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Sermon for Septuagesima
Matthew 20:1-16 + Exodus 17:1-7 + 1 Corinthians 9:24 – 10:5
Everything is upside down in the kingdom of God. God does things differently in his kingdom, differently than our human reason would expect; differently than our sinful nature would like.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus paints a picture of God’s kingdom in which God calls jobless men to work for him in his kingdom. But when it comes time to pay them their wages, he does it based, not on their work, but only on his charity. And so highly is God’s charity, or “grace,” exalted, that those who wish to be paid instead on the basis of their work – are fired and dismissed from his service. In God’s kingdom, it’s not about wages for workers. It’s about charity for the chosen.
Look first at the charity of the landowner in Jesus’ parable. He goes out looking for workers in his vineyard. They don’t come beating down his door. He goes out to the city streets and finds them and offers them a job in his vineyard. The ones he finds right away at 6 AM are the ones who are ready to work, ready to put in a full day’s labor – 12 hours of hard, grueling work. OK. He calls them, he makes a contract, a covenant with them, as it were, and promises to pay them a certain wage, to which they agree.
But then he keeps going out throughout the day – 9 AM, Noon, 3 PM, even as late at 5 PM, knowing that the workday ends at 6. All day long he goes out and finds jobless men in the city square, men who have no work, who have no means of income, and no unemployment check to cash. “Come and work for me in my vineyard, and I’ll give you whatever is right.”
And what would that be? What is the “right” wage for those who have only put in one hour of work? Why, it’s a full day’s wage! And for those who only worked three hours? A full day’s wage! For those who worked six hours, and nine hours, and twelve hours in the vineyard – the “right” wage, as decided by landowner, was a full day’s wage. What grace! What charity! What generosity!
And you remember who was happy about that? Everybody – except for the first ones hired. The landowner saw to it that the last ones hired would be paid first, so that the ones hired first had to wait till last, had to wait and watch as their fellow workers in the vineyard got paid a full day’s wage – each one – no matter how long or how hard each one had worked. “Oh. This is good!” they thought. “If they’re getting a full day’s wage for only 9 or 6 or 3 or 1 hour of work – we’ll get paid even more. Surely the landowner means to give us more than he said he would, because we worked harder and longer than all of these.
But no. A full day’s wage for the full-day workers, just as he had promised them at the beginning of the day. No more. No less. And they were angry about it. How dare he make them equal to the ones who only worked one hour? “Either he should pay us more or he should pay them less! But equal? That’s so wrong!”
But the landowner had an answer for them. ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’
The end of this parable is both happy and sad – happy for all those workers who knew they were receiving so much more than they deserved from the landowner; but so sad for those first ones who hated the landowner for the generosity he showed to the others. So sad, because all they cared about was getting reimbursed for their work, and so they missed out on the grace, on the charity of their employer. It never occurred to them how privileged they were to work for such a good and generous man. And since they despised his grace, he now says to them, “Take what is yours and go your way.” “Get outta here,” he tells them. There’s no room in his vineyard for those who despise his grace.
That’s the bitter-sweet lesson Jesus was teaching with this parable, that those who look to God for charity will receive it in spades. But those who look to God for reimbursement for their labor – they will be dismissed from God’s kingdom, because God’s kingdom is not about wages for the workers. It’s about charity for the chosen.
The landowner is God. The vineyard is his kingdom, that is, his church on earth. The workers are those whom God has called into his kingdom through his Gospel invitation. That call went out first to the Old Testament Jews and brought them in through the covenant of circumcision. And God promised them everything. He promised to be their God, and that they would be his people. He promised them that they would inherit the world. Grace upon grace upon grace. As a nation, they had been in God’s vineyard the longest. They had borne the heat of the day, the weight of Law of Moses with all of its commandments and laws and restrictions.
