Here is a sermon based on Matthew 20:1–16. If you take a look at the passage, you will find that it has its roots in chapter 19, and therefore the chapter division is an unfortunate one. It is offered not as a model sermon but merely as one that has grown out of the process we have just discussed. It would be wise to take a few moments to read the passage so that you have it in mind. Once you read the sermon, we’ll look back at it together. We will use it to review what we have discussed in the previous pages. (The paragraphs are numbered in order to refer back to them in the closing discussion.)
“The Great Wage Dispute”
1. Jesus made a wise mid-career adjustment. Until the time he was thirty, he had worked in the firm of “Joseph and Sons Carpenters” in the town of Nazareth. Then God called him to preach. Many observers feel that the switch of professions was a fortunate one. If he had stayed in business, he would have gone bankrupt.
2. At least that’s what many hardheaded business types might feel when they read this account of a labor dispute that Jesus told with obvious approval in Matthew 20:1–16. As a case study on how to handle labor-management relations, it gives a business analyst cold chills.
3. The story starts out sensibly enough. It’s harvest season, and early in the morning a grape grower drives into the center of town. He goes to the corner where farmworkers assemble hoping for a day’s work, and the grower selects some of these men to pick grapes for him. Before they go out to the vineyard, he signs a contract with them to pay a denarius for the day’s work. At the time a glut existed in the labor force, and a denarius was a generous wage. The owner didn’t have to pay that much, but you can overlook his lack of haggling because the man wasn’t very astute about business affairs.
4. Then later at nine o’clock in the morning the owner returned to town and saw some other men standing around waiting for someone to hire them. The owner sent this group, too, into his vineyard, but this time without a contract. He promised only to “do what is right.” That would unsettle any union leader. A loose arrangement is no substitute for a contract. But, face it, you have to put up with agreements like that when work is hard to find.
5. At noon and then again at three o’clock the vineyard owner returned, and when he spotted other unemployed workers he sent them into his vineyard to pick the grapes. It’s the same deal as before. No contract. Just his assurance that he will do what is right by them.
6. Finally, at five in the afternoon as the owner was about to call it a day, he saw some other workers standing on the corner with their tools. He stopped and asked them why they weren’t working. “We’ve been standing here all day waiting for someone to hire us,” they explained. So with only an hour left before sundown he sent those workers to pick grapes in his vineyard. I suppose the workers were grateful. After all, any work is better than nothing. Even a small paycheck would put some food on their tables.
7. The problem started an hour later at six when the closing whistle blew. The vineyard owner ordered his foreman to pay the workers. The owner was obviously more eccentric than efficient. He got everything backwards. He insisted that the last fellows hired be paid first and the first hired be paid last. So when the laborers lined up last man first, the foreman paid the crew that had worked only sixty minutes a denarius, a full day’s wage. The workers who punched in at three and those who signed on at noon also got paid a denarius. In fact, that was true for those who had worked since nine that morning. Those at the back of the line who had started at sunrise got their expectations up. “Hey, there’s a bonus today!”
8. But no. When they finally shuffled up to the pay window and received their pay envelope, it contained the denarius they had agreed on. Tempers flared, and they sent their representative to the owner to have it out with him. “Look,” he argued, “these last guys you hired worked only an hour, and you made them equal to us. It’s not right. We picked those lousy grapes all day in the sweltering heat. It’s tough work and our hands and backs are sore. We want to file a grievance. We deserve better. You’re guilty of unfair labor practices.”
9. I don’t know how this incident sits with you, but I suspect you want to grab a picket sign and join the workers’ protest. This upside-down system of payment strikes us as grossly unfair—just as it did to the workers and to the audience that first heard the story. (What is going on? Why did Jesus tell this story? What’s he driving at?)
10. Well, Jesus certainly didn’t offer this parable as a model for how Christians should settle wage disputes in the twenty-first century. Imagine the ruckus the press would set up if an employer tried this today. He couldn’t operate. He couldn’t get to his office because of the picket lines he would have to cross. If he did pay his workers this way one week, he would learn his lesson the following week. His labor force would be crushed in the five o’clock rush going to work. Production would collapse. With workers putting in only an hour a day, the work would never get done. (We had better understand why Jesus told this story. Is he completely unaware of how business works? Why did he tell a story as crazy as this?)
11. The context gives us a clue to what Jesus is driving at. The parable follows Jesus’s response to two different men who wanted to sign a contract with God. The first chap was a wealthy young man (Matt. 19:16–26). He approached Jesus to ask him to spell out exactly what he had to do to earn eternal life. He figured that he had kept the Ten Commandments, but he wanted to know if Jesus could think of anything else that might be involved to qualify. Jesus knew that this man needed radical surgery so he put his scalpel on the cancer in the man’s life: “Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” If he wanted a contract, he could have it. But the price was more than the young man was willing to pay. He called the whole thing off. His investments and his bank accounts meant everything to him—more than God, or eternal life, or heaven. That’s why this prosperous young man walked away from the deal.
