Sermon: Septuagesima – 2024

28 January 2024

Text: Matt 20:1-16

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The parables of Jesus are shocking, dear friends.  And they are supposed to be.  The only problem is that we are too familiar with them – unless we’re not familiar enough with them.  But imagine hearing this story of the Workers in the Vineyard for the first time.  Imagine yourself as the first one hired.

Imagine that you were a fast food worker, and you were hired for ten dollars an hour.  It’s hard work, but you were hired first among your co-workers who are all doing the same job.  Maybe you hope that by being hired first, and by working hard, you might get a promotion and a raise at some point.  But then you find out that your coworker – who does the same job right next to you – is making twelve times as much per hour as you do.  Instead of ten dollars an hour, that’s one hundred and twenty dollars an hour.

Would you feel cheated?  Would you feel angry?  What would you think about the franchise owner who just shrugs and says, “Well, you agreed for ten dollars an hour.  I can pay my workers whatever I want”? 

In our world, this would be on the news, all over social media, and Congress would be passing a law against income inequality.  It would probably be called the “Income Fairness Act” or some such.  Labor unions would come in and organize to prevent this horrible situation from ever happening again.  You might join the Socialist Party and rail against “the system.”  If your son or daughter were making a twelfth as much as his or her colleagues, would you side with the boss? 

Now imagine if you were a white collar worker making a hundred thousand dollars a year.  That’s pretty good money.  Most people would consider that a great job.  But how great would it be if you just learned that your co-workers doing the exact same job were making one point two million dollars a year?  You might have been really happy with your job just ten seconds ago, but now, you are probably thinking that you are being exploited, discriminated against, and that your boss is a jerk.  You might be calling your lawyer about now.

Now think about who the Boss is in Jesus’ story, you know, the jerk boss who is taking advantage of you.  That Boss is God.  That is why this parable is shocking.

But, let’s be honest: we do think that God is a jerk, and is unfair.  That’s what it means to be a poor, miserable sinner.  We need to not only rethink what we believe about God, but about ourselves.  For we poor, miserable sinners think we’re entitled to be treated better by God – and especially if we go to church.  How dare God let anything bad happen to me?  What an unfair Boss who allows other people to prosper while I struggle.  How can God allow people in my life to get sick or die?  How can God allow me to suffer from inequality or temptation or not enjoying the American Dream like my friends and colleagues and the people on TV with charmed lives who have the latest cars, take the best vacations, and live in dream homes? 

Why does it seem like it’s always the jerk boss, the lazy worker, the crooked politician, the liar, the cheater, the person born to wealth, the sinner, who gets away with it, and even gets ahead?

Sometimes when people think about God as the jerk Boss who allows such evils in the world, they become angry at God and become atheists.  Of course, that makes no sense, but it is a common argument of atheists: “God isn’t fair.”

Well, dear friends, God isn’t fair, and let us give Him thanks and praise that He isn’t.  And let us also accept the fact that we aren’t entitled.  He is God, and we are not.  He knows everything, and we do not.  He owns everything – including us – and we do not.  And it is what we call “faith” when we put our trust in Him, that He knows what He is doing.  It is also faith when we accept that what we consider “fair” is really just our own sense of self-centered greed and entitlement.

We are not entitled, dear friends.  Our culture and society and government and even our labor laws have conspired to stir us up like the angry worker in Jesus’ story.  Yes, we are the bad guy in the parable – as we always are.  We think we are entitled, but we aren’t.  We are something better: we are privileged.

For when it comes to our salvation and eternal life, we who put our trust in the “very God of very God” who is telling us this parable, who is showing us God’s mercy and generosity, we get the denarius.  We are paid the same whether we have been Christians for one second or one century.  We are given the same reward of eternal life whether we are educated theologians or infants struggling for life in the intensive care unit.  We are paid according to the work of Jesus on the cross whether we are wealthy or poor in this world, and no matter what we have done.  And when we examine ourselves honestly, and when we look in the mirror and see the truth of who we are, that we are not entitled, but we are rather poor, miserable sinners, we can take comfort in our Lord’s words: “So the last will be first, and the first last.”  And instead of being paid as “poor, miserable sinners,” according to our “sins and iniquities” with God’s “temporal and eternal punishment,” instead we hear that we are forgiven in the very same Triune name into which we were baptized, probably when we were too young to be valuable to anyone as a worker, let alone to God.

The inequality of God in how He treats us is seen in “the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of [God’s] beloved Son, Jesus Christ,” who is “gracious and merciful to me, a poor, miserable sinner.”

We don’t deserve a denarius, but we receive one anyway. 

The one who truly suffered for hours, who has “borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat,” is Jesus, dear friends.  He labored on the cross, suffering not only physical pain, but mental and spiritual anguish beyond what we can imagine, bearing the weight of the sins of the whole world on the cross, pouring out His blood as a sin offering upon all of us, so that we, the last, might be the first.  And though we deserve to be paid with eternal death and hell, we are instead paid the denarius of salvation that Jesus earned, even though our labor doesn’t deserve any such thing.  This is God’s mercy, dear friends.

This is the unfair God that we worship, and this is the unfair kingdom we live in that has no labor unions or wage laws, no lawyers to sue the boss, and no entitlement that we be treated the same as everyone else.  For we are not entitled, but privileged.  We are indeed paid what we don’t deserve.

In God’s kingdom, we are the fast-food worker making a hundred and twenty dollars an hour.  We are the office worker making one point two million dollars a year.  We do have a God who is merciful upon whom He has mercy, who does what He chooses with what belongs to Him.  He is generous beyond measure, and instead of begrudging His generosity, let us rejoice in it.  Let us rejoice in our Lord’s words: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong… Take what belongs to you and go.  I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.” 

For we labor now, we suffer now, we struggle now – as we live in the world that we ourselves have corrupted.  But “at the end of the day, at the end of our life, at the end of the world,” as the ancient bedtime prayer goes – we are paid not for what we have done, but for what Christ has done.  And we will enjoy eternal rest from our labors.  That ancient prayer is in our hymnal, by the way, in a daily prayer office for the close of the day.  It is called “Compline,” and that prayer is found on page 257.  That prayer continues: “Abide with us with your grace and goodness, with Your holy Word and Sacrament, with Your strength and blessing.  Abide with us when the night of affliction and temptation comes upon us, the night of fear and despair, the night when death draws near.  Abide with us and with all the faithful, now and forever.”

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.