But as time went by, God sent out his Word to others, too, to Jews who had abandoned God’s law entirely and were leading lives of sin, lives of theft and adultery – tax collectors and prostitutes. John the Baptist and Jesus called them to repentance and to faith in Christ, and brought them into God’s vineyard through the preaching of the Gospel and through baptism. Then, later in the day, God sent out his word to Gentiles, too, to the non-Jews of the world who hadn’t worked for God a day in their lives. He called them into his vineyard, too.
But when the Jews who had worked so tirelessly to keep the Law of Moses saw Jesus calling tax collectors and prostitutes into his kingdom, and even Gentiles, and giving them the same love and forgiveness and promise of eternal life that they, the Jews, had been given, so many of the Jews were angry and bitter about it. They despised God’s grace. This is the very thing that prompted them to plot Jesus’ murder. Because he had come in the name of God, not to reward the Jews for all their hard work, as they thought he should, but to give charity to those who didn’t deserve it – not the charity of money or clothes or social improvement, but the charity of Himself, Jesus, and all that he is and all that he has – Jesus, the charity of God.
Now, very, very late in the day, God has also called you to work in his vineyard. He has called you into his kingdom, his church, through the preaching of the Gospel. He found you jobless, with nothing in your hand but your sin. And the Father delivered up his Son into death in order to pay the price for your sins. You’ve entered into Christ through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and so God has made you a laborer in his vineyard, a member of his Church, his body, a servant of the living God. He won’t reward you according to your sins or according to your works. It doesn’t work that way in the church of God. He gives you charity! He gives you Jesus.
But what happened to the Jews can just as easily happen to you. The longer you spend in the Christian church, the easier it will be for Satan to point you to all the hard work you’ve done as a Christian, to all the things you’ve suffered for being a Christian, to all the prayers you’ve prayed and all the sacrifices you’ve made. And he will try to convince you that God now owes you something extra because of it. “Jesus” is no longer enough.
The longer you spend in the Christian church, the harder it will be for you to see sinners who have “gotten to” live it up in sin and “have lots of fun” living according to the flesh, coming to repentance later in life and receiving the same promises of forgiveness and salvation that you have received – you, who have spent so many years denying yourself those sinful pleasures and following Jesus. How dare God make them equal to you!
Oh, do not despise the grace of God! It is through God’s charity alone that you entered his kingdom in the first place. It is God’s charity alone that keeps you here. And it is God’s charity alone that you will receive at the end of the day – Jesus, the crucified, Jesus the risen One, Jesus, the charity of God. Nothing more. Nothing less. “Well,” some will say, “I don’t want anyone’s charity! I want to earn my place in God’s kingdom!” Well, you can’t, and you’ll never see his kingdom if you try.
It’s true, God has called you to work in his kingdom, to keep his commandments and to love your neighbor according to them, to live in your vocation as an imitator of Christ. But you will not be paid wages according to your works, because your works are still sin, and the wages of sin is death. Instead you will be given charity, credit for Jesus’ works and forgiveness through Jesus’ death, if you continue to trust in him as your Reconciler with God.
What, then? Is it better to be a latecomer to the vineyard, since you get the same reward in the end, after all, the same salvation, the same charity? How can you even ask that question? (Well, you didn’t ask it. I did, didn’t I?) Is it better to live outside of God’s grace? Is it better to live without his Fatherly love, without his comfort, without his promises? Is it better not to know Christ Jesus for most of your life? If you think so, then, friend, you still don’t know him.
The last will be first and the first will be last. Many are called, but few are chosen. All of you here who have been baptized have been called as workers in God’s kingdom and God has promised his charity to all of you. Some will despise his charity; some will never be satisfied with the “wages” God pays out at the end of the day, and that will be their fault, because he offers it to all in Christ. But some will find great comfort and joy in the charity of God and in the wages of grace that he pays, and that is God’s doing, because God has chosen you to be included in his Son and to receive grace from him. It’s not about wages for workers. It’s about charity for the chosen. It’s about receiving Jesus. And if you know Jesus, you’ll never be so foolish as to grumble against God, “Jesus isn’t enough!” He’s more than enough! Amen.
