September 24, 2023 Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost The text is Matthew 20:1-16.
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[Jesus said to the disciples:] 1“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
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May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
God isn’t fair! Let’s accept this right from the start. God isn’t fair! We will come back to this declaration in a little while, after we have first explored what it is that Jesus is teaching his disciples, and us this morning. Our gospel verses from Matthew today follow immediately after Jesus’ teaching about a number of different topics. He has chided the disciples for preventing little children to be brought to him for his blessing. Next, he interacts with someone who has asked him what good deed he must do to have eternal life. Jesus responds, “keep the Commandments, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and follow me”. You will recall that this person finds that he is unable to do these things and he departs despondently.
Jesus tells the crowd that it “is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were astounded at this declaration and they ask Jesus, “who then can be saved?” He responds, “it is impossible for mortals” to attain eternal life, but that “with God, all things are possible”. Jesus assures the disciples that everyone who follows him will inherit eternal life. And this paves the way for Jesus to tell this morning’s parable, once again describing the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. He proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who pays all the laborers who worked in his vineyard one day, a full day’s wage, no matter how many hours they worked.
And let’s be honest, this parable certainly wouldn’t be believable today, and quite frankly, it wouldn’t have made sense to the disciples or anyone else listening to Jesus in first-century Israel. The idea of “equal pay for equal work” was well entrenched those 2,000 years ago; being paid for the time one labors is not a modern concept. Those hearing this parable from Jesus as a metaphor for God’s kingdom would have immediately realized that this is not the way things work in the world. No vineyard owner would deign to pay for work not done. In the ancient world and in our modern time, people expect to receive a just payment for their labors. But then and now, there is no expectation for payment for hours not worked.
And the real issue with this is that we tend to disobey one of the Ten Commandments when we realize that someone else may have been rewarded at the same level we have been, even though they might not have labored as long. That’s called “coveting”, and we’re commanded not to do this. And no matter how hard we try and how much we may realize that this isn’t God’s will for us, it’s in our nature to resent others who have been given the same reward we have; especially when we have determined that they are not worthy of receiving it. Nevertheless, this is coveting; this is jealousy, this is unfair envy raised to an entirely new level. The full day laborers didn’t accept that those who worked fewer hours than they did were deserving of equal pay for the reduced time they labored in the vineyard. But the point that Jesus is making is that that the part-timer vineyard workers weren’t given anything more than the full day laborers, everyone was paid the same full daily wage. And in Jesus time, this payment for a day’s labor was one denarius.
But this penchant to covet the reward given to others based on our assumption of their worthiness didn’t start with us, not did it begin with the jealous vineyard workers in Jesus’ parable. In this morning’s First Reading we learned that Jonah proclaimed that he would rather die an angry, agonizing death than accept that God might show mercy toward the people of Ninevah. The willingness of humans to deny others an equal share of God’s mercy has been with us for as long as there have been people. The concept that Jonah, the vineyard workers, and quite frankly we don’t get is that it’s not a “zero-sum game”. If someone receives more of anything than us, it doesn’t necessarily follow that somehow our portion is in any way diminished. God tells Jonah and Jesus teaches in the Parable of the Vineyard Workers that the grace, mercy, and love that God chooses to bestow on others is in no way related to the portion of these blessings that we receive.
Because, God isn’t fair! Thank God! We humans tend to live by the old adage, “you get what you deserve”. We should be most thankful that this isn’t God’s will when it comes to how God’s children are rewarded. Because of our sinfulness what we deserve is condemnation; what we receive is mercy; and this granted by God’s grace alone.
Should we find ourselves questioning the worth of others, we would do well to first consider our own unworthiness! We are recipients of God’s righteousness in spite of our sin, and certainly not because we “deserve” it. We’re no more entitled to the grace of God than the ones whose situation we covet; you know, the one who only worked a few hours while we labored a full day; the one who doesn’t measure up to our standard of worthiness; the other whose faithfulness we find lacking when compared to our own. Thank God that God isn’t fair! We would indeed be in dire straits if God judged us, rewarded us, denied us based on our worthiness. If God judged any of us in ways that were “fair”, not a single one of us would be found worthy.
God isn’t fair when grace is bestowed; God isn’t fair when generosity is shown; God isn’t fair when the invitation to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is offered. It must be obvious by now that The Parable of the Vineyard Workers isn’t about the laborers at all. For the workers in the vineyard are us, and Jesus isn’t teaching about the ways we humans unfairly treat others. The parable is rather focused squarely on the vineyard owner who has elected to reward the workers in the manner in which he sees fit to do. God, the vineyard owner, through grace rewards everyone not based on their worthiness, but by God’s willingness to show mercy to all, for all are unworthy. It doesn’t matter how much we labor, how many hours we “work” or we don’t in the attempt to earn our unmerited salvation. The Kingdom of Heaven can’t be entered through ANY effort we might make. We are rewarded with life everlasting only through the willingness of the vineyard owner to grant it to us. Thank God that God isn’t fair!
Will you pray with me? Good, and gracious, and holy God, we thank you that you are not fair when you determine how you reward us. Help us to recognize that your grace is offered to all and that we ought to rejoice when others receive your blessings. And we pray these things the name of Jesus Christ, the One whose life, death, and resurrection have secured an equal share of your grace for all. Amen.
God is Good, all the time. All the time, God is Good. Amen.