Tag: Septuagesima (70 Days to Easter)

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Septuagesima (about 70 days until Easter)

Readings: Exodus 17:1-7 | 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5 | Matthew 20:1-16

Text: Matthew 20:1-16

Quite often, the airwaves are abuzz with talk of fair wages and proper compensation.  Strong words come from politicians, talk show hosts, and probably in your own conversations, too.   Everyone wants to get what’s owed to them, and as much as possible.  But there seems to be no agreement on what that is.  So, the fiery debates continue.

But, here, in the Kingdom of Heaven, we need to leave all that clamor behind.  It’s earthly baggage.  If we try to bring it with us, we will be in grave danger of missing what grace really is.  So, leave the world while you’re in this place, and listen to your God and Savior.

We will focus especially on the Master’s question in the parable, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” (v. 15)

“A master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”  Notice carefully what he does:  Nobody came to him looking to work in his vineyard.  Rather, he went out to look for them.  And notice the people that he hires: idlers.  If he hadn’t called them, they would have gone home at the end of the day empty-handed.  But did the landowner owe these workers a job?  Did these laborers have any claim on the master’s property?  Not at all.  It was the master’s free choice to go out and hire these laborers.  It was his vineyard, so he set the wage and the rules for working there.

The Lord once said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.”[1]  The truth of the matter is, God does not owe any person anything.  He is the Creator, and we the creatures.  Not the other way around.   He is not accountable to us; we are to Him.  He formed us from the dust, and everything that makes us different from animals is due to Him creating us in His image.  “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  God said this to the man and his wife after they brought sin into the world.[2]  And, boy, do we need that reminder!  In our sinful arrogance, we want to answer back to God and accuse Him of being unjust and stingy.  But it is He who formed us, and by His own will gave us body and soul, eyes, ears, our reason and all our senses.

And we must understand this in order to enter God’s heavenly Kingdom.  God does not owe us anything.  Is He guilty toward mankind?  It was man who turned away from Him, despite the warning of death’s consequence.  Is He guilty for accusing you of sinning against Him?  No, He “is justified in His words and blameless in His judgment.”[3]

He is the one who planned for your salvation, and fulfilled all of His saving promises.  He is the owner of the vineyard, as He also explains in Isaiah 5, “My beloved [which is God] had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.”[4]  God built it and prepared it, and put us in it.  Heaven and earth are His property.  He restored us, when all we deserved was to be thrown off his land.  Still, even after this, we have no claim on His property.

By our natural birth, we are those laborers standing idle in the marketplace.  And corrupt workforce that we are, we don’t even want to be in God’s vineyard, as the Psalm says, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”[5]  But He comes out seeking us through the preaching of the Gospel.  He preaches, “As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your transgressions from you”[6] and He calls us into His vineyard, His Kingdom.  And He does it all by His free choice, without any merit or worthiness in us.

And because it all belongs to Him, He has the authority to do what He wants with what’s His.  He has the power to hand out His gifts of forgiveness and life to whomever He wants.  Since none of us has a claim on it, it’s entirely up to Him who He gives it to.  “For he says, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’”[7]  To prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners?  The poor, the widows, and the orphans?  To wretches like me and you?  It’s His to freely give: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”[8]

God also has the power to give out His goods whenever He chooses, whether the first or the eleventh hour.  Jesus tells Nicodemus, “The Spirit moves where He wishes and you hear His voice, but you do not know where He comes from or where He is going.”[9]  God has called some of you from your mother’s arms.  This is His good and gracious will.  Others, He has called later in life, or even on their deathbed.  This is His good and gracious will.  He called people when it was accepted to be God’s people, and He called people when they would be berated and beheaded for confessing Jesus as Lord.

God gives larger or smaller burdens to be borne by each of us.  Often we take the attitude of those hired first, and grumble against our fellows who seem to have it easier, as if we were deserve better, now that we’re not bound for eternal torment.  He also portions how much work is accomplished by each laborer.  There are the famous saints—Moses, Elijah, Paul, and Luther—but the success all came from God.  St. Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”[10]

God also has the power to hand out as much as He wants of His goods.  That is, He gives the heavenly inheritance to everyone, regardless of seniority.  “When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.”  Seniority lists are not what we see in the kingdom of the world.  On the job, think of how much resentment comes from seeing upstarts and flatterers make it over those who worked hard! Such wrong is common to see! But not so in the Kingdom of God.  God is shows no favoritism and He cannot be bought off with gifts and flattering words. To David the noble King and Rahab the whore, He gives the same reward.  Moses and the thief on the cross stand around the same throne in paradise.  The Apostles Peter, James, and John bask the same glory as you and I will one day.

