Bible Text: St Matthew 20:1–16 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
The master of the vineyard, who represents God, when he goes out, he goes out to find workers. Workers. In fact, that’s what marks the people in the vineyard, which is the Christian Church, the Kingdom of God: everyone in it is working. When the master sees people out in the marketplace, outside the vineyard, he sees they are “idle,” that’s what the translation says, and it’s a good translation, but the Greek word for “idle” is literally “not working.” So this is the stress, at least A stress, of the parable – you get called into the Christian church, you are being called out of idleness, out of not working, to a life of working.
Now that does NOT mean that you are saved by working. In fact, this is the Sunday of the Church Year when we especially emphasize that we are NOT saved by our works. Because in the end, the workers in the vineyard don’t get rewarded because of their works – that’s the whole point of the parable: the master of the vineyard gives the same thing to those who worked all day as he does to those who only worked half an hour. You have a gracious God, who saves you from sin and death and the devil, because He is good and His mercy endures forever, and He gives you, as the parable says, He gives you what belongs to Him, and He has every right to give it to you, because He earned it. He earned eternal life, He earned forgiveness and perfect righteousness, and He paid for it dearly with His own life on the cross, His own suffering, His own blood, because He loves you.
And He gives it to you freely. He doesn’t make you work for it, because that’s simply not the God He is and not the relationship He wants with you – He doesn’t want some contractual relationship with you, some you work hard enough and I’ll reward you. No, He wants you as His child, and you don’t work to become a child. That’s silly and gross – imagine if I made my children work before I would show them any love! It’s exactly the opposite. I show them love first and any good works they do for me are because they are loving me back. That’s why in the end it didn’t matter if people worked twelve hours or half an hour in the parable. What mattered was only the Master’s kindness.
But they all do work. This is always the case. You don’t earn heaven by your works, but no one goes to heaven without works. When Revelation talks about those who go to heaven, it says, “Their works follow with them.” St. Paul, in Ephesians 2, probably the clearest passage in the Bible that we are saved by grace alone, by faith alone, and not by our works, right after he says those beautiful words, “For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, not of works, lest any man should boast,” he says, “For you were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand for you to walk in.”
Probably the most beautifully comforting promise that Jesus gives, “Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” words that assure you that you don’t work to get Jesus’ favor, He does the work, He has come to unburden you and relieve you and give you rest from your sin and guilt and pain, Jesus says immediately afterward, “take my yoke upon you,” and a yoke is worn by oxen when they work. Even the thief on the cross, the one who doesn’t even have a chance to do good works, because he dies right after he believes in Jesus, the one to whom Jesus says those beautiful words, “Today you will be with Me in paradise,” he still does good works. He defends Jesus as people mock Him and tell Him to come down from the cross, and He prays to Jesus. Those are the good works of a Christian.
Christians work, they aren’t idle. Jesus sums it all up by saying, “A good tree bears good fruit.”
But Christians do good works as a response to the good work and love of God toward us. Not to earn God’s favor. That is totally pagan. I do this, and so God rewards me. To trust in your works is as unchristian a thing as you could possibly do. There is nothing Jesus goes after more than people trusting in their works, instead of His mercy. It’s what the Pharisees did and Jesus can’t stand it. As if we earn God’s favor by what we do. That’s to make God into a petty slave master instead of the gracious Father He is. It’s an insult to God.
Look at the workers who get kicked out of the vineyard. Because that’s what happens at the end of the parable. They get kicked out, told to leave, and that means they’re out of the Christian Church, out of God’s Kingdom. Why? Because they trust in their works. And they’re totally miserable because of it.
They are miserable. How do they describe their time in the vineyard? It was torture. We worked all day, we bore the burden and heat. They hate being in that vineyard and all the work in it. Because the only reason they’re working is to get a reward. And what do they think of the master? They can’t stand Him. They think he’s unfair. They grumble against him. Why? Because He’s kind and generous to other people and give them what they don’t deserve. And their fellow workers? They don’t like them either, they criticize them, they think they’re lazy. And that’s the picture of people who trust in their works. When you fall into it, you will find yourself miserable, judging God, judging your neighbor, and full of yourself.
Jesus said once, maybe more than once, to his disciples, when they were getting a bit too proud of the good works they were doing, “When you have done all these things (all the good works God calls you to do), when you have done it all, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have only done our duty.’” Even if all our life was nothing but a list of good works, we’d still have nothing to boast about. We’d only be doing our duty.
But we haven’t done our duty. We’ve sinned. We’ve thought far too highly of ourselves and judged our fellow Christians and envied them because they seem carefree while we are drudging away. We’ve complained in our hearts that God hasn’t given us more. We’ve considered the light and easy yoke Jesus puts on us hard and heavy and felt sorry for ourselves. And that’s because we take our eyes off our sin and the punishment we deserve from God and we fail to see how wonderful the forgiveness and love and peace He showers on us is.
So we run to the Gospel. We thank God for His grace, for His generosity, His kindness toward poor sinners like us. We see once again we haven’t deserved it. We’ve deserved to be cast out of the vineyard, out of His presence. But He won’t have that. The eternal Son of the Father instead became our brother and bore the heat of God’s wrath against sin. He worked under the heavy yoke of our burdens and He laid down His innocent life for our guilt. He loved us to His death and then rose again to give us His life. He forgives us and feeds us with the body and blood that have conquered our enemies. He gives us His Spirit and tells us to call on His Father as ours. He is the owner of the vineyard, its inheritor, and He make us inherit with Him.
And we want to work with Him. With Him as our Savior, our works become light and beautiful again. To love this God is not hard. Because we’re not working to earn anything from Him. We’re not working for a slave master. We are those called to work in the cool of the evening. We are those who have been called out of a useless, idle life, where nothing actually matters, to a life of purpose, where we live and work and act with God in mind, with eternity in mind, the eternity He has purchased for us. We are only trying, by His grace, to live as His children, because that’s what He made us in our baptism. So we pray to Him, we ask Him for what we need, we take discipline from Him, we learn from Him, we fight against our sins and our pride and the temptations of the devil, we love one another, we forgive one another as He has forgiven us, we strive daily to keep His commandments. We work in His vineyard, and it’s wonderful, because we’re safe, we’re children of God, we’re heirs of heaven, it’s already ours, we’re forgiven, by grace. God make us forever thankful for it. Amen.