12. The second man who wanted to negotiate a contract was Peter (Matt. 19:25–30). He and the other disciples had overheard the conversation with the wealthy inquirer. As a result Peter raised a candid question. “Look, we have left everything to follow you; what’s in it for us?” Peter’s question sounds self-serving, but some time or other most of us get around to asking it. At first when we sign on to follow Jesus we may not bring up the question. But then after we have labored in the heat of the day, we get uneasy. Things happen. “What’s the deal?” we ask. “What’s in it for us?”
13. Some time or other we all get around to Peter’s question. Perhaps you have hit some financial difficulties. You see yourself as a dedicated follower of Jesus. Yet you have to struggle to make ends meet. Others don’t have to struggle with a tight budget. It doesn’t seem fair. What’s the payoff for your commitment? What’s in it for you?
14. Perhaps you wrestle with health problems. You have served Christ with all your strength, but now you no longer have any. Your health and strength are gone. You wonder, “Lord, what’s happening? I’ve tried to do your work. Yet new Christians who haven’t served as long and faithfully as I have are vibrant and healthy. It’s not fair. What’s my reward? What’s in it for me?”
15. Perhaps you have gone to serve Jesus in another part of the world and have struggled with the anxiety and frustration of coping in a different culture. Other Christians stay at home and live in the luxury of affluent America. You take the pressure on yourself and on your family, but every victory is offset by a setback. You have won some and lost some. So what do you get for your sacrifice? You ask, “What’s in it for me?”
16. Or you serve in a church where you feel that people have badly mistreated you and taken advantage of you. You hang on when you want to hang it up. Other Christians seem to thrive in their service. They don’t seem to have labored as hard or as long as you, but they are doing well. The question nags at you, “So what do I get out of it?”
17. (“What’s in it for us?” There’s a bargaining streak in Peter’s question. But you have to identify with him. Peter felt that he had good reason to ask the question, “We’ve given up everything to follow you; what do we get out of it?”)
18. Jesus responded with gentleness and grace to Peter’s question, “What will there be for us?” He could have made Peter feel guilty.
19. Jesus might have said, “Okay, Peter, let’s put it all down where we can look at it. What precisely did you give up? You say you gave up your position as vice president of the Zebedee Fish Company. You gave up a promising career in fish. That’s impressive. What else?
20. “That’s true, you gave her up, too. She was a pretty little thing. She had lovely curves and a beautiful shape. You loved to spend time with her. In fact, you thought you would probably spend your life with her. Yes, we’ll put that down, Peter. You turned your back on your boat to follow me.”
21. If Peter had compiled a list of things that he had given up to follow Christ, Jesus could have shamed him. They seem trivial. Instead, Jesus assured Peter that he and those like him would be well repaid. In the future when Jesus sets up his kingdom, Peter and his friends would have positions beyond the wildest dreams of any Galilean fisherman. Whatever anyone had given up to follow Jesus will be repaid a hundred times over in addition to receiving eternal life. For Peter and those like him the best was yet to come. God would never be in their debt.
22. Then Jesus made the statement, “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matt. 19:30). It’s a weird saying. It is so important, though, that Jesus rephrased it again at the end of his story, “So the last will be first and the first will be last” (20:16). What’s that all about? It sounds like pious nonsense. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” doesn’t work if you are standing in line at the checkout counter at the supermarket, or waiting in a long line at the airport, or lining up to be served at the bakery where everyone takes a number.
23. Actually it doesn’t work any place that I can think of. In our society the first are first and the last are last. That’s the way the system works in sports, in government, in education, in business, and in most vineyards. In those realms the last are last and the first are first. But Jesus declares that’s not the way it works in his kingdom. In his setup “many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first.” (What does it mean? What does it mean in the kingdom to have our order of things reversed? Does it make any sense?)
24. “The first shall be last and the last first” means that Jesus changes the order of things. The reason for this reversal is that God deals with us not on the basis of our merit but on the basis of his goodness. We live with a merit system. The people who arrive first get served first. The people who work more hours make more money. The students who make the best grades go to the top of the class. God doesn’t work with that system. He rewards us not on the basis of our merit but on the basis of his goodness. He doesn’t give us what we deserve. He gives us more than we deserve. He is always fair, but far better than fair, he is always good.
25. Look at what this story shows us. To be allowed to go to work in his vineyard reflects God’s goodness. Service in itself is an undeserved reward. Those men standing idle in the square before sundown were not “the idle rich.” They were “the idle poor.” Unemployment ran high in the country. Work was hard to find. Their pathetic explanation tells us why they were standing there. “Because no one would hire us.” That means, “No one wants us” or “no one needs us.” If you have ever spent days or weeks desperately looking for a job, you know that it’s more exhausting standing in an unemployment line than working on an assembly line.
26. I have a friend in his early fifties who lost his job when his company downsized. For weeks that man scoured the city trying to find another position. He was willing to take almost any job available, but no firm was interested. It almost killed him. In fact, he grew so depressed that he contemplated suicide.