The footnote under the last part of verse 15 says, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”  When we bring our worldly baggage with us into heaven, we judge God.  But in fact, it’s our eyes that are evil and He is good.  God is in debt to no one.  And that makes our salvation that much more incredible.  The very heart of grace is that God chose to create you.  You owe your existence entirely to Him.  He chose to pay for your sins by the death of His Son.  He didn’t consult with you to check if it was a good idea.  And He chose to call you into His Kingdom.  You didn’t stumble through the door when your other options were used up (the point of the Prodigal Son is another lesson for another Sunday).  So rather than judge God for who He is and what He does with what’s His, we praise and exalt Him because of His grace and goodness, which He lavishes upon us.

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

[1] Job 38:4

[2] Genesis 3:19

[3] Psalm 51:4b

[4] Isaiah 5:1-2

[5] Psalm 14:1-2

[6] Psalm 103:12

[7] Romans 9:15, Exodus 33:19

[8] Ephesians 2:8

[9] John 3:8

[10] 1 Corinthians 3:6-7

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Septuagesima (70 Days to Easter) (Matthew 20:1-16 NKJV)

Bethlehem Lutheran & Bethel Lutheran Church, Lebanon & Sweet Home, OR

Septuagesima (70 Days to Easter) + February 17, 2019

Text: Matthew 20:1-16 NKJV

As you’ve already probably noticed from the bulletin, there’s something different about this season in between Epiphany and Lent.  Easter is still over two months away, but already we begin our countdown to it.  For starters, these next three weeks, we will meditate on God’s grace in Jesus Christ.  Every Sunday of the Church year is centered around the themes in the Gospel reading.  As the saints who went before us chose the readings, these next three Sundays form a sermon series on grace.  First, we hear from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard that Grace is undeserved.  Next week, in the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-15), we will learn that Grace is received passively.  Finally, and right before we intensify our focus on the cross of Christ, we learn from the story of a blind beggar (Luke 18:31-43) that Grace is spiritually discerned. All of these teachings, put together will better prepare our hearts for our devotion to our Savior, who in great love, willingly offered up His life that sinners might live eternally through Him.

There’s the way of the world, of daily life, the way things should be.  We are so deeply inculcated with those things.  And we should be, when it comes to our dealings in the world.  Workers should get fair payment for their time and labors.  The story of Jacob working for Laban is true: It was unjust for Laban to renege on what he had promised Jacob, forcing him to work another 7 years for Rachel and repeatedly changing his wages after that (Genesis 29:1-30, 30:25—31:9).

But the Kingdom of Heaven is an altogether different matter.  Yet, couched in the terms of wages, Jesus explains: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner…”  Notice how our Lord does not say the Kingdom of Heaven is like an organization—a non-profit or a corporation; it is like a man who owns land, and that’s the first clue that this is going to shift the way we think of how God deals with men in His Kingdom.

This landowner goes out to hire laborers for his vineyard, and with the first, he agrees with them for a set wage (a denarius was a standard pay for a day’s work).  These work 12 hours.  Next, he goes out at the third hour and hires others, promising more vaguely, “whatever is right I will give you.”  These work 9 hours, but their pay isn’t explicitly stated.  Next, he goes out at the sixth and ninth hours, and sends them into the vineyard without a promise of payment at all.  They work 6 and 3 hours respectively.  Finally at the eleventh hour, 1 hour before the end of the work day, he hires those who have been idle all day and sends them.

Now, before we get to the time for them to “pick up their checks,” notice who he has hired: The diligent who were out there first thing, the less fortunate who were late to the marketplace, and the total slackers who—if they had mom’s basements then—would have been crashed in them, playing video games until 4 in the afternoon.

8 “So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.’ 9 And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius. 10 But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius. 11 And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’

When it comes time for the payout, every one of these gets the same wage—a denarius.  This is where your blue collar grandfather—who worked his whole life from nothing, who went without the finer things when he couldn’t afford it, but loved his family enough to work 12 hour days—wants to spit on the ground in disgust.  How can it be that the undeserving slobs get the same as those who toiled and sweated for the long haul?

But hear the Master’s response: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?”

