Let’s pretend this is a bookshop, and you see this sign: “Sell your old books here—$5 for ten books.” You think that sounds like a great deal. So you hurry home, pick out ten books you no longer want, and go back to the bookshop. Two other kids are in the line ahead of you. One of them has only 3 books. The owner of the bookshop gives him $5. The other has only one book, but he also receives $5. You get really excited. You think, “Wow, if they get $5 for only a few books, I’ll get way more for my ten books.”
But the owner of the bookshop gives you $5 as well. You might say that’s not fair. But he owner of the shop could point to his sign and tell you he had kept his part of the deal. He gave you what he said he would. He also has the right to give his money generously with other people if he wants to.
Jesus told a story like this about workers in a vineyard, to teach us that everyone who trusts in him receives the same gift of eternal life. Some people start believing in Jesus only a short time before they die, yet they have the same promise of heaven through faith in Jesus just like us. We may know others who we think have not been working for God as much as we have, yet they receive the same gift from God.
God also has a sign. It is a cross. It says I gave you my Son to pay for all your sins. Whoever believes in him receives a new life with him, forever.
For us who have known Jesus as our saviour all of our lives it is sometimes easy to forget that it is
God who has made the deal that gives us life with him. When we go to church, study the bible, and help other people so regularly, the temptation is to think that we are earning our place with God, and that we deserve more favour from him than other people. But we don’t deserve anything from God, and there are no greater or lesser rewards. God promises to give us all the same. And we do all have the same, right now—we all have Jesus!
Growing in faith at home prayer
SERMON
Today’s text continues the long sequence of teachings from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel about what the kingdom of heaven is like—a kingdom that rules with grace. ‘Grace’ is a word so often used in the church, a word especially significant to Lutherans. We like that word, ‘grace’. But what does grace mean? What does grace look like in practice?
Jesus shows us with a parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.” This is a picture of Jesus going and calling disciples to follow him. He is the one goes out into the marketplace—a picture of the world—to find people to work in his vineyard; his kingdom. In the parable, workers are not coming to the landowner to apply for work. They are standing about doing nothing. The initiative—the going out, finding and calling workers—is all on the landowner. He seeks and calls the workers even before they have had any opportunity to prove their worth.
To be workers in God’s kingdom necessarily means already being a part of the kingdom. Jesus does not call us to work our way into the kingdom. God in Christ has already chosen, saved, and gone out in the world to find his people—who he then calls to work for him. Those who work for God in his church are saved already.
That’s good to know in our heads…but what does it mean to know it in our hearts?
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples had come to Jesus and ask him: “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matthew 18:1). In Mark’s recounting of this, we hear the disciples argued amongst themselves who is the greatest (Mark 9:33-34). That is the problem with striving to be the greatest in the church: it leads to comparing and competing, arguments, and divisions, and children of God being hurt. It’s not a matter of who has worked the hardest or the longest, or given the most, or who did the best.
Jesus responded to the disciples’ question by calling a little child to him, to be in their midst. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:1-5).
So that’s then what the people do: they bring little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and bless them—but the disciples rebuked them! They haven’t understood what Jesus had just said! Maybe they thought Jesus shouldn’t be troubled by those viewed by society as so insignificant, or maybe they think it is just too disruptive. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt 19:13-14).
Later, Peter says to Jesus, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” (Matthew 19:27).
After today’s parable, later in Matthew 20, the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked him to give them special, privileged places of honour: “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. (Matthew 20:20-21, 25).
Who is the greatest? Who is the most deserving? With their focus on positions of honour, accolades and recognition, the disciples have lost focus. So Jesus tells this parable of the landowner going out to gather his workers, and all the workers in the vineyard receiving the same.
This seems so unfair to us humans because we are conditioned since birth that good performance is rewarded. When the behaviour is good, the result is good. Better discipline at school means better grades. People who work more get paid more. People who perform better get the promotion. Players who train with greater discipline play in higher competitions. The world lives by the mantra: you get what you deserve.
In the context of the spiritual life that’s a problem though. To get what we deserve is not good. In Romans Paul tells us that there is no difference—all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
The work we do wouldn’t earn the slightest bit of favour from God. So today’s parable is sandwiched between episodes of the disciples grumbling and desiring rewards, honour and greatness; their sense of entitlement to more blessing for all they’ve done in following Jesus! (forgetting it is all about what he has done, and continues to do). To make blessing fair is to make the kingdom of heaven all about ‘me’—instead of all about ‘us’.
