Scripture. Matthew 20:1-16
20:1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4. and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6 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?’ 7 They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.'
8 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.’ 9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 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.'
13 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? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
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If you are one of those people who will be attending several different worship services today and are interested in how different preachers treat the same passage - I am sorry to tell you that I am NOT preaching on today’s lectionary text. This passage is scheduled to be read a couple of weeks from now, but it’s Labor Day weekend. How could I not preach on the laborers in the vineyard?
Labor Day is an important holiday for anyone who appreciates the 40 hour work week, weekends off, the minimum wage, safety standards in the workplace, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, retirement plans . . . and the freedom to join a union. On Labor Day we celebrate all those who worked so hard to get these benefits for all workers. My late father-in-law was a union ironworker. His union book number was 21. He had so many stories about what it was like in the early days, when they were just organizing the union, about the beatings they endured, and the dangers they faced so that his son and his grandchildren could work safely and for a fair wage. I know that some of you are or have been union members, some have not. But all of us get to thank those union organizers for the benefits we enjoy in our workplaces - and tomorrow is the day we set aside to do that. So when you are enjoying whatever celebration you have tomorrow, given the constraints we operate under because of the coronavirus, remember those who went before. Remember, and thank God for those who did the hard work so that we could have better lives.
You know, I can kind of see why those first laborers in the vineyard, the ones who had been there all day long, got upset when the people who had only been there a short time got paid the same as they did. I can imagine them watching as each group who had been hired after them got the same wage as the one before, and getting all growly about it, so that by the time the foreman was handing them their wage they had built up a pretty good resentment. One might point out that the vineyard owner could have avoided all this by paying the ones who’d been there the longest first. Then instead of a story about resentment in the face of grace, it would be about gratitude. But it had to go this way, because the whole point Jesus is making in this parable is the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. And, we don’t get to tell God who to save, or who to call, or who receives grace.
It’s like the vineyard owner had an Oprah moment - you get grace, and you get grace, and you get grace. And none of y’all earned any more or less than any one else. Because grace is mine to give away as I choose. Are you envious because I am generous?
It’s easy to get upset when someone else gets the same thing we have worked hard for without having to do the same work we did. At the 2009 General Assembly in Indianapolis, we passed a resolution making provision for some ministers to have their ordination recognized by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) without having to fulfill the same educational requirements as, say, me. These were often immigrants who been serving as pastors in other countries and/or other denominations for decades. I sat in on the workshop before the vote - mostly because Ben Bohren caught me in a hallway and said, “Hey Maria, help me with this workshop” and I did, because it was Ben and it’s really hard to say no to Ben. I was totally in favor of this resolution, as I knew some of those ministers - and frankly how that whole thing works is pretty complicated and does include quite a lot of formal education (which I learned more about while serving on the Committee on the Ministry in the Pacific Southwest Region). But y’know, I had moments when I looked back over the 8 years of college and seminary and the tens of thousands of dollars in Student Loans, and thought to myself, “this is not fair!” Then I would remember this passage, and quite frankly, a lot of those pastors had been working in this particular vineyard far longer than I had. They could just as easily think it wasn’t fair for my ordination to be accepted just because I had completed my Master of Divinity degree and other requirements for ordination, when they had been working in God’s vineyard for 20 or 30 years already and weren’t accepted in the same way.
But fairness as humans understand fairness has nothing to do with God’s gift of grace. Or God’s call to serve.
Sometimes people come to me worried about a loved one who was ill or dying who had not yet accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. They worried about the soul of that person. They desperately wanted their loved one to be saved, and feared it was too late because it was impossible now for them to pray the Sinners Prayer, too late for them to accept Jesus in their heart. I will usually talk to them about the thief on the cross, who came to believe at the very last possible moment and was saved, was seated with Jesus that very night in paradise. We don’t know what happens at the very end. We don’t know whether, in those last milliseconds between life and afterlife - which to someone facing God could be like a thousand years - if in between that final breath and whatever is next, that person looked at God and said, Lord, Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned and was then embraced by the Lord of all. We have no way of knowing. For that matter, we don’t know what is happening in the mind of a person in a coma, or in what we think of as an unresponsive state. They could be talking to God the whole time, and we would never know. But I think this passage might even be a stronger message about God’s freely and generously given grace even at the very last moment. The laborer in the vineyard who was only there a minute, who accepted the vineyard owner’s offer of work even though it was the very end of the day, received the same pay - the same grace - as the one who had been there since dawn. We don’t get to judge who gets what. We don’t know what their relationship is with the vineyard owner, with God. We just get to accept what we are given, gratefully!
Here’s the thing about judging others - about comparing ourselves to others - about thinking that we, humans, can determine what God will or will not accept, who does or doesn’t have Jesus in their hearts. We don’t have that right. We don’t have the power to know what is going on between God and some other person. We don’t get to judge.
Paul talked about this, frequently. He said in his letter to the churches in Rome, in Chapter 14, while discussing the matter of whether or not everyone needed to follow Jewish Dietary Laws, “Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. . . Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”
We, humans, think in terms of fairness and unfairness, in terms of what is acceptable and what is not. We can be kind of rigid and narrow and shallow in our understanding of fairness and in what is acceptable. God’s love is wider and deeper and broader than we can possibly imagine. God thinks in terms of mercy, of justice steeped in kindness. “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” God thinks in terms of welcome for the sinner, inviting the leper and the tax collector to the Table. God thinks in terms of forgiveness - “go and sin no more”.
God offers grace to the laborers he called first who have been laboring in the vineyard all day and to the ones who came at the last hour
- to the disciple who has followed Jesus from the first day of his ministry and to the thief who accepted him in his last moments.
For Grace is God’s and who receives it is God’s decision.
And you get grace, and you get grace, and you get grace . . . all y’all get grace,
because in God’s vineyard there is grace enough for all.
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