Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)

Dear congregation,

I liked my job. Even though it was tough, working outside for the whole shift, in every weather. With the noise and all the dangers. I was an airplane filling agent at Frankfurt Airport. This means beside my studies on the University I drove trucks over the apron area of the airport. From plane to plane. Of course I knew them all. Boeing 747, Airbus A300, Lockheed Tristar. And the others. I liked this job because it was exciting. And I felt in touch with the whole wide world. Lufthansa to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Aeroflot to St. Petersburg, Russia. Continental to Houston. The whole wide world and I on the tip of a hose from Shell.

Even though it was hard. As I said, I had to go out in every weather. Fog, frost, rain and thunderstorm, burning sun and snow. Nevertheless, it was okay for me. It was only every few days, then I returned to my lectures. My colleagues, all men, real blue-collar workers, had to do this every day.

It was a job with high responsibility. Nothing may go wrong, everything must be perfect. A lot of security rules have to be obeyed. That is difficult, specially shortly before the end of the shift. Just a second of dreaming away - and the plane cannot start in time. And that means big amounts of money, thousands of Dollars per minute. And a lot of trouble for the filling agent, maybe even getting sacked.

Because the boss of our company wasn’t a nice guy. He used to be called ‘old man’, like the captain on German vessels, maybe there is a similar term in English. A captain and his crew, order and obedience. He liked that. And control, checking on his staff. We workers had always had to expect to be watched or checked spontaneously during our work. His motivation wasn’t success, but anxiety. We should be scared to function.

But, of course, nobody can function without mistakes all the time. I remember exactly this one day. Where everything went wrong. I had to fill up a plane to some place on the Mediterranean. Not far from Frankfurt. I had slept badly the night before. I had absolutely no wishes to go working. But I went. And I drove my truck to the side of the plane where the gas cap is. I put the nozzle in. And started the filling. Every liter, every gallon counts. It’s all weight. And weight is expensive in the aviation business.

Somehow it went wrong. Probably I looked in the wrong direction for one second too much. All of a sudden I had put in too much. Oh my, so far, so bad, I thought. I hoped it wouldn’t matter. I rolled up my hoses and drove to the next plane. From then on I paid attention. But the moment came. Later that day. When I was called to this Lufthansa plane that just arrived from Belgrade. But I shouldn’t fill it up, I was called into the cockpit. Why that? I remember how I could feel my heart beating. Somehow, of course, I knew what was coming.

The stairs up to the cabin were high, a long way. The handrail was ice-cold. The pilot was very angry. He wanted an explanation. What could I have said? That I’d slept badly? No way. There was no other way but apologizing. I had no explanation. - The stairs down to the ground where long again. But every step was easier to take. I had it all behind me. The rest of that day was pretty normal. But I remember very well that moment when I came to work the next day. The first that I heard was, of course, the voice of ‘the old man’. ‘Come to my office, now.’ The boss sat behind his desk, upstairs in what we called his ‘sanctuary’. He read aloud a letter from Lufthansa. An official complaint about a deficient filling of a plane to Belgrade. Again my heart was beating. ‘Can you explain this?’ I told him the whole story. Again without explanation. Until the moment when I stood in this cockpit and I apologized. ‘You apologized?’ Eyebrows raised. - Our conversation was over very soon. I went back to work. I’d been lucky. He would have had a reason to fire me. Or at least to give me a written warning. But he showed grace, perhaps because I apologized. I don’t know. I had got a new chance.

Dear congregation, when I listen to today’s gospel I feel uncomfortable. The three servants who get a certain amount of money from the landowner. Two multiply the money. One is too scared of his ‘boss’. He hides the money. As the landowner comes back he lets them show him what they’ve got now. The first two are praised, the last one gets chastised. Because he hasn’t increased the amount of money.

For me this is a story of control and trust. In German we have a word that I translate: ‘Trust is good, control is better.’ I don’t think I have to explain this. I know it from situations where people want to justify themselves when they check on someone. When they don’t expect that they can trust the other. In technical things or with planes this makes a lot of sense. But often I don’t see much sense in it - if it is between people. It is not graceful. Checking doesn’t look for success, it looks for failure. It is the negative view of things. The checker asks himself: Where is the mistake? Where is the failure? And then it is followed by sanctions. Trust, instead, thinks that the other will have done it well. And trust allows now sanctions. Because mistakes happen, everyone knows that. And mistakes are forgiven. This is grace.

I know, many things don’t work without checks and supervision. But many things also don’t work without trust. It is a question of relation between these two terms. In today’s gospel text checking is important. Not trusting. Sure, that landowner has entrusted his servants with amounts of money. But he checks on them. In a rough way. Because beforehand he didn’t tell them to increase the money. But he chastises the one who hasn’t done this. Who preferred to hide the money. And it says: There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

No grace. The landowner in this story is not the trusting boss. He is the guy who confronts. Jesus tells this story in the gospel of Matthew. There it stands in a context of many parables about the kingdom of God. It bothers me. Where is the good shepherd who loves and forgives his sheep? The good Lord, full of grace? Where is the Good News for us? It is hard to see it within this story, where only the successful are praised. Not the fearful.

Yes, there is good news. It lies in the fact that Matthew had an intention with this story. Outside of this story. He wanted to tell his readers that this parable isn’t meant to speak of God. The landowner is Jesus himself. The one who can be rough with those who don’t try to make the best of their lives. Of the amount of goods they have during their lifetimes. He is rough, because he wants to encourage us. To multiply the gifts that we’ve been given when we were born. Not to hide them. Talents, abilities, sensitiveness, all that. He stressed it with the harsh words about weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Still, it is also a question of trust and control. Inside the story. God and Jesus aren’t those pocket size toys that we can pull out when we want. This story can remind us of this. The good shepherd, Jesus my friend. It’s not that easy. But, anyway, all we can read about grace and that we don’t have to earn it by good deeds stays true. This reminds us that God and Jesus are just much bigger than us, no pocket size. We cannot pull out grace when we need it.

But we can hope. And pray. Hope and pray that God now and then acts graceful. It may be weak to compare God to my old boss at the airport. But I think this was a kind of human grace. How big must godly grace then be. I don’t know why, but he didn’t sack me. I leave his ‘sanctuary’ and feel my steps becoming easier and easier. Alleluia.

Amen.

Copyright 2005, The Rev. Peter Stockmann