Text: Isaiah 55:6-9, Philippians 1:1-27, Matthew 20:1-16                                    W 18^th Sunday after Pentecost

Uncommon Sense

            Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Dear friends: Let’s start with a quick poll: How many of you would say that you have common sense?  Raise your hands.  Much as I suspected:  pretty much everyone.  That’s why we call it common sense, I guess.  But now let me ask you this:  How many of you know someone (maybe more than one) who doesn’t seem to have it – or much of it anyway?  Again, raise your hands.  Hmm … well then maybe common sense is not so common after all.  I suppose the obvious next question would be to ask those who raised their hands the second time if they saw one or more of the people they hand in mind raise their hands the first time; but we won’t go there – besides, I expect some of you were thinking about me.

            What is common sense?  It’s basic understanding of the way things work, the way things are, and the way they should be.  Common sense is what allows us to avoid danger and solve all those little problems we face every day without really having to think – we just know.  And everybody has some common sense; but as we’ve already indicated, some have it more than others.  And it really doesn’t have anything to do with how well educated a person is.  In fact, the lack of common sense is most obvious in a person who is otherwise considered intelligent.  You’ve probably heard the one about the college professor who had to pull over to change a flat tire in the middle of a rainstorm.  He set the four loose lug nuts in the hubcap to keep them from getting lost; but while maneuvering the spare into position he accidentally stepped on the edge of the cap, effectively catapulting the lug nuts into the drainage ditch, which was full of water.  He spent a half hour wading in the muddy ditch searching for the nuts without any luck, all the while loudly complaining about his misfortune.  The whole time, right beyond the ditch and behind a chain-link fence, a patient of the local mental hospital was watching him and smiling. Finally the patient says, “Why don’t you just take one lug nut from each of the other three wheels?  You could replace them at the nearest auto parts store.” The professor thought, “Well, why didn’t I think of that?” and soon he was ready to roll again.  As he was about to leave, rather than thanking the man behind the fence the professor said, “Don’t you think it’s funny, a guy like me, a well respected college professor, taking advice from you, a mental patient?” To which the patient replied, “I’m in here because I’m crazy, not because I’m stupid.”

            Common sense is a good and necessary thing; and if you have it in abundance, then you are truly blessed.  And yet, we have to recognize that it has its limitations.  That is to say, there are times when we run up against truths that are counterintuitive; we find solutions to problems that run contrary to common sense.  Just for example, common sense dictates that taking poison is bad for you.  You should avoid it because it may harm or kill you. And the last thing you’d want to do is to take poison if you were sick and your system was weakened by disease. And yet, that’s pretty much what chemotherapy treatments for cancer patients are:  poisons that are a little more effective at killing cancer cells than non-cancer cells.  By carefully controlling the doses, doctors use these deadly poisons to cure.  Or take another example:  as part of my studies in civil engineering, I had to learn about building roads and airports.  Now think about an airport and consider this question:  which do you think would have to be better reinforced and have a thicker pavement, the runway on which the heavy jumbo jets take off and land, or the tarmac on which they gently taxi around and park while loading passengers and cargo?  Common sense would suggest that it would be the runway because it has to be able to withstand the force and impact of the landing planes – but that’s wrong.  It turns out that most of the time a plane is on the runway, some of its weight is being carried by the lift from the wings, so the runway doesn’t need to be so thick.  It’s where the planes sit for long periods of time that need the most support.  And here’s one more that really struck me the first time I heard it.  Strange as it seems, a lot of the sprays the farmers around here put on their crops to control weeds are actually chemicals that make the weeds grow faster.  Common sense says that’s foolish:  controlling weeds by making them grow?  Doesn’t sound like the kind of weed control you want.  But what happens is that these chemicals cause weeds to grow so fast that they can’t sustain themselves and so they die.  The weeds are literally helped to death (which, in a way, reminds me of the effectiveness of some government welfare programs; but I digress).

