A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on September 20, 2020 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Matthew 20:1-16. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 20th chapter:
[Jesus said:] “The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 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 a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It's seen as a common courtesy that, in the workplace, we don't discuss our wages with other people. After all, the person who goes around and says, Well, I'm making so and so, and the other person says, Well I'm making more, and the other person says, I'm making more. Well, they’re all kind of doing the same job and feelings get hurt and people, well, they start to get a little bit antsy and start to think, Don't I deserve more pay? And then of course they actually get the courage and they go to the boss and they make their demands and either the boss gives in or they get let go. It's one of the two.
Here in Jesus' parable today, we find people discussing wages, seeing a wage given out, and it doesn't seem fair that the person who comes in to work at the 11th hour of the day (that would be from about 5 to 6 o’clock) gets paid an entire day’s wage, compared to the person who's been working since 6 o'clock in the morning. It doesn't seem fair, does it? Let's think about that for a second. Let's say that a day's wage is $144. That means that the person who works in the morning gets $144 and the person who works one hour gets $144. That means that the person who began work in the morning gets paid $12 an hour and the person who gets for one hour of work gets paid $144 an hour. It doesn't seem fair, huh? And yet, the master has complete authority over what he gives out. After all, did he not agree with the servants in the morning to pay them an entire day's wage? Of course he did. And they saw that they would have to work 12 hours in the sun. It was going to be hard it was going to be grueling and yet they wanted to do it. They agreed with the master over this. They saw that the master was good and gracious to hire them, to bring them in, and they said, Sure we're going to go do it.
Well, the master goes out later in the day. The text says that he went out about the third hour. That'd be about 9 o'clock in the morning. He saw other people standing around and he said, Go and work in my vineyard. Notice, there’s no agreement over a wage here. He just says go and work and I'll pay you what is what's right. And then going out about the sixth hour, which would be noon, and the ninth hour, which would be about three, he goes out and does the same. He says, Go and work in my field and I'll pay you whatever is right to you. And then again at about five o'clock, he goes out and finds more people and he brings them into his field. He says, I'll pay you what seems right.
As they’re all lining up at the end of the day, you have to imagine these last people picked to work. They get handed an entire day’s wage. They have got to be so grateful. It doesn’t just seem fair to them; it seems overly generous, but they’re not going to turn it down.
But then, these first guys, the ones who worked twelve hours, they’re watching all these other guys get paid what is essentially a day’s wage. Wouldn’t the master pay them more? After all, he chose them first. If they get paid for a whole day, wouldn’t it be right that they get paid more for all their work? I mean, they worked an entire day. The master gave an entire day's wage to a person who worked an hour. They should be getting paid a whole lot more than that.
That's wonderful. That's great. It's kind of like what happens to us around Christmastime, right? It’s like the master is giving out bonus money. And we start seeing the bonuses getting paid out to the other employees, the ones who haven’t worked as many hours, or as many years, and you start thinking, Well, my bonus is going to be great. Sure enough as you watch from the top down, the board gives the the guy next to you twenty bucks and a pack of gum. Sure, the CEO got a bonus of millions, but that’s expected. The guy next to you has only been here since June, so you, of course, will get more. But then, they get to you, and the chairman of the board gives you a car wash coupon book. How ticked off are you going to be in that moment? It's going to be hard, isn't it? It's hard to see that as a gift when you see other wages, even the same wages, being paid out to people who are below you. And yet, it still is a gift, is it not?
A wage is what you’ve agreed on to work for and we should not begrudge that fact. That we can get any kind of wage at all is a wonderful thing. But Jesus isn't just talking about salaries and wages, is He? There's obviously something greater going on here. Here the wage can be seen as eternal life, salvation.
Since the beginning, certain people spoke with God face to face. They had a relationship with God that we look at and envy. They heard His voice. And when God gave His Law to the Israelites, they heard His command, Do this and you shall live. And they said yes. Of course, they weren't very good at that, but God’s Law was never given to be saved by, but to be saved through. His mercy and grace were always there, and the promise of life came, not through the Law, but the mercy of God. They would have life and have it abundantly, for even in their sin, as they turned away from their sin and repented before God, they found the forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of their debt. They were burdened under the Law, to obey it, though. They agreed with God to do it, and they felt that weight all the time.
Have you thought about that? There are 613 Commandments in the Old Testament that the Jews had to obey. They sometimes, mistakenly, thought they had to do all 613 to be saved, but the commandments were there to show them their need of salvation. Still, they operated in obedience. They did the sacrifices, the dietary laws, the civil laws. They were burdened under them and every time they turned around they saw that they were breaking those commandments of God in some way. And so they had to go and make sacrifices for their sin. They had to bring before God what God demanded that their sins would be forgiven.
And as they're going on, as God is revealing his plan little by little, He brings more people into their midst to show that salvation is a gift, people who did not feel the same burden all the time as the other Israelites. I think of Rahab, the prostitute who had lived a life so unfruitful until those Israelite spies came into her city, and she protected them and guided them out of Jericho that they may be safe and report back to Israel that Israel may ultimately conquer the city. She had lived a life outside of the law, and yet because she trusted in God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, she, too, was saved. I think of David her great-great-great-great grandson. He was a man said to be after God's own heart and he was a man who slept with a woman who is not his wife, and, upon finding out that she was pregnant, ultimately decided to have her husband murdered on the battlefield. David, who fell out of faith, David the soldier, David the killer, David the one whom God said could not build his Temple because his hands were too bloody. David also in his repentance was brought back to faith, and he too was saved.
