Working in the Vineyard

Matthew 20:1-16

Albertville MN

Rev. Michael Trask

9-18-11

When you do your best, and throw yourself into your work more than the next guy, you expect to get something for your extra effort. When you put in more time than anybody else, you expect to get paid for it. The people who work the most should see the most compensation and the people who work the least should see the least. That's the way things are. And pity the poor man who seeks to change this time-tested method of remuneration. And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus does in the text for today.

To explain how things work in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In this parable, there is an owner of a vineyard who needed some work done. Around 6:00 in the morning, he went to the local marketplace, which is where day workers would customarily gather to find work, and he hired a bunch of guys. They agreed to work for a denarius a day, which was the usual rate for a day's work back then; about 50 to 100 dollars in our money. Not a princely sum, but a fair wage for unskilled labor.

It was apparently the time of harvest, a hectic time for those in the vineyard business. This is when the fruit has ripened and has achieved the right balance of acid and sugar, You pick to early, the wine will be acidic. You pick to late, it will be too sugary and will have no tang to it. The grapes simply have to be picked when they have to be picked. Apparently, for the owner in question, they were not getting picked. More workers were needed. So he went out to hire more workers at 9:00 and then again at 3:00.

But as the day wore on, he realized that he would still need more. So at five in the afternoon, with only one working hour left, he went out again to get more workers, and found a few standing idle in the market place. "why aren't you working", he asked them. "No one would hire us." they said. He then told them to go into his vineyard because there was work for them there.

Finally, when quitting time rolled around at 6:00, the boss instructed his foreman to pay the workers, and this is where it gets interesting: The foreman seemed to be all messed up when he gave out the money. First of all, he paid them in the wrong order. (The accepted custom was to pay those who worked the longest first) But not this foreman: He paid the stragglers, the guys who only worked 1 hour first. If that were not enough, he paid them a whole denarius! A whole day’s wage for just one hour of labor!

Well, when those who had worked all day saw this, They were thinking big thoughts; they were thinking that if those one hour workers got 1 denarius. They should probably get 12 denarii, because they had worked for twelve hours!

Can you see their faces when they went up to the pay table and put out their hand and received only 1 denarius? Can you feel their anger at the apparent unfairness of it all? It's a wonder they didn’t trash the place! They didn’t do that, but they did grumble. They grumbled about bearing the burden of the of the work; they grumbled about working in the heat of the day; they grumbled about how the owner had, in effect, made those Johnny-come-lately’s into their equals by paying them the same wage.

That’s just not the way that things are done! On earth maybe. But in heaven THAT IS the way things are done. Remember Jesus began this parable by saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like.” The point is, when you start thinking about your eternal reward and how you receive it, you got to throw out all your human ideas of the way God should run his business and start listening to what God has to say about how he runs his business. In his word God says things like “It is by grace you are saved, though faith, it is a gift of God, not of works” That’s from Ephesians. Or how about this one from Romans “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We are not saved by how many hours or days or years we put in, We are saved by the unmerited gift of God’s favor which is Grace.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think for one minute that we can somehow earn the right to eternal salvation. We cannot earn our salvation by putting our time in at church. We cannot earn our salvation even by devoting our entire lives to continuous prayer or some other all-encompassing religious pursuit!

If you really want to get on track to earn for yourself a spot in eternity, you should first think about what is required. You would actually need to accomplish two impossible tasks . The first thing you would have to do is somehow make up for all the sins you have committed in your lifetime. How do you do that? Well God says that your death is the payment for your sins. And more specifically, the second death, which is eternity in hell. That’s where people go to pay the price of their sins. Obviously, if you are spending eternity paying for your sins in this way, you will never receive the eternity that you are trying to earn. The second thing you would have to do if you were seeking to earn the right to enter eternal life, is you would henceforth need to reach perfection in thought, word, and deed. Jesus says “Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect”. But you might say “I’m trying, I’m getting better, I’m closer to perfection than I was a year ago.” But Jesus didn’t say “try” He didn’t say “get closer to perfection” He said, “ be perfect” and you have not been. Do you see how utterly impossible it is for us to save ourselves?

