(Nameun Cho)
Matthew 20:1-19 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ 5So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. 6And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ 7They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ 8And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ 9And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. 10Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. 11And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ 16So the last will be first, and the first last.”
17And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, 18“See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death 19and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
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The heart of this parable addresses a temptation that lies at the root of every human heart: entitlement. For a reasonable amount of time, effort, and energy put in, we expect a corresponding output. And oftentimes in life, this works: work income, services rendered, project management, and even relational capital. But the one area of life where this principle does not correlate is in our spiritual status. This is not to say that God does not honor hard work, rather that no amount of hard work can fulfill the order required of us on a spiritual scale.
Notice the order in which the workers in this parable are paid. The master carefully instructs his foreman to pay the eleventh hour workers first and the first hour workers last. Those who would feel the most entitled to the most wages (i.e. the first hour workers) would witness the “injustice” of equal pay. Had this happened in reverse order, each camp of workers may have gone home none the wiser. But the master had more intentions that day than to have his vineyard tended to; a lesson was to be taught.
The first agreement of wages to the first hour workers was for one denarius (a single day’s wage): a reasonable and expected contract. But the wage agreement for each of the following camps of workers is left ambiguous. For a master who is seemingly equitable based on his interaction with the first hour workers, one might reasonably expect a prorated amount of the previously stated wage. But the very words that Jesus chooses to use in telling this parable are that starting with the third hour workers, the master promises to pay “whatever is right” (v. 4). And for every subsequent camp of workers, “he did the same” (v. 5). When it comes time to distribute the wages, the first hour workers iterated a sentiment that we ourselves may have uttered inwardly while reading this story: “That is not fair.”
In the eyes of the world, God’s love is unfair. God’s generosity to mankind is what he deems as right, and not based on our criteria. The reason why a one-to-one correlation does not work in a spiritual economy is that we could never satisfy the price demanded of us to fix what we broke. We try our best to. We could read our Bibles everyday, pray regularly, tithe to the Church in sacrificial amounts, serve in multiple outreach ministries, and raise and disciple our children to do the same. At the very least, we could live relatively more moral lives than the next guy (“I’m not as bad as him!” or “I’m nicer than her!”). But at the end of the day, it could all amount to being infinitely shy of the demand of perfect righteousness (Rom. 3:23). Without a faith resting on the trust that all of this has been redeemed for us in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, our slaving away in the scorching heat since the first hour is just as good as the idleness of an unhired hand in the marketplace.
The gospel is meant to highlight the generosity of the Master. Before his gracious intervention, no workers had any favor or merit. Rather than focus on the amount of effort we put in, we’re reminded in this parable that we had no stake in any wages had God not first made the invitation. God initiated our salvation from nothing but his pure mercy. When we see the depth of our need and the mercy of the generous Giver, we rejoice both in our inclusion and any otherwise lost soul into his abundant kingdom.
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An audio version of each devotion will be posted on our church podcast “Life Together at CRPC,” which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.