I think of all those saints who came after him, the Israelites who were taken into Babylon for all of Israel's infidelity towards God, that they chased after false idols and even the faithful people were taken out of their land. But God had a plan for them, a plan to prosper them and not to harm them, a plan to give them again a hope and a future, that they may return to the land of Israel and, from them, not only would they find salvation, but salvation would flow from their own loins, bringing about the God-man, Jesus.
And then I think about us. We are those who have been chosen at the eleventh hour. We are the ones who do not have to bear the great burden under the Law. We are the ones who do not have to bear up under the scorching heat. We are the ones who know that the Day of Reckoning, the time of being paid out, is coming soon. And we sit there in this 11th hour and we work in labor for the master of the vineyard. When the day finally ends, our Master comes to give us what He's promised. We receive the very same thing that all those saints before us have received. We receive life eternal life, everlasting salvation, for our salvation has come to us through Jesus Christ.
What a glorious thing it is that we should receive from His hand the very thing promised to Adam and to Eve ,to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and to Rahab and to David and to Solomon and to all those saints of the Old Testament that we know and love, all those from those stories that we hold on to. We have received the very same reward that they have received.
God did not bargain with us. God did not make some kind of arrangement with us. Instead, we have received from His hand something that's beyond our comprehension, something we must be eternally grateful for. We have received an entire day's wage for working an hour. We have received salvation at a time when, honestly, it's easier to believe in Christ. It’s easier, I think, to believe in Jesus Christ after He came to die and was resurrected, than it was to believe before Him, looking toward His coming. We don't need to make the sacrifices. We don't feel that need to follow all 613 commandments in order to be saved. We do not have to work for our salvation.
Instead, we work because we've been called by the Master. At the end of that we do receive a reward for all that which we have been given. We have been given work to do. And God says, Here. I know you're doing this work. Here is the great and good reward.
We haven't earned it and still it is given freely from His hand. Our God is so good and gracious that, even we who were lazy, we who are sinners, who were outside of the Church of God, have been brought into it by the Master. From His direction, we have been given our tasks, our vocations to do. There is joy in this work. It’s not our reward, but that we have been entrusted to do the Master’s work is a blessing. He trusts us, He sends us. What joy there is in this. It's an amazing thing when you consider the graciousness of God, the generosity of God.
But then the end comes, and, really, is there any end to the joy we must feel in that moment? That joy when we open our eyes again, and we see Jesus bringing us up out of our graves, that joy that we feel when our body has been put together again after decay after decay after decay, knowing finally all of our sin has been taken away, all of our grief is gone, all of the sadness we felt has disappeared. Finally, we know what it is to move past all of that and to expect nothing bad ever to happen to us again. The joy that we must feel in that moment is overwhelming and, if we even took a minute to ponder it, I dare think that we should be overwhelmed even now.
And yet it is not something that we can fully comprehend. It is a gift coming for us that we really just can't see because, in our sinful flesh, we are still clouded, our eyes are still clouded over with scales of sin. They must be removed from us, and they will be. When your eyes close to this life and you open them into heaven and you wait there for the resurrection, there you begin to see what life must be, life with Jesus life forever. And then finally when your soul is reunited with your body and you are resurrected upon this new earth that will be given to you, there you will finally understand what it is to receive from God's hand the wealth of riches He desires to give to you.
No, I do not think that, in the resurrection, the saints of old are going to be looking at you, wondering why you got the same thing as them. I think Jesus is using this as an analogy. The saints of old instead are going to rejoice that we, even we who are Gentile sinners, have been brought into the Church of Jesus Christ. They who awaited Him and we who look back upon Him are joined together in one mystical Church throughout all space and time and they will rejoice with us and all the angels at seeing your face. What an amazing thing that day will be when the end finally comes.
Jesus leaves this passage with the statement, The last will be first and the first last. We so often take this passage to mean something that it doesn’t. We so often think, Well, we must humble ourselves in order to lift others up. Thus we will receive from God's hand all due reward. That's not what Jesus is saying here.
He's saying that we we who have come last into the Church, Well, we will be first. We will be elevated. We will be given all good things. We will be paid our salvation first and those who came first will receive their reward in due time. Think about it, we have received our salvation through His Word, through Baptism, gifts that the saints of old could only dream about. We have received it from His hand now but the saints of old waited to see His day.
You can see Jesus then, making His way down the line of His faithful. He approaches the infant who believes and says, Here, my friend. This is your reward, eternal life. And He gives to the one who was 90 years old here in this life and just has entered Heaven, Here, my friend. This is your reward, eternal life. And He moves to the one who has been waiting for five hundred years, Here, my friend. This is your reward, eternal life. You can hear the joy in His voice. You can hear the cheers of heaven as He gets to the one who's been waiting thousands of years, Here, my friend. This is your reward, eternal life. You have waited long. Wait no more.
This gift is your today, my friends.
You may not necessarily see it in all circumstances, but you must hold on to it. It has been given to you in the gift of Baptism. It has been strengthened in you by the gift of the Supper, and has been formed and shaped by the gift of God's Word and we hold on to that. If we were to give up that promise, that promise of what's already expected for us, then we should be those most to be pitied.
Your Jesus will give you your reward. He will give you life eternal with Him. He who was crucified for you, who bore the punishment for your sin will live with you in peace and give to you all that He won in this life: salvation, and life Everlasting. In Jesus name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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