What he speaks of isn’t a wage gap or unfair practices.  He exposes a fundamental error in the complainer’s heart: You think your work entitled you to a greater share than others.  The Master has every right to pay generously and even at His own expense, without partiality.  But the next part of verse 15 gets to the heart: “Or is your eye evil because I am good?”

I chose to use the New King James version over the ESV because of this direct translation from the Greek.  Where does the problem really lie with the Master paying the slacker the same as the hard worker?  The evil is in the eye of the beholder, because it’s the hard worker who thinks God owes him more.  It’s the sin of covetousness, not being content with how God distributes His goodness.  With our evil eye, we look in judgment on our neighbor say, they’re getting far more than they deserve.  But the truth is that if any of us got what we truly deserved, then “this poor wretched soul of mine, in hell eternally would pine.”[1]  Or as the Apostle Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

What is God’s goodness?  With evil clouding our hearts, we can scarcely understand it, but suffice to say, God only loves unworthy people.  As the Proverbs say, “Surely He scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble.” (Prov. 3:34)  To those who boast in themselves, God will be intolerably foolish, wasteful, and extravagant.  Is your eye evil because God is good?

The latest issue of the Lutheran Witness has an article about mercy in the early church.  One particular sermon by John Chrysostom in the late 300’s AD is cited:

“Today, I stand before you to make a just, useful and suitable intercession. I come from no one else; only the beggars who live in our city elected me for this purpose, not with words, votes, and the resolve of a common council, but rather with their pitiful and most bitter spectacles. In other words, just as I was passing through the marketplace and the narrow lanes, hastening to your assembly, I saw in the middle of the streets may outcasts, some with severed hands, others with gouged-out eyes, others filled with festering ulcers and incurable wounds…

I thought it the worst inhumanity not to appeal to your love on their behalf, especially now that the season [of winter] forces us to return to this topic…During the season of winter, the battle against [the poor] is mighty from all quarters…Therefore they need more nourishment, a heavier garment, a shelter, a bed, shoes, and many other things…their need of the bare necessities is much greater, and besides, work passes them by, because no one hires the wretched, or summons them to service.”

The article’s author continues: “If his congregation didn’t step up, he told them, they would be guilty of dereliction of duty towards their neighbor. And there was to be no investigating whether or not a poor person was worthy of the generosity he received. Jesus’ own words encapsulated the motivation for this generosity: ‘Freely you have received. Freely give.’ (Matt. 10:8).”

The very grace we have received is the reason Christians show grace toward others, and grace doesn’t ask questions of worthiness.  But, the evil eye presumes, “They’ll just waste it; we’re enabling them; or what are we going to get in return?”  If you don’t understand grace, you will find soup kitchens abhorrent, you will want homeless shelters nowhere near your house, and you will hoard your hard-earned income with a tight fist and only dole it out to those who can demonstrate they’ll use it to your standards.

Is your eye evil because God is good?  If so, the early Christians should rise up at the judgment and condemn us proud, wealthy Americans because we have outsourced charity to the government—and what a wasteful and impassionate job they do of it—and we outsource to other Christians the job of showing mercy that middle-class Christians don’t want to do themselves, because it might get them dirty and infringe on their worldly luxuries. 

If you are humbled by this, now you’re ready to learn (or re-learn) what grace is.  You are evil, but God remains good. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  In His goodness, He has delivered up His Son for you to be received as a gift.  Do you now see that none of us has a reason to boast in the presence of God?  It is in fact part of God’s essence that He shows His goodness to the evil like you and me.  Yes, we take it for granted, we turn His Word into a weapon to use against others and feel better about ourselves, we presume on His kindness.  Yet that doesn’t stop Him from giving to us a goodness we are unworthy of.

That’s what this parable teaches us: Grace is shown without partiality.  When Jesus goes to the cross, He goes there without doing the math to make sure it’s worth it.  His love impelled Him to do it.  He did it long before any of us took our first breath, so that we might receive not the wages for our sins, but the free gift of eternal life in Him.  What is a denarius or any earthly treasure in comparison with that?

I pray that God increases the effects of that grace in His Church, in you and me.  May what we have freely received also inspire us to freely give.  Like the example of Christians who have come before us, may the grace shown to us overflow in grace toward others, so that our lives are a testimony to what He has done. May it be that our congregation is a place not known for its looks or its history, but for its works.  I hope that each of you who have received grace with your hearts will pray this with me. Amen.

[1] “If Your Beloved Son, O God” (LSB 568:1)