            There are many other examples I could give, but the point I’m trying to make is that sometimes common sense leads us astray.  What seems to be obvious and make the most sense can be totally wrong.  And this is especially the case when we are dealing with the things of God.  When it comes to understanding him and his ways, common sense won’t get us very far.  We hear the Lord say as much in this morning’s reading from Isaiah.  He says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”  What this means is that when we are dealing with the wisdom of God and the truths of his kingdom, we can’t assume that what makes the most sense to us naturally will be correct.  In fact, it’s better to assume right up front that what we might conclude about the Lord’s doings using our common sense will be wrong.  No, to really understand him and the way he operates we’re going to need something more than common sense, something we might call “uncommon sense”.

            And it just so happens that today’s Scripture readings provide us a veritable smorgasbord of examples of such uncommon sense in action.  There is for instance the parable of the workers in the field.  “The kingdom of heaven is like”, Jesus tells us, a man who hires people to work for him at various times all through the day.  Some get hired at sunrise and work a twelve hour shift through the heat of the day, others get hired at midmorning, noon, or mid-afternoon, and some come to work an hour before quitting time.  It only makes sense that there should be a graduated pay scale; those who work the longest and do the bulk of the work should get paid more than those who do very little and work only for a short time.  Ah, but that’s not how things work in the kingdom of God. Everybody gets the same wage at the end of the day.

            What does that mean?  It means that the life-long Christian, the person born and raised in the faith, who scrupulously studied God’s Word and supported the church with time, treasure, and talent throughout a lifetime of dedicated service and the death bed convert, a person who comes to the faith in the last few moments of life and who perhaps spent a lifetime ignoring the church or even fighting against it – both of them get the same reward:  namely, the forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life in glory with the Lord Jesus. It also means that those who have it comparatively easy, who live in security and affluence in places where there is religious freedom have the same final reward as those who are poor and suffering and who live in places where they face persecution, torture, and even death for confessing the name of Christ.

            Common sense tells us that it shouldn’t be that way.  It’s not fair, not right at all.  But that’s because we are universally stuck on the sinful notion that there is something about us, something we can do or suffer or endure or contribute that in some way earns us credit with God.  We think there ought to be just compensation for what we do for him. But that’s absolutely wrong.  The very idea completely undermines what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.  And with the uncommon sense of God this becomes clear.  Friends, we don’t want the just wages of what we do for God.  If he gave us what’s fair, any of us, we’d spend eternity suffering in Hell for our sins. That we don’t get that is due only to his grace to us in his Son who suffered and died in our place.  The Lord Jesus took our just wages of punishment for our sins and he gave us what he earned by his perfect life and total obedience. And when we fall into the common sense trap of thinking that God is treating us unfairly because we’ve been called to do more than someone else, we’re only showing that we’ve lost sight of what he did for us.  With uncommon sense we see this truth and we rejoice in every opportunity to give ourselves in the service of him who gave himself for us.

            Okay, here’s another one:  Paul says in today’s Epistle lesson, “to die is gain”.  Common sense asks, “How can that be?”  We spend our lives trying to avoid death.  We call it the worst thing that could possibly happen.  Oh, perhaps when someone is old and infirm and has lived a full life, when death comes we nod our heads grimly and say, “It’s best this way.”  But if it’s someone who’s comparatively young or (perish the thought) a child who dies, we treat it as the worst tragedy possible.  Now, to be fair, the impact on the survivors is certainly more severe when someone younger dies.  Their loss is unspeakably painful.  But we usually think of such a person who’s died as having lost something.  “Poor so and so!  Just think of all the wonderful things life has to offer that they’ll miss out on.”   But again, uncommon sense sees the situation differently.  Let’s see, the person who has died will never again know sorrow, pain, sadness, sin, betrayal, frustration, sickness, stress, loneliness, weariness, hunger, thirst … can someone explain why we seek to avoid this? And to suggest that someone has lost something by missing out on a few of the paltry and fleeting pleasures of this life when they are presently partaking of the endless joys and unimaginable glories that we’ll know in the life to come is absurd.  Using our God-given uncommon sense it’s plain to see that for any of us to die in the Lord is a great gain.

