Grace Ain't "Pickin' Cotton"!

I was born and raised in Missouri. I am basically a “city boy” but I have spent time visiting rural areas.

When I was just a boy, I visited a cotton farm in the southern Missouri boot-heel region. The owner was a friend of the family and he told us about the labor involved in producing cotton.

In the spring, you had to “chop cotton” which involved starting at the beginning of a row of small cotton plants and making your way to the end of the row, chopping weeds away from the cotton plants so their growth would not be inhibited.

Then, in the fall, after a long, hot summer, it was time to “pick cotton”. Again, you started at the beginning of a row, and with a canvas sack across your shoulders, slowly made your way down the row removing cotton balls from the plants.

Mechanized cotton pickers existed at the time, but they were a luxury, and they were for the big farms. These fields were comparatively small, so the cotton pickers were human – family members, as well as hired hands who were paid according to the weight of cotton picked. We all know that those fluffy little balls of cotton are extremely light. It takes a lot of cotton balls for the scale to even begin to register. Being paid by the weight of cotton you pick is a hard way to earn a living! I learned at that early age that I didn’t want to chop and pick cotton for a living.

As with any work we humans do, it is based on doing something that would make the person for whom you are toiling happy – happy enough to reward you with your pay. No matter how old, mature and experienced we become in life, this general model of working in order to gain the good will of another (and to be rewarded) remains our common denominator by which to judge a relationship. Whether the relationship is one of employment, friendship or romance, we humans operate on the principle that hard work is necessary to gain favor. On the human level, there’s nothing wrong with this principle.

But one of the primary misunderstandings we have of God comes from trying to use this principle in our relationship with God.

Many of Jesus’ parables centered on agricultural activity (but I still can’t find one about cotton pickers!). Matthew chapters 20 and 21 contain two parables about farm workers.

Matthew 20 talks about what seems to be an inequity in pay for workers where no regard whatsoever was given to the amount of time worked or energy expended. They were all given the same pay. The workers who felt they deserved more than the others then made a huge mistake. They insisted the employer (representing God) give them what they were worth. They wanted what they deserved. They wanted their rights. They demanded justice.

The lesson? We are all so completely indebted to God that there is no way in this world we can ever pick enough grapes (or cotton) to pay our way. We would be smart if we simply forgot the whole business of demanding our rights and instead gratefully thanked God for His grace and mercy.

In the next chapter 21 of Matthew, Jesus gives another parable about farm renters. The landowner gives the tenants the responsibility of dressing and keeping the vineyard. But when the landowner sends his representatives to collect the rent, the renters reject them. The owner finally senses his own Son, but the renters kill the Son. The renters have lived on the beautiful vineyard for so long that they now seem to believe that the vineyard is theirs – and that all of the produce belongs to them.

The lesson? We humans are very independent. We are happy to occupy (as long as we don’t actually admit that we are indebted to God) his vineyard and enjoy the produce, but we are reluctant and sometimes even refuse, to admit that God owns us.

Humanly, we like the idea of getting what we deserve – of not being obligated to anyone – of paying our own way. We don’t want to take handouts from anyone, including God. The idea of making our own way appeals to us because we can control our work and effort (at least we kid ourselves, thinking we can).

As Christians, we must be committed to surrendering and remaining surrendered to God, and not allow ourselves to think that we no longer need God’s love and grace. But the word “surrender” makes us nervous. It sounds like a word for losers – people who can’t cut it. It sounds like giving up. And that’s exactly what it means, theologically. God wants us to accept His grace, surrender all notions of doing things our way and allow Him to do for us what we can never do for ourselves.

I never did pick any cotton, and I probably would have starved to death if I had to make a living that way. I once thought that I could build enough spiritual character, do enough right things and eventually be good enough, so that one day God would weigh all the spiritual cotton I had picked and say to me on the basis of my hard work, “Lou, you have earned your way into my kingdom. Welcome. I love you because you have worked so hard.”

By God’s grace, I now know (and I pray you do as well) that it is absolutely futile to try to have a relationship with God on the basis of my deeds. The only relationship that God wants with me – the only relationship that will last – is built on the cross of Christ and God’s amazing grace.

The name on the front of my church is “GRACE CHURCH” and not “GOD’S COTTON PICKIN’ CHURCH”!

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