Unfairness

Text: Matt. 20:1-16

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            One of the hardest lessons that we learn and relearn time and again, is that life is not fair. Sometimes people who do good things don’t get rewarded. Sometimes people who do bad things get away with it. We have an innate sense of knowing when something is unfair, and so we constantly try to square the circle, looking for ways in which it all balances out, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes it simply doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to make it all fit with our sense of fairness.

            People have tried that with the parable we have before us today, the parable of the vineyard workers. But at the end of it all, we’re faced with a conundrum: this parable is not fair. In it, the owner of a vineyard goes out very early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his vineyard. Then he goes out again at about 9:00 am, then again at noon, then again at 3:00 pm. At 5:00 pm he goes one more time to the marketplace and finds some laborers who still haven’t been hired, so he tells them to go and work in his vineyard too. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard told the foreman to line up the laborers, from the last hired to the first, so they could receive their wages. He gave the workers he hired at 5:00 pm a full day’s wage, a denarius. This led the other workers, the ones who had been hired early in the day, to think that they would be paid more. But when it was their turn, they received a day’s wage too: one denarius. They were resentful and started to grumble and complain about it. When the owner of the vineyard heard their complaint, he said, “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 you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

            I think we can all agree that this is no way to run a business. The instinct of the workers is right: those who work longer and harder should be paid more than those who showed up for only the last hour. Any of us would file a complaint if we were treated this way. But it’s not as if this sense of unfairness comes from nowhere. We know that the Bible itself has plenty to say about proper treatment of workers. The Lord commands His people not to withhold a worker’s wages, even for one night. In the Law given at Sinai, employers are not allowed to hold a deposit against their employees’ pay. The worker is said to be worthy of his wages. In the New Testament, St. Paul gives the command to the Thessalonian Christians, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” This is how the Lord has arranged things in this temporal order, where we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brows ever since the fall in Eden.

            So what’s going on in this parable? When it comes to the parables of Jesus, we should always look for something surprising or even shocking because that will give us the key to understanding it. That turn is what helps us understand the point Jesus is making about the kingdom of heaven, because the kingdom of heaven is different than any of the kingdoms or orders of this world. And the point that Jesus is making today is this: When it comes to your reward in the kingdom of heaven, God is not interested in your works—how long or hard you’ve worked, or how great or impressive your works are. God gives you His reward purely out of grace; that is, because He wants to, He chooses to, simple as that. As the master of the vineyard says in the parable today, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

            This is a startling truth and our instinct, trained by living daily lives in this world, doesn’t like it. And yet, it’s a truth that God states again and again in His Word. When the Lord spoke to His people after leading them out of slavery in Egypt and made them His chosen people in the Promised Land, He said, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers.” Jesus told His Apostles, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” As St. Paul wrote in so many places and ways, “For 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, so that no one may boast.”

            This runs counter to everything we know in this world. Indeed, it runs opposite of how God has arranged things in this temporal earthly order. But ever since the fall in Eden, God has not wanted to govern His kingdom of heaven, His rule of grace and mercy, in the same way He rules this earthly kingdom of power. They are as far apart from each other as, well, heaven and earth.

            And this is good news for us. For if we are honest, as much as we want to grumble and complain that we’re more worthy than some other sinner, the truth of the matter is that we are the vineyard workers called late in the day. We’ve been called into the Lord’s vineyard in these latter days, this final age ushered in by Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. We’ve been spared the burning heat of what our forebears in the faith suffered in their persecutions and martyrdoms. We’ve been called during a time of relative comfort when we compare it to 99.9% of people who have ever lived, let alone those who have been Christians in this era or in years before. And yet our reward is the same as theirs because God’s grace is the same. We’re given the gift of eternal life. We receive the same life in Jesus’ body and blood as those who were first called, the Apostles in the Upper Room, the saints and martyrs who followed them, the prophets who received a prophet’s reward. This is all by grace, so who are we to boast, we who have been called into God’s kingdom in the cool of the evening.

            So we can work joyfully in this time before the night comes and no man can work. We can go about the tasks that the Lord has given us in His vineyard, knowing that our reward is secure, that it doesn’t depend on our grandiosity or impressiveness. It’s a gift from the Master, given because He chooses to give what is His, because He has always given us what is His and He always will. The kingdom of heaven has always been about His generosity, and so we rejoice, knowing that our faith in Him will never be put to shame, and we shall never perish. In the name of Jesus, the generous Master, Amen.