Pentecost 16, 09/24/2017

Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16, by Richard O. Johnson

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And 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?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When 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.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘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.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” –Matthew 20.1-16 [NRSV]

This morning’s gospel lesson is high on everybody’s list of parables that are difficult. It offends our sense of fairness, and even though we know we shouldn’t feel that way, let’s be honest: we do feel that way. Sometimes the best way to approach a text like this is not to jump into it head on, but to circle around it for a while, looking at it from some distance, and from some different angles, to see what we can observe.

The context: before and after

First, let’s notice the context of the parable. When we pluck a passage out for reading in the liturgy, sometimes we fail to think about what comes before and what comes after. In this case, that’s a deadly mistake. What comes before, in chapter 19, is the story of the rich young man who asked Jesus, “What must I do to have eternal life?” You remember it: Jesus says, “Keep the commandments,” and the young man replies, “Oh, I’ve done that all my life. What else?” Jesus tells him to go sell everything he has and give it to the poor, and come follow him. The young man, of course, is not willing to do that because he is very wealthy.

But after he goes away, Peter pipes up: “What about us? We’ve given up everything to follow you—what will we get?” And right after that, Jesus tells this parable—obviously intending to say something about Peter’s expectation of rich reward.

If that weren’t enough, what do you think follows this parable? It’s the story of the mother of James and John, coming to Jesus and asking him to promise that her two boys will have the seats of honor in his kingdom, one on the right and one on the left! So in fact the parable is encased in between two stories of disciples who really think they are entitled to generous compensation for their wonderful sacrifices! The context suggests that Jesus is telling us something here about how different discipleship is from our human expectations.

The difference: the rabbis’ version

While we generally identify the term “parable” with Jesus, scholars have long been aware that parables were a pretty standard teaching device in the ancient world—Aesop’s fables, for example, are really very much like parables. A few of Jesus’ parables are in fact quite similar to parables told by other rabbis in ancient Palestine—though sometimes with a startling twist.

That is the case here. There was a parable, well-known in Jesus’ day, that starts out just exactly the same as this one, with a vineyard owner hiring groups of laborers throughout the day and then paying them all the same, regardless of how long they worked. But when the early workers complain, the employer says something quite different. He tells them that in fact the workers hired late in the day worked so hard that they accomplished just as much in two hours as the early birds had working all day long, and that’s why they’re getting paid so generously!

Now that’s a parable we can understand! It is fair, it is reasonable, it has a wonderful lesson about hard work and diligence. But of course it is not the parable that Jesus tells! The contrast between his version and the one told by the rabbis could not be starker: Jesus’ parable has nothing to do with “just reward for labor.”

I can’t help thinking of a hymn that we sometimes sing called “For the Fruit of All Creation.” The hymn celebrates our doing God’s will on earth by helping our neighbor, caring for the hungry, and so forth—fine sentiments, in most respects very Biblical. Yet it has a line: “In the just reward of labor, God’s will is done.” Maybe so on earth, but apparently it isn’t that way in heaven! Otherwise we’d be calling that rabbinic parable “the Word of God” instead of Jesus’ strange twist! The contrast suggests that God’s ways are not our ways!

Understanding it

Now the problems we’ve noticed have caused Christian commentators throughout the years to try to find some other acceptable explanation for the vineyard owner’s treatment of these late-coming laborers. Some have suggested that he pays them so generously out of his own compassion for their need—not a bad explanation, I suppose. Others have thought he was rewarding their willingness to respond to his call with confidence and faith. Others have speculated that the workers were actually doing him a great favor, because the harvest was very urgent, he needed their help, and he was grateful they were willing to step in at the very last minute.

My, my, my! We Christians will go through any contortions to try to make God seem fair and reasonable! The truth is that the parable itself tells us exactly how we are explain the owner’s generosity: it is his will. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” There is no reason beyond that. The owner chooses to do it; he does not owe us a reason. And so, of course, with God. All these various construals miss the simple and dramatic point that God does what he wills; he doesn’t owe us an explanation.

The heart of the matter

Circling, circling—now let’s come at it head on. The heart of the parable, Luther says, is “that God does not want to deal with us according work, according to our deserving, but according to grace.” That is precisely the point. Grace has no reason, no strategy, no explanation that makes sense to human minds; it is simply the way God wishes to deal with us.

It doesn’t, of course, seem fair. Who can’t sympathize with the early workers who think they deserved more? Who can’t sympathize with Jonah whose disobedience of God’s call carried him into the belly of a whale, only to discover that God lets the wicked sinners of Ninevah off with no punishment whatsoever?

But that is grace, and that is God. His ways are not our ways, says the prophet Isaiah; his thoughts are not our thoughts.

Reader’s Digest once told about two men talking to each other, and one says to the other, “My greatest fear is that in the final judgment I’ll be standing in line behind Mother Theresa, and I’ll hear God say to her, ‘You know, you should have done more.’” Well, at the end of the day I suppose all of us should have done more, could have done more—but that is not really how God reckons things. His ways are not our ways. In the scandalous mathematics of grace, how much you do just isn’t the point.

So what do we make of it? Well, let’s go back to Luther once more. In the catechism, after reciting the long list of things God has given me—“home and family, food and clothing, daily work, and all I need from day to day”—I acknowledge that none of it, none of it have I earned. “All this he does out of his fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it.” And when we see that clearly—see clearly that nothing we have is earned or deserved, all of it is grace, all of it; that “all depends on our possessing God’s free grace and constant blessing”—then we know that we surely ought to thank and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true!

Pr. Richard O. Johnson
Grass Valley, CA
E-Mail: roj@nccn.net

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