May 28, 2023

Matthew 20: 1-15 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. . .” (NIV) [read the entire parable in your Bible]

Muttering is the native language of a sad soul.*

In this parable, a man offers a denarius for a day’s work in his vineyard and he gets some takers. Throughout the day, he goes out to the parking lot at Home Depot (well, the equivalent of it!) and hires more workers for the same wages as those who started out first thing in the morning. Everyone gets what they agreed to but at the end of the day there was grumbling among those who had put in the most time. When we read this story, we tend to identify with the grumblers. It doesn’t seem fair that someone who put in an hour of labor should get the same pay as one who had been there since early morning.

I found myself in similar circumstances after I had been at a job for about a year. When my boss hired someone else to fill a vacancy, she chose a woman who had been in another department for a few years and whose salary was already more than mine. I probably would never have known that fact but my boss felt she needed to explain to me that she couldn’t ask her new employee to take a cut in pay. I told her I didn't care as long as she didn't take anything away from me. Unlike the workers in the vineyard, I just wanted what I had already been promised.

As for the eternal implications of this parable, Jesus doesn’t really provide an explanation. We gather that the landowner represents God and the workers represent us. It seems that he wants us to understand that God has the right to be generous to whom he chooses, and that he keeps his bargains with us. Instead of identifying with the grumblers, let’s put ourselves in the work boots of the latecomers. Whether we have been Christians for decades or whether we are babes in the faith, our reward is the same: eternity.

Our eternal reward will not be based on how long or how hard we worked. We are saved by God’s gift of grace - we can’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, we can’t take credit for it. What right would any of us have to demand less for those whose faith is new? What would that attitude say about the condition of our heart?

God dispenses gifts, not wages.*