Septuagesima—February 16th, 2025
Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Matthew 20:1–16
“Saved by Grace”
Theme: God’s reward for work in the vineyard is entirely by grace—not by works.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus’s parables are so great because they often do not match up with how life on this earth works. Jesus tells parables that we can easily understand even today, but he puts a spin on them that give us an insight into how God works rather than how man works or how this sinful world works. We should pay attention to this when Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” The kingdom of heaven is God’s kingdom—it’s how He reigns and how He acts. But, Jesus encapsulates God’s work in a human story. The one we get today is one of my favorite parables, because it teaches us so clearly how we are saved by grace alone.
The first part of the parable is important. Jesus beings our Gospel reading with the master of a vineyard going out early in the morning to the marketplace and hiring some laborers to work in his vineyard. There’s some negotiating, and the master promises them one denarius for a day’s work. Now, this was the standard daily wage for laborers during a busy harvest season, so probably something like a few hundred dollars for a day’s work. Everything is normal and fair so far.
Later, the master sees that he needs more help. So, he goes out later at 9 a.m. and is surprised that there are even more standing idle in the marketplace. He hires them. This time they don’t haggle over wages. He just says that he will pay them whatever is right. They probably assume something less than a denarius. And this is fascinating. You would assume some haggling or discussion about their wages, but there is none. They are working on the basis of a promise, and they trust this master of the vineyard.
So he goes out later to hire even more, at noon and 3 p.m., and finally at 5 p.m., an hour before closing time. No doubt he makes the same promise to them as well, to give them what is right.
What are we to make of this? First, we ought to understand this as referring to God as the master of the vineyard and we as the laborers. The reward for working in his vineyard is a denarius. Some of us he has called early in the day, that is, at our baptisms as infants. Many of us have been laboring in the vineyard since he called us through those blessed waters. Others of you may have been called later in life. You may not have heard the Word of God, or you may have rejected it for a time before repenting and believing. Regardless, God’s promise to every single person is this: “Whatever is right I will give you” (4).
Secondly, do not assume that all the later laborers were just lazy by showing up in the marketplace later or that they refused his first call to work. There’s no evidence of this. It’s just simply the fact that they did not hear him the first time, or the second time, or the third. Why are they idle? Their response is simple: “Because no one has hired us” (7).
I find it interesting that the work itself is explained. Perhaps that’s a good thing. There are many ways that we can work in the kingdom of God. God needs each one of us to share with each other the abilities and skills that he has given to each of us individually. Some of us are encouragers, some givers, some teachers, some musicians, and so forth. However you can contribute to the kingdom of God and your fellow Christians and the church, that is recognized as a labor of love that God is sending you to do.
That being said, do not expect to gain more in eternal life because you have been a Christian for longer, or that your works will somehow earn you something eternally. No, that is the point of the rest of the parable. Let’s turn there.
So, at 6 p.m. the work was finished. Quitting time. It’s pay day. The landowner begins with those who came last and paid them first. To everyone’s surprise, he decides to pay the people who only worked one hour a full denarius—several hundred dollars for one hour’s work! You can imagine their surprise. He then pays the same to those who worked 3 hours, 6 hours, and 9 hours. All receive the same amount from the generous master.
Now, you can probably imagine what’s going through the minds of those who were hired at the beginning of the day. They were probably counting up the bonuses coming their way. After all, they bore the “burden of the day and the scorching heat.” Suppose they got paid $200 an hour rather than for a whole day. They could be making off with a thousand that day, at least!
And yet, they too get one denarius. You can imagine their indignation. They saw their fellow workers getting bonuses, and they thought that they were entitled to one too, for all their work. They thought that they deserved more. They thought that they were the ones who were bearing the injustice.
However, it was the master of the vineyard who bore all the injustice himself. He paid for labor that was not performed. He allowed himself to be cheated by his own generosity. No one else was cheated, especially not those who worked all day and got what they had agreed to.
And yet, they were indignant because they compared themselves to those around them. They weren’t looking at the generosity of the master or his abundant grace on those who least deserve it. They weren’t looking to his promises.
You see, the point of this parable is to expose our earthly mentality of fairness and show how it doesn’t work before God. He’s not telling us how the world should run its business. Instead, Jesus is telling us how the kingdom of heaven works. God doesn’t work the way we think he should. Our sinful human nature wants to think that God judges based on what we’ve done here on earth. Our sinful human nature wants God to decide salvation on the basis of the law, by what we do or do not do.
And yet, God doesn’t want us to think this way. He wants us to rely on his promises. What did he do with the men who worked part-days in our text? He didn’t give them a sum for how much he would pay them. He said that he would pay them what was right.
They lived and worked on that promise. They didn’t know what they would get paid. They didn’t seem to care. They just knew that work needed to be done, and that this master would provide for them.
And he did. He gave them all a denarius. This is the way God works. When it comes to salvation, he is not fair, but he is gracious. He doesn’t give us what we deserve, because then he would not be a gracious God. This is the essence of grace: that it cannot be earned by anything. This is the essence of the Gospel, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works” (Eph 2:8).
If there is any human comparison to the gospel and God’s kingdom, it is that of a promise. What does God promise you? He promises you salvation through Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. How does God promise that this comes to you? It comes as you are washed and renewed in Baptism. Salvation enters your ear as God reminds you of his mercy. God promises that his body and blood are present in the Lord’s Supper to forgive your sins.
We go about in this life relying on the promise of our good and gracious Savior. And they are easy, because we are free. We aren’t laboring under judgment. We are living under grace. We live like the laborers who came in after the day was almost through and just worked, knowing that the master would take care of us. There’s plenty of work to do. There’s plenty of good works to do. Our neighbors need us.
And so, the last will be first. Their work didn’t look grand or glorious to the world. It looked like they only worked a little bit. That’s because it wasn’t hard work. It was done in faith and confidence. It was done trusting in the merits of Christ. That made it a joy to do.
The first will be last. They did what they did for the reward they would get. They worked hard and long. They got what they worked for. Then they were told to leave. “Take what belongs to you and go your way.” In other words, “Get lost.” There is no room in heaven for those who think they have earned it by their works.
And so, God is not fair as the world sees it, but he is gracious. So it is that God does more than simply treat us as good laborers. He doesn’t pay us our wages and then ask us to leave. He treats us as sons and indeed we are sons, adopted by grace, with His Name upon us. Thus we get the Son’s place. We not only get paid generously, more than we could ever deserve, but we also get to stay in the heavenly vineyard forever.
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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