July 15, 2018 Matthew 20:1-16 LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD The Kingdom of Heaven is like... What does this phrase mean to us? A number of parables begin with this phrase, or something close to it. Does that strike us as such familiar rhetoric that it hits with all the impact of water off a duck s back? Don t we want to know what the Kingdom of Heaven is like? Why does Jesus start a parable with this kind of phrase? The Kingdom of Heaven is like... and then we are given a familiar scenario from here on earth but with some strange twists and turns. And we are told that this scenario is like it will be in Heaven. It is as if Jesus looks around here on earth and from time to time claims to be seeing something that is reminiscent sort of a snapshot of the coming realms. You would think that this would get us pretty excited that this would raise our curiosity many levels. If we direct our attention to where Jesus is pointing, we will learn something about what it will be like in the realms to come. Wow! Of course, we do not get complete or full descriptions only hints. Even so, it becomes obvious that the disciples keep asking Jesus questions about the Kingdom. They are eager to know more about the Kingdom, even if we are not. And it is Jesus favorite theme and subject. If you have a good concordance, it becomes quickly obvious that Jesus has more to say about the Kingdom than about any other topic. Jesus says very little about love, for instance, mostly quoting what others have already said. But He loves to talk about the Kingdom. So the scene that Jesus is pointing to in this parable is familiar enough to His hearers, but what is taking place there is very different indeed. It takes us a moment, perhaps, to get oriented to what is going on. Even though it is still happening this way in rural communities we know about today, most of us do not get work in this way any longer. Most of us are not day laborers. That is, we do not go gather at a known hiring place and wait for some employer to come along and give us a day s work for a day s wage. But there is a place in Laguna Canyon where this is going on in very much the same way still today. Matthew skips over some of the details. The scene was so familiar in his time that he did not think anybody would be concerned about the details. If the vineyard owner hires everybody he can find early in the morning, why are there more laborers waiting for work at later BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 1 OF 6
intervals during the day? Obviously if a conscientious worker finishes a job during the day, he might come back to the hiring place in the hope of picking up some extra work. Or if he or someone in his family was sick that morning, he might not get to the gathering place as early as usual. I suspect that those who showed up at five in the afternoon were hoping to get hired for the following day. It was lucky indeed that they got sent out that same day, even if for only one hour. In any case, that is the scenario. The vineyard owner comes at six in the morning, nine in the morning, noon, three in the afternoon and, surprisingly, five in the afternoon. Obviously the landowner is eager to get his grapes harvested. Do the grapes represent those who still need to be brought into the Kingdom? We could stop and muse about how eager God is to bring his children home. But perhaps that seems far-fetched or mixes too many images. Some of the children need to be hired to bring others into the Kingdom. We can get mixed up between who are the grapes and who are the laborers if we want to. But it only gets complicated if we want it to be. Most of us know which one we are. I have met quite a few people in the church over the years who pretend most of their lives that they are the grapes, when they are supposed to be the laborers. And if you try to suggest that they should be the laborers helping to bring others into the Kingdom well, they get irate. Out come endless excuses and objections. God is supposed to pamper them all their lives and never expect them to bring in any of the harvest. And indeed, some of them have never helped to bring in any of the grapes for years on end. How else can we explain the phenomenon of the declining membership of the church today? Do we really imagine that nobody is interested in spiritual realities in our time? Is it really more fun to stay on the vine, growing fat and ripe, until you spoil, fall off the vine, and rot because no laborer ever shows up to bring you into the Kingdom, where you get assignments of your own and begin to help with the work of the Kingdom? * * * How important is it for us to go to the marketplace and wait for the landowner to come hire us? The life of the church depends on it. The Christian WAY of Life in our time and in our culture depends upon it. Individually and alone, none of us can do very much. But if nobody wants to work in the vineyard, it will be the end of the story fairly quickly. Does that bother any of us? BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 2 OF 6
It is interesting to me that in our time there are many people interested in saving whales, birds, the environment, the poor, the abused, and almost every other problem we can identify on earth. But few are interested in saving the church or the Christian Life, or in helping people to find an authentic relationship with God. And of course, from my poor perspective, if we save all these other things but lose our awareness and our relationship with God, the devastation will be beyond utterance. When I ponder this parable, it seems clear that the landowner is very concerned about such things. Each time the vineyard owner finds men standing around, he is eager to hire them. And he is not picky; he hires everyone he can find. There is Gospel in that. Should we make a big deal out of this? I think we should. God has work for every one of us to do. And God is always more eager to hire us than we are to be hired. Our contributions, however small they may seem to us, are important to God. God is always out looking for more of us to come help. Do any of us really believe this? If we did, would it not change a lot of our attitudes about many things? When I look around me, do I see hordes of people who are working for God and serving God s Kingdom? I certainly do see some. But they seem to me to be in a small minority. Doubtless that is my poor perspective. Nevertheless, the thought of a high percentage of the earth s population working for God s Kingdom on purpose and knowing it what a glorious world it would be, if that were true. The parable knows it is not that way in our world; it is not like that here. But Jesus tells us it is that way in the Kingdom. He even seems to think it could be more that way here. The fields are white for the harvest, but the laborers are few, He says. (Matthew 9:37; Luke 10:2) * * * So this parable of the vineyard laborers is like it will be in God s Kingdom? First surprise: The Kingdom needs our abilities and our efforts. I do not understand that, but clearly the vineyard owner is God, and the vineyard owner needs all the laborers he can get. Perhaps it is not as easy as we suppose to create a Kingdom out of the void out of emptiness and chaos and keep it vibrant and full of light and life and love. Anyway, according to the parable, everybody is valuable. Everybody can contribute. Everybody is invited to work for the Kingdom. Everybody s labor is worthwhile. But then comes an BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 3 OF 6