            Well, if that’s the case, then that’s what we should all want, right? If dying is gain, common sense says we should yearn for it – maybe even take the sorts of risks that might encourage it to come sooner.  Wrong again! That’s what Paul is saying in his letter to the members of the church at Philippi.  And to appreciate what he’s saying, it’s important to understand that at this point he’s old, tired, and beat up from long years of suffering as he’s gone from place to place proclaiming the Gospel.  He’s been whipped, stoned and left for dead, shipwrecked – really pulled through one knot hole after another in the service of Christ. On top of it all, he’s writing from prison where he faces the possibility of death by execution.  It’s in this context that he says “to die is gain”; but then he goes on to say that he knows the Lord has more for him to do in this life, and that even though it would be better for him to die, it would be better for the church if he could go on serving it even though that means more heartache and suffering for himself.  Common sense says look out for number one, and since dying is best for me, that’s what I should want.  But uncommon sense says it’s best to die to the selfish desires of the heart and use whatever time and means God grants me to do what’s best for others.  That’s the kind of love that Christ had for us. And that’s the kind of love that Christ has put in us:  that we should desire to serve in any and every capacity until the Lord himself calls quitting time.  When I was in the Army we had people we referred to as ROADs. It was an acronym for “Retired On Active Duty”; and believe me, that was one of the nicer things they were called.  They were the ones who decided that since they’d put in a lot of years already, they could sit back and take it easy until their twenty years were up.  What Paul is saying is that there is no place for ROADs in the church – just as there is no place for the “I’m too young, too inexperienced, too busy, or too whatever.”  The love of Christ compels us to set aside what we want to do for ourselves so that we want to do what’s best for the good of others.

            And that’s why Paul writes in his letter that he wants the Christian love of the members of the Philippian Church to abound.  He says that is his prayer for them – and for us too, I might add. And with that in mind, once again common sense would suggest that we should make it our goal to answer this prayer by striving more and more diligently to give ourselves in service to one another. Surely that will make our love grow.  But that’s wrong again!   No, when Paul says he wants our love to grow, he goes on to say exactly how that is accomplished.  How? “In knowledge and depth of insight”, he says, “so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ”.    What does that mean?  It means we don’t become more loving by trying to be more loving, rather we becoming more loving by learning to know more of Jesus through his Word.  It’s same lesson Jesus taught through the sisters Mary and Martha.  Martha thought she was doing the better thing and performing the more loving service by knocking herself out in the kitchen for the Lord.  It only made common sense.  But Jesus told her she was wrong – that her sister, Mary, had chosen the better part by simply sitting at his feet and listening to him teach.  Why is that better?  Because Martha was looking to please Jesus with her work while Mary was being transformed from within by the power of Christ’s holy Word.  One sister was acting lovingly, but that’s what it was:  an act; an act calculated to earn a reward of some kind, even if it was only a “thank you” or word of appreciation.  The other sister was becoming more loving because she was gaining the knowledge and depth of insight that Jesus was conveying through his teaching.  The words of Jesus create and enhance faith in Jesus.  By such faith we are counted righteous.  Not only that, but by such faith we are also equipped to produce the fruits of righteousness among which the foremost is love.  So, though it only makes uncommon sense, we become more loving not by doing things for God, but rather by hearing what he has to say – which means we should make every effort to do so and take advantage of the opportunities he gives us. And so we will; that is, if we have any sense at all.

Dear friends, God in his grace has granted each of us some degree of common sense.  And for what we have, we are right to be thankful.  But to us, the children of his kingdom, he has given his own uncommon sense by which he opens our eyes to see as he sees, and he expands our minds to think as he does.  He wants to give us even more of it – and there is a lot there to give, for as he says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  He gives us this uncommon sense when we learn of Jesus in his Word.  You might think of it this way:  God’s Holy Word is a vineyard with a lot of grapes to pick.  In view of this, may it be that we always be found among those whom the master finds already waiting when he goes early to find workers to harvest his vineyard.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!