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| First and Last (Matthew 20:1-16) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace, mercy and peace to you … Truth is … I composed a message for this morning based on our Gospel for today … with the title you see in your worship folder, “First and Last.” But on reflection of the week’s events … perhaps instead of the title “First and Last” we should call it “First Texas … then Louisville.” We watched Hurricane Hanna and then Gustav and then Ike hit our coasts … and we responded with prayer and monetary contributions. We watched Louisville become home to some 3000 hurricane refugees as our civic center was turned over night into a shelter with water, yea, drinks of all kinds … food of all kinds and games … tickets to Bats games, beds … and most of all … power. We watched Louisville spruce up and pave almost all of Shelbyville road to put our best foot forward as hosts of this week’s Ryder Cup. We as a congregation have donated over 60 bags and boxes of food to our Eastern Area Community Ministries food program so far this month … as our congregation is their main sponsor in September. So … what went wrong? It’s not like we just put in casino gambling. It’s not like we just decided to close our doors to the poor and homeless … It’s not like we just shunned our hurting neighbors to our south. Lord, almost 300,000 families without power and still over 50,000 still out a week later … their food rotting, their schools closed, their property values damaged. Gas unavailable or way overpriced. Dare I say it … What did we do to deserve this!!? Well, the Parable we have in our Gospel is sort of an answer to our quandary. Why did Jesus use all these parables? Well, our Old Testament reading from Isaiah gives us a clue. Isaiah there quotes God saying that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. And not just a little bit higher … but as high as the heavens are higher than the earth. And so, as a result, when things happen as they did last week and God’s ways don’t seem logical to us … Jesus uses these stories, these parables, to help bring God’s thinking, God’s thoughts, God’s ways, down to earth, so to speak … And by using everyday kinds of things we’re familiar with, He helps us better understand His doings. So then … before us we have the parable that we find in Matthew Chapter 20, the first 16 verses. The problem, though, is that our reading doesn’t contain the issue that Jesus is dealing with … the reason why Jesus felt He needed to explain a spiritual truth using a parable … So, to understand that, we have to go back into chapter 19. There we see the disciples witnessing Jesus’ discussions with the rich young man, or rich young ruler … someone who claimed to have kept all of God’s commandments perfectly from his youth. Jesus complimented him and told him he lacked yet one thing … Jesus told him to go and give all his riches to the poor and then follow Him. To that, the rich young man dejectedly declined. Peter, then … noting that he and the rest of the disciples’ had already given up everything to follow Jesus, asked Jesus what their reward for that might be. And Jesus gave them a promise of a reward … but then He warned them that many (not all) but many who consider themselves to be first in the kingdom by virtue of their works and piety and sacrifices for the Lord … will find themselves actually last … or left out. And to explain that spiritual truth, Jesus tells them the Parable we have before us this morning. For many, it may be familiar. We see a landowner go out and hire men to work in his vineyard. He begins at dawn hiring the first group, promising them a fair day’s wage … a denarius. He then goes back and hires more men at 9, and more at noon, and more at 3 in the afternoon and then again, more even at 5 … Hiring men like he did in the afternoon … especially at 5 o’clock with only one hour left in the work-day was unheard of. But this owner does. And then, finally, all the workers are called in from the vineyard to receive their wages. Now, here comes the twist. To the world, this parable makes no sense. Why? Because in the world, you earn your wages. The more hours you work, the more you earn … the more you get paid. That’s logical, and just and fair. But in Jesus’ parable, each worker is paid the same amount for a different number hours worked: for 12, 6, 3, or even just 1! Unfair, would be a natural human assessment. Crazy, might be another. But to understand the truth Jesus is showing us here requires eyes of faith. Now, remember what Jesus is doing. He’s addressing Peter’s question … For all of us who left everything for the sake of following You … what’s in it for us?” Can’t we see Peter, and by association, the rest of the Disciples putting themselves in the place of those who suffered the burden of the work and the heat of the day? Those who were hired at dawn? Perhaps we can identify with them too … we who have been faithful to our Lord … and yet have reaped a natural disaster? Perhaps we’re thinking that God is being unfair to us who are still without power compared to those who never lost it? Unfair to Louisville … compared to other cities? In the Parable, the last workers got paid first. And so, those who worked all day got to see that those who worked for only one hour got paid the same amount that they did! And so those thinking themselves first in terms of wages grumbled, not against the short-time workers … but against the owner for not being fair. In fact, they are indignant. Our English text reads: “You have made them equal to us.” The Greek is even more emphatic, it reads: “Equal to us … you have made them.” Are you getting the picture? … the warning to Peter? Be wary of falling into the trap of self-righteousness. You see, this parable is about attitude. An attitude we are tempted to fall into anytime … anytime … we compare ourselves … not with the world, but with other Christians. It’s warning to us who have made sacrifices for the faith … but because we have, we may be tempted to devalue others who have not worked as hard, or sacrificed as much, or had as much hardship come into their lives …as much testing of their faith. It’s not fair that we had to go through all that, and those others didn’t. If we’re thinking like that, then we’re losing sight of what it means to be a called child of God by Grace. That’s what being hired in this parable signifies. The owner made each man He called … employed. That may seem trivial to us, but that was all important in the first century. If you did not work, you did not eat … neither you, nor your family. In a perfect world … those who worked the full day would have cheered the owner and carried Him out on their shoulders for being such a gracious and generous man to those who worked for only one hour. But instead, we see human judgment put above that of the owner and grumbling about what he did with his own money. That was a fatal mistake. When the owner tells those who worked all day to take their money and go … that “go” is like: go and get out of my sight. The language is very similar to the language Jesus uses as He describes God dismissing those on his left at the final judgment. The spiritual truth is: those who fancy themselves more deserving … because they think that God owes it to them … are in danger of forfeiting God’s grace. “Many who think themselves first … will be last.” Remember when the disciples asked who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven … how did Jesus answer? With a visual parable … he took a child into His arms and compared the attitude, the faith of that child, to the attitude and faith of those who are great in God’s eyes. The pride of the Pharisees over their own righteousness … was just the opposite of the humility of a child-like faith. In fact, when it comes to thinking about our hardships in this world and our stars in our crown in the next … we are reminded of Jesus’ words that tells us when we have done everything we have been told to do, we should say, “We are unworthy servants, we have only done our duty.” Whether God has called us shoulder a burden or to work for just one hour … our response, by the power of His Spirit, is to be faithful to God with the time and the gifts He has given us. His promise to us is that He works all things to the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. In that, those without power can rejoice with those who have just had it restored … while they each join with God in what He is doing in their own circumstances … without comparing themselves to each other. God has called each of us. Remember that … That’s the good news, and that fact alone makes all the difference in the world. Jesus did answer Peter’s question by affirming that there are different degrees of glory in heaven … but not different degrees of happiness. We all get the denarius! That’s something to rejoice in with all who are His, In Him. Amen. |