God Does Not Deal with His People with Fairness, But with Righteous Judgment

Matthew 20:1-16

The owner of the vineyard in St. Matthew’s gospel exemplifies the way God deals with us: not in fairness, but with righteous judgment and abundant grace.

The five sets of laborers arrived to work at 6:00 am, 9:00 AM, 12:00 pm, 3:00 PM and 5:00PM. Evening comes, the work stops promptly at 6:00 p.m., and the workers line up to receive their pay. The book of Leviticus tells us that workers must be paid for their work at the end of the day. Chapter 19: 13: Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. And then the turning point in the story: everyone is paid one denarius, which is what they all agreed to. Historians pretty much agree that the daily wage for an unskilled laborer and a common soldier was 1 denarius estimated at $20.00.

Remember the four classes of workers: some worked the full twelve-hour day; others 3/4 of the day; others ½ a day; and a few others just one hour of the working day. Then the owner of the vineyard says, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last first.” This was a very unusual practice.

Most business owners would start with the first and then work their way to the last. But what’s really outlandish is the equal amount of pay for vastly different working days. In the midst of their anxious score-keeping, the workers had not factored in one important thing: the owner’s abundant grace.

He is not paying them based on the hours that they worked; rather, he’s paying them based on His own goodness and mercy. “Not fair!” cry the twelve-hour workers. “We’ve worked hard, out in the heat the whole day, and those people who only worked for one hour have received the same pay. But the owner of the vineyard is not interested in their complaints. He basically replies,“A denarius is what we agreed on, and a denarius is what you got. If I want to give a full day’s wage to some workers that worked only an hour, that’s my business, not yours.”

Do you see how this vineyard owner operates? It’s not a merit-based system, but a grace-based mentality. He is the owner and he is allowed to do as he pleases with what belongs to him. And so it is that “the last will be first, and the first last” in this vineyard of judgment and grace.

So, what have we learned? The rewards that we are

Rev. Reid

storing up in heaven are not proportional to the total amount of time that we have practiced the Christian life.

If someone becomes a Christian early in life, he or she may spend decades diligently practicing the Christian life, but in the end receive the same reward as one who became a Christian later in life. The phrase,“Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?

One other aspect to this is to consider the precarious position of those who were looking for work all day and only got hired in the last hour. If anyone has been unemployed and spent many months looking for a job, as your savings decrease, and the bills pile up you know the difficulties and pressures you can face.

In this case it seemed that some of the workers were just victims of circumstances, and the landowner, being a gracious man wanted to help them out, by paying them the same as others whose circumstances allowed them to go to work earlier.

Sometimes people who are successful in this life often congratulate themselves and don’t really understand the plight of those less fortunate. Too often they forget that some of their success was simply due to circumstances not necessarily under their control.

We need to also consider the position of those who become Christians late in life, if they had died earlier; they would have not gone to heaven. Given a choice, after having come to know Christ, I suspect most of them would have preferred to have done so early in life. But the mercy of this vineyard owner preaches Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Notice how the times of day that the owner hires workers correspond to the hours of Jesus’ cross. Very early in the morning, Jesus was on trial, tossed to and fro from Pilate, back to Herod, and finally back to Pilate for His condemnation. At the third hour (9:00 a.m.) He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and made to carry His own cross to Calvary, where He died our death. At the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land that we might be delivered from the darkness of death and have the light of life. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and yielded up his spirit, winning full and free forgiveness for the entire world. And about the eleventh hour (5:00 p.m.) He was buried, taking all of our sins into His tomb and leaving them there for eternity.

Do you see how the wonderful grace of the vineyard owner is based on Christ and His cross? There’s nothing “fair” about it, so there’s no sense in keeping score. It’s called God’s Grace. The innocent One dies for the guilty; the Righteous, for the unrighteous, that we might freely receive this wonderful thing called “Grace”

The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

The Most Rev. Dr. Rick Aaron Reid, Presiding Bishop Traditional Anglican Church of America Rector, St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Newton, North Carolina 28658