It wasn't meant to be fair
Sermon Notes 24th September 2023
Geoff Vidal
MATTHEW 20:1-16 “It wasn’t meant to be fair”
In Matthew, the emphasis is on the things that Jesus teaches about Christian life: the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is different. There’s a different way of sorting out conflict and last week Desiree helped us understand what Matthew reported on generous forgiveness. Often, we are able to see how the Lectionary readings are linked to a particular message or theme. Today the Old Testament reading from Exodus clearly sets the scene for the Gospel story. Our life is a journey with God: The Israelites see that God is with them as they journey out of Egypt through the Sinai and the companions of Jesus are journeying with him to Jerusalem. And, on our life’s journey, God will provide us with what is needed. The Israelites wandering in the Sinai desert are provided with a sort of bread they call manna and birds. If you read on in Exodus, you hear how they eventually find that they can’t control what God provides. We are not able to store up what God provides and choose when we wish to use it.
We often hear that Jesus was a brilliant teacher who used the telling of parables to help people remember his message. But these parables are more than just good teaching; they are an invitation for us to see how God acts. In the parables we find some really significant information on what the Kingdom of God is like. The parables open up a world of possibility for us and they encourage us to respond by changing our way of doing things (repenting). Jesus teaches how to live the life of the Kingdom where the poor in spirit and the meek and the hungry are blessed.
There are always new ways of looking at a parable even if we think we know it well. New things are always to be learned about life in the Kingdom of God. So, let’s go digging into the parable of today, being open to the possibility there might be something new to discover.
Today’s parable unfolds in several scenes. It begins with the vineyard owner as he moves through a series of hiring of workers: early in the morning, and then at nine o'clock, noon, three o'clock, and finally at five o'clock. The next scene occurs when evening comes (about 6 o’clock) and the owner gives instructions for the way the workers are to be paid. The story then escalates with the way the wages are paid and it culminates in a confrontation between certain disgruntled laborers and the owner who has the final word. The passage ends with Jesus summarising "So the last will be first, and the first will be last".
Because Jesus began the parable by saying “the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner”, we suspect initially that this is in some way a story about God. (Desiree has often pointed out that we need to be careful in our thinking about who is what in our Bible stories.) And, as we read this story today, we wonder what kind of God is lurking in these words of Jesus. The owner of the vineyard deals fairly with one group, paying them exactly what they bargained for after twelve hard, hot hours in the fields; but then he turns around and gives exactly the same pay to those who put in only one hour's effort in the cool of the evening.
To our way of thinking, there is no justice if the letter of the law is followed with the way one group is paid and then there is startling generosity shown to other workers who began their day much later. We wouldn’t do that. Our kids and little grandkids have a better understanding of fairness than this vineyard owner. Kids are pretty quick in telling us “That’s not fair”. There’s no doubt that, in a situation like this, the ACTU and the Labor Council and all sorts of workers’ rights people would say, “You can’t do that, it’s not fair!”
You don’t have to be a unionist to know that the people who worked longer should have been paid more. That’s the way any fair-minded person would do it. But that isn’t the way the owner of the vineyard does things. When he is criticized, the landowner points out “You might not like it; you might think it’s not fair. But I can do it if I want to.” And he says “I did no wrong!”
We have a problem in letting God do things God’s way. We expect that things will be done our way. So, God surprises us. The master of the vineyard hasn’t been unjust; he’s simply been extraordinarily generous to some of the workers. It’s God’s strange and unexpected generosity that causes us a problem. There’s a warning here that those who think that they know exactly how God must act are in for a big surprise. God’s plan is to bring delight and fulfillment to everyone. But it’s God’s plan, not ours! Remember the link to our Exodus reading; God certainly will provide everything that is needed (although not necessarily all that we want).
Everyone who toils in the Lord’s vineyard should be delighted that some receive exactly what is just. If some others who work in the vineyard have been blessed with God’s extravagant generosity, who are we to question why? Isn’t God allowed to do what he likes with his love? And we are loved. In the story, the words spoken to the grumbling worker are “My friend, I am doing you no wrong ... are you envious because I am generous”.
When we hear this story about the farmer who hires servants to work in his vineyard, most of us would probably think of ourselves as being like the servants who worked out in the vineyard all day. After all, here we are “in the vineyard” so to speak. We are people who have been here in church all our lives, or certainly most of our lives. To be told that somebody who shows up in the vineyard just one hour before the end is given the same as those who have laboured here all day, well, no wonder there was grumbling!
And yet, if we were prepared to hear this parable from the standpoint of those workers who came late (the people who were passed over all day long and only got hired at the end of the day) and yet received the same wage as those of us who had been there the whole day, we would see it as a really good news story. And it is a good news story. The unemployed have now been employed. Those who have recently decided to live their lives as followers of Jesus in this Kingdom of God that he says is near, can be encouraged to know that they don’t have to work themselves into a frazzle trying to catch up with people who have known Jesus all their lives. The bandit on the cross next to Jesus who probably had never seen the inside of a synagogue was promised “today you will be with me in Paradise”.
There is a common theme running through these parables that Jesus shared, and it is grace. What God will do for us is not a matter of shrewd calculation on our part (how we manipulate God), but rather it is a matter of God’s extravagant graciousness. We somehow tend to think, “As far as God is concerned, if I do this, then I will get that.” But what if our relationship with God is not a matter of what we do, or the way we understand it, but a matter of what God does and the way God understands it?
Last week we heard how the disciple Peter came to Jesus wondering how often he should forgive someone who had wronged him. He asks, “seven times?” That seems reasonable; perhaps even more than reasonable.
We know that it is hard enough to forgive someone one time, little own seven times. But Jesus told him that we are to forgive someone not seven times, but seventy times seven times.
It seems that, built right into the heart of the gospel is a kind of generosity, of extravagance. And, as Jesus said on one occasion, God makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad and his rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We are being given the message that God has created the world in such a way that there is room for God to be gracious. There is room for people who have nothing to be given everything. It is possible for those whose lives don’t add up to much of anything to have everything.
God is willing to risk everything just for one who is lost. On the other hand, the wealthy, the trend setters, and the big wheels, are seen as nothing. A poor widow’s single copper coin is seen as being bigger than a huge cheque from someone with lots of money in the bank.
Or as Paul said to one of the early churches, God has chosen to take the things that add up to nothing, and make them into something big. God takes those things with which the world is impressed and reduces them to nothing.
Soon you are going to come forward to the Lord’s table. You will receive just one little bit of compressed bread, hardly enough to satisfy a big appetite. And you will have just a thimbleful of wine, not enough to cure a big thirst. However, our hungers are so deep and our thirsts are so unquenchable. And yet as we accept the good news of Jesus Christ, just that sip, just that little bite of bread is enough to feed you forever, to strengthen and preserve your soul, not just through daily life, but into eternal life.