17th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20) – September 24th, 2023
Trinity Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Matthew 20:1–16
“Payment or Gift?”
Theme: God gives his salvation to us as a gift, not as a payment for deeds.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Children are great at knowing what’s fair. From whose turn it is to play with that toy to how to treat each other’s property, it takes up much of our conversations with them. I think any parent can probably sympathize. It’s not only fights between them. If we promise anything—anything—to them, they remember. They have amazing memories. They want what’s promised to them, even if it was promised days ago. I don’t think it’s only children, though. We’re all this way. All of us have a sense of fairness and justice. We tend to want what’s right, what’s due to us for what we’ve done.
Although, we don’t always want this, do we? If we’ve done something wrong, we don’t always want what’s coming to us, right? Children are great if they feel that they’ve been wronged, but extracting a confession of guilt out of them is almost like pulling teeth. Why? Well, probably because none of us want the punishment for doing wrong. That too is inborn within us.
We have a sense of justice, but it is affected by sin. It is bent. We need only look at the political scandals of our day to see how some people are prosecuted viciously, while others get a slap on the hand. There was a president of Peru who summarized this perverted justice when he said: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law!” (Oscar Benavides). The idea behind it is that you will pervert justice to get your friends out of their problems while holding your enemies to the letter of the law.
We as Christians take comfort in the midst of injustice by knowing that we have a just God. God has created this moral universe, and he reigns over it as judge. He will punish evildoers, in this life and/or the next, should they not repent. But we need to also thank God for his goodness. God is both just and good. It was God’s mercy that caused him to send Jesus to this earth to be our Savior, to take on our sin, die for it, and rise again. God’s justice over our sin was satisfied when he saw His Son dying in payment for those sins.
And yet, this might not seem fair to us on this earth. Do you mean that a serial murderer can repent in prison and go to heaven just like me who hasn’t done any major crimes? Do you mean that someone who’s lived a dissolute lifestyle but is baptized on their deathbed will go to heaven alongside me who has been a Christian my whole life?
This is what Jesus is teaching us in our Gospel text for today: that God sometimes does not seem fair, but he is always good and merciful.
Jesus tells a parable of a master of a house who goes out to hire day laborers. The first batch are hired early in the morning, and he agrees with them for a denarius a day. This was standard payment for a day’s work. It was around minimum wage for whatever a day’s work meant. All is good—this was typical. The master isn’t stiffing them, and they agree to the wages.
The master needs more people, though. The vineyard needs more laborers, and work needs to be done. It just can’t wait—maybe it’s harvest time, and a storm is moving in. So the master goes out to the marketplace around the third hour. He finds others standing idle in the marketplace. He sends them into the vineyard saying, “You go into the vineyard too, and what-ever is right I will give you” (4). Note the words he says. They do not agree on a denarius, only “what is right.” There must be a level of trust between the master and these workman. They’re working, not knowing how much they’ll get out of it. But they know that the master is going to be fair because he is good.
The master does likewise around the sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours, always finding more people. When he says, “Why do you stand here idle all day?” (6), it’s not a question of laziness. These are all people willing to work, only no one has hired them, as they themselves say (7).
Finally, payday comes at the end of the day’s shift. The master tells the foreman to pay the men, “beginning with the last, up to the first” (8). All of them receive a denarius, even if they only worked one hour. And here is where things begin to go sideways, so to speak.
I’m sure the master of the house is watching these men like a parent watching children who are about to get into an argument. Why? Because the workers are doing the math. That little word “thought” in “thought they would receive more” (10) is the number for counting and reckoning. It’s the sort of mental math that you can do in an instant to see if something is fair. Whether it’s on the side of wages or on the side of spending for groceries, we’re great at doing this fairness math.
And sure enough, he hears those words, “it’s not fair.” The grown men who have worked the whole day were grumbling that those who worked only one hour got paid the same as them. You can see their point, can’t you? We might all feel this way when someone gets a bonus at work instead of us, but we know that we’ve worked harder than them. Or a friend gets a better grade on a test than you, but you studied harder than them.
We could go on and on. My response as a parent in this situation would be something like, “Life’s not fair! Get over it.” The master in the parable, who is God, takes a more patient route. He says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?” (13). It’s true, of course. They did agree on that amount. It is fair.
Jesus goes on. The master is making good his promise earlier to those who came late. He never promised them any set amount, only “whatever is right.” He decided that a denarius for that day is what is right, despite what anyone else would say. He points this out to the grumblers: “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?” (14–15).
He’s true, of course. Here God is being fair and just to each man by keeping his word with them. He’s also being good and gracious by giving everyone the same despite the work they put in.
We should firstly thank God that he is gracious and merciful to each of us. We should also be thankful that God is gracious and merciful to other people. It’s part of our sinful nature to grumble when someone else gets something good and we do not. That’s not right. We will have our good days too, and God remains gracious to us even when we feel jealousy and envy take over our hearts.
The truth is that eternal salvation is given to us entirely by grace. We cannot work for it. It is not given out as wages for deeds done in love. Many of you have been Christians since you were baptized, maybe in this very font. You have denied yourself some of the pleasures of this world because you know that it’s not Christian to do those things. Does it seem like non-Christians sometimes have more fun doing things that are wrong? Sure. But that doesn’t mean we should emulate them.
On the other hand, when they repent and believe in Jesus, we ought to welcome them. God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). I remember getting a phone call from a member asking if I could visit her son-in-law in the hospital who was dying of cancer. She didn’t think he was a Christian. I went right away and talked with him about Jesus and what Jesus had done for him. He received the gospel and repented. I asked him if he wanted to be baptized, and he did. So, I baptized him. Two days later, he passed away.
Will God treat him any different than those of us who have born the heat of the day by being Christian our whole lives? No. He has promised one thing to us, that baptism and faith save: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). There are no stipulations based on time or deeds done. So we rejoice! We rejoice in God’s mercy when someone is saved. We rejoice at every baptism and every conversion. We ought not grumble.
One last verse of the Bible occurred to me this week as I was pondering this text. It’s from Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you are all concerned with wages, then remember the wages of sin. Each of us will get that payout unless Christ comes before we die. But God is concerned about the free gift that he has won for us: eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us rejoice in that!
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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