even bigger surprise: At the end of the day, everybody receives the same wage: a full day s wage. That is, everybody receives everything they need. Give us this day our daily bread. My my. The vineyard owner may want our labor, but he is no skinflint. He is wealthy beyond our imagining, and he is generous beyond all our expectations. The laborer is worth his hire, Jesus tells us, in case we were confused about such things. (Matthew 10:10; Luke 10:7) And many of us are confused about such things. Some of us are very shy about taking money for our efforts. Others are always trying to get more work out of people than they are willing to pay for. I was in a church once that wanted to pay its staff as little as it could possibly get away with. It looked around at other churches who were also underpaying their staff and thought this was a good excuse for them to be just as stingy as they could possibly be. In this parable, every day everybody receives everything they need a full day s wage. Can we even imagine such a thing? For how many days would we have to receive our daily bread before we started to relax and trust it? Not ever not in this realm. All of us have known more wealth than 95% of the world s population, but we never stop worrying about having enough. I am not scolding any of you; I live in the same world and have the same problem. Several times in my life I have been willing to give up greater income in order to do things I thought the Lord wanted me to do. Even so, I have never starved. Throughout my life I have had more earthly goods than I ever thought a poor, country preacher would ever have. Mariana can remember when we were dating and I used to tease her by pointing to some old shack and saying we would probably have to live in something like that because whatever church parsonage we would live in, it would not be much. I needed to make sure that if we got married, she would not be surprised or disappointed enough to leave me if we were poor. I rather expected that this would be one of the prices I would pay for becoming a minister. Even though our lives have never been as poor as I imagined back then, I never escape entirely from concerns about supporting my family or having enough to take care of myself so I will not be a burden on others. Why don t I know that even if I show up at five in the afternoon, there will be work waiting for me and a day s wage to go with it? BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 4 OF 6
Well, I don t know this because I live in a world where this is not always true. I live in a world where lots of people cannot find a day s wage. And by the way, Jesus never said everybody would get a full day s wage here in this world. He said it would be this way in God s Kingdom. This parable is nothing like the reality any of us have ever known. We live where some people are always poor and some people are always in need. We feel forced into competition. There is not enough to go around, so we are always struggling to get what we need (for ourselves and those we love) before the supply runs out. We live where there is not always work for everybody who needs or wants work. We live in a place where some people hoard; some people steal; some people lie and cheat; some people undercut others to get what they want. If all of us knew that everybody would always receive everything they needed, stealing would go out of style very quickly, don t you think? On the other hand, if we lived someplace where everybody wanted to contribute their fair share where everybody wanted to do their share of the work well, we cannot imagine that kind of reality either. * * * The Kingdom of Heaven is like... Yes, like someplace we cannot even fully fathom or imagine. All the principles are different because the reality itself is different. Different, yet familiar enough to be recognizable in some ways. This is the dual reality we actually live in: one foot in the physical world all around us, and one foot in the spiritual reality all around us. The more we take that seriously, the more we awaken to the presence of the Kingdom in our midst. And we feel it in many familiar ways, when we stop to think about it. Why are we compassionate? Why do we keep wanting to help other people? Why do we keep having to learn not to trust some people? Jesus commands us to forgive the repentant, but the truth is that we often forgive people too soon, even before they are truly repentant. After all, many people suspect that learning spiritual principles is not really very important anyway. Do we think that it is? Do we care if our children learn the spiritual principles? Have you ever known anybody who was surprised when somebody they thought loved them betrayed them? Of course, it is fortunate that none of us have ever betrayed anybody. Anyway, here is this simple little parable. On the surface, the only surprise is that those who come to work late in the day are given the same wage as those who have worked the full day through. That BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 5 OF 6
is certainly unusual. And we struggle with the envy and the sense of unfairness that arise in us when we contemplate this parable. But then the parable takes us quickly into many other questions and wonderments. How little we really know about God s Kingdom. And how fascinating it must be. Are we being prepared for LIFE in this coming Kingdom? How can we learn and prepare for the coming realms while we are still here in this realm? Are we really supposed to be getting ready for a very different reality? Among other things, I am ever more aware of how dependent we must become on guidance from the Holy Spirit. In the huge array of complexities here on earth, the only chance we have of being faithful or staying faithful is to stop trusting our own wisdom and our own notions at the moment about what we want or what we think is right or fair. So we learn ever more deeply to turn our wills and our lives over to the direction and the caring of the Holy Spirit of our Risen Lord. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 6 OF 6