Getting what we deserve

I was thinking this morning -- I know, I know, you didn't know I thought -- about the generosity of our God. And about our need to be givers, of time, money, service, ourselves.

Can we talk?

Imagine, for example, delivering 85 pizzas that cost a grand total of $1,453 and receiving a $10 tip. That's what happened to a pizza delivery man last year. A friend posted a photo of his paltry gratuity to a social media site, and it racked up nearly 2,000 comments and plenty of debate on tipping etiquette. Some felt tipping 20 percent would amount to an inappropriately expensive tip, almost $300, while others argued that a tip is based on performance and level of labor. If the delivery guy had a nickel for every Reddit comment he got … he'd be on his way to a 20 percent tip.

Performance. Level of labor. Hot pizzas versus cold stuck to the box pizzas, I assume. Most felt he should have been given what he deserved. Wouldn't you?

The thing is, most figured what he did was the reason for his being deserving of a tip. That's common in our society. What do I get if I do this? If I'm not getting anything, or enough of anything, or my fair share of anything, well, I'm not doing it. What's the use? What's the point?

Then there is Abigail Sailors, an 18-year-old college student in Lincoln, Nebraska.

According to a Nebraska newspaper, a man stopped in with a friend for lunch at the restaurant last week, and he asked the hostess to seat him and his friend at the table of the restaurant’s grumpiest server because the pair wanted to use their charm to cheer someone up. The hostess responded that the chain actually didn't have a single dispirited employee and instead gave them the opposite — their happiest waitress -- Abigail.

The men asked her questions about why she had such a sunny disposition. Throughout their lunch, Sailors told the patrons her story. Sailors, the youngest of five children, was tossed around the foster care system throughout her childhood. She and her older siblings were separated and reunited multiple times, and suffered from abuse for years until John and Susi Sailors took all five of them in nine years ago.

She told them she recently completed her first semester at Trinity Bible College in Ellendale, North Dakota, playing basketball and studying psychology and youth ministry, and she paid for her own education. She told her inquisitive customers that she didn’t have enough money to return for the spring semester and was saving wages and tips for future tuition, hence the reason for working in the restaurant.

After the meal, the two men left a $100 tip that was to be split with another Cracker Barrel server.

AND …

One of the men revealed that he was a Trinity alumnus and pulled out his checkbook. He wrote the young student two checks — one for $5,000 to the school and another for $1,000 for whatever else she needed.

Sailors was shaken. “I couldn’t believe it. I tried to thank them, and they said, ‘Thank God.' "

Indeed.

This wasn't the only one of its type lately. In October, Aurora Kephart, a 25-year-old bartender at Conway's Restaurant and Lounge in Springfield, Oregon, received a Keno ticket $17,500 as a tip. In December, an anonymous person who signed @tipsforjesus on receipts left a slew of substantial tips for servers, such as $3,000 on a bill of only $87.88, and, just a few days later, $5,000 on a $214.75 total due.

Jesus told a story of an employer who hires workmen to harvest grapes. He hires members of the crew at various times of the day, so that at the end of the day, some have only worked a few hours while others have worked all day long.

There’s grumbling when everyone is paid the same standard day’s wage, regardless of how long they worked. To add insult to injury, those who started last got paid first. “No fair!”

Well, wait just a minute. Fair? It ain’t far?

The master paid those who worked all day exactly what he told them they'd get. He decided to be generous and pay everyone, even those who came late to the part, a full day's wage. Justice, my friends, does not preclude being generous. The Pharisees, those religious folk who wanted to control everything associated with God, especially those in power at the time Jesus lived on earth, were made incredibly unhappy, unhappy enough to kill, to hear Jesus talk about all those Johnny-come-lately's who would sit along side them in the Kingdom of God.

Whoa! We would never, ever do that. Huh?

Jesus understood in ways we still don’t. that God, like some of these anonymous givers, doesn't give us what we deserve. We should be on our knees thanking Him for that.

Instead, God gives us what we do not deserve. Freely. Wonderfully. With a big ol’ God smile as big as a rainbow across three parishes.

Period. EXCLAMATION POINT!!!!!!!

Oh. What He does is called grace. Fair? Nope. Gracious? Yep.