About this episode
Day 20
Today’s Reading: Matthew 20
Inevitably when someone well known dies, I get asked, “Do you think that person is in heaven?” Before I respond, I always think of John Newton, the eighteenth-century former slave ship captain who became an abolitionist and clergyman. He said, “If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.”
With that thought in mind, I tell the person a story:
“Let’s say you knew a guy named Rudy who was from the worst part of town. Rudy grew up with no father and no discipline in the home, and from an early age he got in trouble with the law. As a kid, he stole candy; by the time he was a teenager, he’d worked up to stealing cars. Into his early adulthood, he broke into people’s homes. During one break-in, he discovered the residents at home and he killed them. He got convicted and sentenced to death. You also knew the people he killed, so you attended the execution. You saw him enter the room, then walk behind a curtain for his execution. Question: Does that thief who killed those people go to heaven?”
The person always responds, “Of course not. I knew him till the end. He didn’t repent.”
But then I add a twist and change the scenario.
“Okay,” I tell the person. “On that day three executions were scheduled simultaneously in that room. Rudy and one other man were thieves. The third was a deranged man who claimed He was God. Just before Rudy died, he had a conversation with the so-called deranged man, in which he heard something about paradise and he accepted the man at His word. Did he go to heaven?”
The person typically knows the “right” answer: that Rudy went to heaven. But I can see the confusion and frustration on the person’s face, especially because of the sins Rudy committed. Inevitably, the person is grappling with the fairness of it all.
Surely, he can’t be in heaven, the person thinks. He was a thief and a murderer. How is that fair?
And yet this twist in the story is not made up. It happened at Calvary. A life of sin and selfishness was altered in seconds—all because the thief talked to the Middle Man.
Jesus is our middle man—the one whose sacrifice made a way for us to go to heaven. No matter who the person is or what they have done, on the day they die, they enter heaven and walk on streets of gold.
Before that scene at Calvary even happened, Jesus prepared us for the reality of salvation with this parable, what we call a little story with a big meaning, which comes from today’s reading, in Matthew 20:1–16.
Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a vineyard owner who hired workers early in the morning and agreed to pay them a certain amount of money, a denarius, for their day’s wages.
Aroun