God certainly saw that. He saw the utterly impossible situation that we have gotten ourselves into and it broke his heart. He decided to open up a new way. A way that did not depend on what we do; but rather, a way that depended on his mercy. That’s why he sent his son Jesus. The two impossible tasks are still there. They didn’t go away. But they would be accomplished by Jesus for us. At the cross he endured the eternity of hell that was in store you and me and for all people. And with his life, he lived the perfect life that you and I could not live. And it is by faith in this one who did the impossible for us that we are saved. The sins of a lifetime have been paid for and we are declared righteous and perfect in the sight of God. And this is true even though we are still sinners. This is what Grace is. It is Gods undeserved, unmerited favor towards sinful people who are incapable of saving themselves.

And it matters not how long we have believed. It matters not how long we have worked in his vineyard. We can be in the faith from the time we were infants, or we can be in the faith for the last hour of our lives, but the reward of salvation is the same. It operates on the principle of Grace.

That’s the interesting feature of this parable: it reveals the pure grace of God. But another interesting feature of this parable is it reveals the raw human reaction to the grace of God. Those guys who worked all day grumbled at the owner of the vineyard when they saw him graciously give the same wage to those who came late. They grumbled over the hard things they had to endure in the vineyard all day that the others did not. They grumbled against the owner for being unfair.

What these all-day workers didn’t understand is that they got to be in the vineyard. They got to be in the vineyard! Contrast the day they had with the guys who spent the day in the marketplace waiting to get hired! The guys in the market place, stood there all day, waiting for someone to ask them to go to work. As the sun reached its apex and began to sink in the west, their spirits sank with it. Another day of no work. Another day filled with depression over their inactivity. They questioned their self-worth, they were feeling like they let their families down. They thought of how ill-fed and poorly dressed their children were and were filled with self-loathing for not providing a better life for them. If you’ve ever spent time without a job, you know how they felt. You know also that you would much rather be working than sitting there wondering if you will ever find work.

So don’t be like these all-day workers in the parable who envied those who came to the vineyard in the last hour. Don’t envy those who somehow manage to live a life according to their sinful nature and then at the end come to faith and just squeak by into eternity. Don’t envy those who live most of their lives outside of God’s vineyard! It’s not the picnic that you might think it is. It’s a life without purpose and meaning: a staring into the void. It’s a life of sefl-loathing and sadness.

For the person who lives by faith, life is quite different. When he knows that he is in God’s vineyard and under God’s care, his whole attitude is refreshingly different. He sees what he used to think of as his small life and all the little everyday things in it, all the duties he has to fulfill, and all the people he meets, fitting into a grand program in which there are no accidents. He can dare, quite simply, to believe that he has been put in exactly the place in the vineyard where he is needed and that everything that God sends to him is as it should be.

Of course, we who are in the Vineyard don’t always understand this at first. We are kind of like students in their early years of study who react badly to the purpose of their lessons. They don’t see the big picture. They don’t see the point of the curriculum that has been applied to them. “Why do we have to learn this stupid stuff!” They might ask. And at the same time they are suspicious of their teacher and see her as some sort of totalitarian dictator who loves to control and spoil the lives of children. Only later, and with a touch of regret, do they understand the relevance of what they were asked to do. Many a person who has graduated from school looks back and wonders how much better off he might have been if he hadn’t been so rebellious in his early years. And quite often the toughest teachers of all are remembered with fondness and respect. There is a reason for school.

There is also a reason for the things that God asks you to do and endure during your time in his vineyard. And if your not quite on board with this yet, and you are grumbling about what he has asked you to bear in your life with him, might I suggest that you rethink your impressions of the Lord? Do you see him as a spoiler of fun? Do you see time with him as some sort of mindless duty to be carried out? Do you think about God in the same way you used to think about your poor teachers when you didn’t understand the purpose of school? If I am describing you, even in some small way, it’s time for you to get to know God for who he is. It’s time to grow up and start seeing things the way they actually are. God loves you with a perfect, love. God loves you with a self-sacrificing love. His intentions for you are all good. Stop grumbling and start living in his vineyard. AMEN