the disciples, the followers of Jesus, have have given up everything to follow him-homes, families, the the comfort of their daily routine-and they look out at the at the crowd who who keeps showing up? The crowd who keeps gathering day after day, you know the crowd, hoping to receive something-healing, bread, a kind word, forgiveness. People who hadn't followed Jesus for years, people who hadn't sacrificed anything at all-they just showed up, hoping, and Jesus welcomes them exactly the same as he welcomes the 12, who left everything. So Peter, Peter being Peter, finally says what they're all thinking, surely Jesus, we're worth more to you than than they are, right? Surely we've earned something that they haven't, and Jesus. Answers with that story. He answers with a story about a God who runs the vineyard, nothing like we run our own lives. Now, honestly, we run on an on an economy of merit. Prove your worth, earn your keep. You know there's no such thing as a free lunch. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, even when nobody has handed you boots. We sort the world into winners and losers, deserving and undeserving, first and last. And most of us assume quietly that we belong somewhere near the front of that line. You know, now we've we've even built our national policies on this logic, I mean, look at how we talk about immigration in this country. Debating merit-based systems, asking what a person can contribute before we ask what they need. It's the language of the marketplace applied to human beings. I mean, prove your worth, and then maybe you'll be lit in. Now I understand why nations wrestle with with policy and borders and and law. law, real complicated questions, and people of of good faith land in very different places. But notice how naturally we reach for merit as the measuring stick. The measuring stick, even for who who gets to belong, that instinct doesn't start at the border. It actually starts in our own hearts. It starts in the quiet scorekeeping we do every day about who deserves what, and who doesn't, and this parable challenges our assumptions. The landowner never asks the 5o'clock workers. You know the worker is still there at the end of the day. He never asks the 5o'clock workers what they have to offer. The landowner asks why they're still standing there, unchosen, and then he chooses them anyway. Now the wage the landowner is talking about the wage isn't a isn't a fortune, a denarius, which is a day's wage. Just enough, just enough to feed a family that night. You know, it's the same thing Jesus taught us to pray for. Give us, give us this day our daily bread, not abundance, enough. Give us enough. Everyone, everyone in the story goes home with enough. The landowner isn't running a meritocracy, he's running a household where nobody nobody goes to bed hungry. Which means the question this parable throws alongside us isn't, is this fair? The question is, what kind of world do we actually want? I mean, one where everyone gets exactly what they've earned and not a drop more, or one where everyone, especially the ones standing idle because nobody's chosen them-a one where everyone gets to eat tonight. You know, I think about the last workers hired still standing in the square at 5o'clock The landowner doesn't ask, "Want to make some quick money? He asks, "Why are you still here? And they answer,"Because no one has hired us. Nobody wanted them. I had a friend growing up, Tom, who was he was the. One, we all have a friend like this-the one who was always, always chosen last for kickball. Tall, uncoordinated. He actually didn't really care about sports, but gosh, he wanted more than anything to be picked. He wanted more than anything to belong, and I can still see his face, while the rest of us got called one by one, and he stood there waiting, hoping. A friend whose daughter has Down syndrome told me she reads this parable differently than most people do. I know what it what it is, what it is to watch my child, my child, be the one left standing. She said,"The ones still there at 5o'clock aren't lazy. It takes everything you have just to keep hope alive, when you're the one who keeps being passed over. When the landowner finally says to them, "You, you also go into the vineyard. That's not a business transaction. That's a declaration of worth to people the world has already decided are expendable. That's saying to

the invisible ones: 16:31

You are needed. You're not invisible to me. Let me ask you something. Take take a moment before you answer it. Has there been a time in your life when, when you receive something, love, forgiveness, a second chance, simple kindness, or maybe somebody someone just simply saw you-a gift that you know you hadn't earned, a gift undeserved, no strings attached. You know, I know something about what that feels like. Several years ago, when my wife spent a month in the ICU and then another month in rehab, never once, never once did anyone from the church mention family leave or what it says in the personnel handbook. They. They just knew what they knew. I was where I needed to be, and when we finally came home, you know, after two months, I was I was completely depleted, wondering how how is possibly going to go back to work, and before I could even ask, they saw my need before I did. A member of the church leadership took me for coffee and said, "You cared for Lori. Now it's time to care for yourself. We'll see you in two months. I hadn't earned that. I couldn't have. It was sheer grace, and the grace itself turned out to be the healing. That's what turned out to be the healing I needed more than the rest ever could have been on its own. Father Greg Boyle says it this way: Imagine, imagine a world where we stand in awe of the burden people carry, rather than standing in judgment of how they're carrying it. That's what this parable is really after. You know, not not a lesson about labor policy or even immigration policy, though it has something to say to both. It's an invitation to imagine a different way of being in the world, where we stop measuring who deserves what, and we start noticing what people need. Where the question shifts from "What have I earned? to "Who is still standing in the square? From "Is this fair? to "Does everyone have enough? We can't make life fair. We were never. Promise that, but we can stretch towards something better than fair. We can let God's extravagant, unreasonable generosity loosen our grip on what we think we're owed, and open our hands to what we might give away instead. The last will be first, and the first will be last-not as punishment, but as an invitation to stop counting altogether, and finally see. see who has been standing there all along, hoping to be chosen. May it be so. I offer us this prayer, generous God, generous God. We come to you today like workers in the marketplace. Some of us tired from a full day's labor. Some of us still standing here, wondering if anyone will choose us at all. You know the accounts we keep, the quiet scorekeeping of, of who deserves more and who deserves less. Who has earned their place and who hasn't? God, release us! Release us! Release us from the burden of keeping score. We hold before you the one still standing in the square, passed over, unchosen, invisible, wondering if they matter. Choose them, God. Say to them what you say to to all of us. You also go into the vineyard, and we thank you for the grace-the grace that has always found us, that has already found us, the kindness we didn't ask for, and couldn't repay, arriving before we, before we deserved it, healing us more than we knew we needed. Loosen our grip on on what we think we're owed. Open our hands to what we might give away instead. Let us stop asking who deserves what and start asking who. who still needs to be chosen? We ask all of this in the name of the one who paid the last worker the same as the first, and called it right. Amen. Friends, may the extravagant, unexpected, generous grace of God. May that grace be the very ground upon which you walk, and the very air that you breathe. May the radical, spacious, generous, compassionate love of Jesus inspire you to love as Jesus loved, and may God's Holy Spirit lead you to those people still standing in the square, unpicked, unnoticed, waiting for your grace and your generosity. May it be so.

Whitney Higdon: 27:14

This worship broadcast is only possible because of your generous support. We need your support in sharing a spacious Christianity, a faith that welcomes questions, embraces difference, and makes room for everyone. Please consider making a financial gift today. You can give online at bendfp.org or by using the QR code on your screen. Thank you for worshiping with us. It's a gift to have you here. Until next time, may God bless you.