The workers in the vineyard didn’t only grumble about what they received themselves. Their frustration was really with the generosity of the housemaster to the others: “you have made them equal to us!” These words uttered in resentment are also the gospel truth: “you have made them equal to us” is the wonderful reality of God’s grace. God’s grace is not just about ‘me’ but ‘us’. Jesus did not redeem isolated individuals, but the people of God, the communion of saints. In his family, God does not show partiality. We all have the same Christ. We are all forgiven for everything, we all have the same promise of eternal life, and we are all restored to the Father in Heaven.
Is this arrangement fair? It is only unfair if we think we are earning our salvation, and God should give us more based on what we do. But grace has nothing to do with earning, performing or fair pay. Back in Matthew 16 (18-19), after Jesus asks his disciples who they say he is and Simon Peter answers: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Jesus says: “…on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Grace isn’t a concept or idea, but God’s creative power. In water and the word the same gracious reality is given to all: God brings redeemed sinners through the open doors of the kingdom of heaven to share in a new life with him and others. It is not by a construction crew that Jesus builds his church, but by the word of grace: forgiving and welcoming workers into his vineyard, who in turn welcome others into the vineyard by this Good News from God.
God’s grace frees us from striving to earn his and each other’s approval through performance, behaviour and piety. God’s grace frees us from comparing ourselves to others in the church, to instead realise with the Psalmist that it would be better to be a door keeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of the wicked (Psalm 84:10). God’s grace goes to work to change our heart towards others, so that we are less concerned with what we get and more concerned about what we give away, like Zacchaeus, who, rejoicing in his new life, said: “Look, Lord! I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” (Luke 19:8). Living in God’s grace means not seeking to compete or control. It does not puff out its chest but bends the knee.
In his book Gospel Handles the theologian Francis Rossow notes: “Whether we work many hours or one hour, whether we bear the burden and heat of the day or experience only the cool of late afternoon, God gives to all of us the same generous gift. The same heaven…is given to all believers in Jesus, whether those believers have been so since infancy or have come to faith on their deathbed; whether those believers have been lifetime pillars of the congregation or have been recently converted. It is not only faithful John on the Isle of Patmos, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who looks forward to heaven; it is also a dying thief who is assured, “Today you shall be with me in paradise…”
This parable and the things surrounding it in the Gospel of Matthew all come before Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday, riding in to be the least, serving others by laying down his life to bring divine life, favour and forgiveness to the world. God didn’t trust anyone else to purchase us from our sins but came into our world in Jesus. The price he paid to redeem the world was no monetary amount, but his own holy and precious blood, shed on the Cross.
Jesus again brings that same life, that same forgiveness and favour from heaven to you today at his table. He says “This is my body, given for you, this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” For pastoral reasons—to bring assurance to people’s troubled consciences—Luther gave an individual emphasis to these words: “This is for you”—personally. That is a focus we have held dear as Lutherans. We often say things like: ‘Communion is between God and me.’
But Holy Communion isn’t only ‘between God and me’. The ‘you’ Jesus uses in his invitation is plural. We come as individuals, individually needing assurance, but we are invited by Jesus to eat and drink at his table together. It is Jesus’ invitation to the people of God of all times and places to receive holiness from the Holy One; life from the divine Life-giver. It is the holy communion of the saints with our Lord.
To this precious meal you are all invited, as people God went out to the marketplace to seek, and call, and gather through baptism, to make all of us equally a part of his church, to labour in the Father’s vineyard. Jesus still goes to hire his workers in person. He has hired you, too. He hired you before you were ready to put in your application, before you could put impressive credentials on your CV.
As we work together in the vineyard, may our focus always be not on what we do but on who we work for. May we joyfully join with Jesus in calling and gathering other labourers to work in his vineyard. As we do, may we recognise Christ in each other, whether infant or octogenarian, whether we’ve been in the church for a lifetime, or only a week. May we only ever be in competition with one another about whom among us is the least. And at the end of the day, may we rejoice when our Heavenly Father graciously gives us all the same denarius—our place together with all the other saints in his mansion in heaven forever. Amen.