27. If when you get out of bed in the morning you have meaningful work to do, instead of resenting the alarm clock, breathe a prayer of thanks that you have a job to go to. It is terrifying when a society can’t provide employment for someone who wants to work. People seldom crack up under the strain of hard work. They come apart because of meaningless inactivity. The toughest challenge in life is not when you have to work hard. It’s when you don’t have any work to do at all.
28. Jesus comes to the idle, the unemployed, the lost who have time on their hands and offers us meaningful work to do in his vineyard. That work is in itself a gift. There is fulfillment in serving the Lord of the vineyard. In his work we have a relation with him and his harvest. The people to be pitied are not the workers in the vineyard but the idle in the marketplace.
29. Do you doubt that? Compare Peter with that rich young man. Putting aside all the religious jargon for a moment, whose life was better spent? Would you seriously suggest that Peter would have been better off if he could have stayed in the fishing business and become a tycoon? By the standards of their society the wealthy young man was a “first” and Peter was a “last.” But don’t you feel some sorrow for that young man who turned away from following Jesus and missed out on the timeless life of God? The person to pity is the man or woman who crawls out of bed in the morning, grabs a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks, fights the traffic to the same office, eats at the same restaurant, leaves the same tip, drives home at the same time, watches television, and then falls into bed. He or she retires at sixty-five, plays golf until seventy-three, and dies with no sense of the eternal about life. Who ends up being first? Who ends up being last?
30. By sending us into the vineyard to work, Jesus delivers us from eternal insignificance. When the Tartar tribes of Central Asia curse their enemies, they don’t tell them to “go to hell.” Instead they say, “May you do nothing forever.” Jesus Christ in his goodness delivers us from that curse. (There is reward just to work in the vineyard, and when it comes to the payoff itself, we can count on God’s generous goodness to determine our reward.)
31. This parable assures us that our Master is much more than just. He is always that, but he is much more than that. He is generous and good. Listen again to the interaction that the owner of the vineyard had with his disgruntled workers (Matt. 19:12–15). They protest that he is unfair. After all, they argue, they had to sweat for twelve hours while some of the other grape pickers had to work for only one. The owner defends himself: “Look, I was not unjust to you. You received everything we agreed on. Certainly you can’t argue that I don’t have full right over my possessions, can you? I am free to give to the others as much as I gave you.” The owner gave unequal treatment, but it was not unjust treatment. He had not wronged the first workers to favor their friends. Those early workers received everything they had agreed on. Everything.
32. The vineyard owner in paying off his workers gave everyone justice. With most of the workers, however, he went beyond what was just. He acted out of the goodness of his heart. Justice forms the background of this story against which goodness appears as goodness and not unfairness. The owner would have been evil if he had cheated those early workers out of what they had bargained for. The emphasis of the parable falls on his magnificent generosity to those eleventh-hour workers. Everyone in the story was treated fairly, but the last men in were also treated with lavish generosity.
33. When you serve Jesus Christ, you don’t work for a wage; you receive a reward. In his service you are rewarded based not on your merit alone but on his generosity. You are not rewarded on the quality of your work—you pick delicious grapes. You are not rewarded on the quantity of your work—you pick more grapes in an hour than the others do in twelve. When you serve Jesus Christ, he does not put you under contract. He puts you under grace.
34. That’s how you become a Christian. Salvation is based entirely on God’s grace and not on your merit. If you think that you come into a relationship with God based on what you do, you are doomed never to have eternal life at all. That’s why the rich man missed it. He couldn’t understand that Christ turns our system upside down. He wanted a contract based on his merit, but when he got one, he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t get it out of his head that God doesn’t work in a system where the first are first and the last last.
35. Peter was inclined to think that after following Jesus everything changed back to the old bookkeeping system. Shouldn’t the first who have given up the most have preference over the last? Peter wanted to go back to a wage system. But wages are the wrong way to think about God’s dealing with us. The focus of this story is not on how to earn a salary but on the generous reward of God. It is wrongheaded to bargain with God. We ought to enter into his service with gratitude that we have meaningful work to do and leave the ultimate reward with him. Jesus wants to treat both the first and the last as objects of his generous goodness.
36. (How do you react to the goodness of God?) Most of us are delighted—even thankful—when we sense his bounty in our lives. I suppose those men who worked for an hour and received a full day’s pay cheered the owner for his goodness. The test, however, is not how you respond to the goodness of God when it is showered on you but how you react when you see it displayed to others.
37. The owner asks, “Are you envious because I am good? Do you begrudge me my generosity to others?” In other words he asks, “Are you uptight because I have shown these other workers a measure of generosity they have not deserved? I haven’t given you less than you had coming to you, have I? You don’t suffer at all because I was openhanded in rewarding these other workers, do you? Are you begrudging me my right to give these other fellows more than they have earned?”
38. We respond, “Of course not, Lord. We’re delighted that you are generous to our friends—that’s very nice.” Yet all the time we are thinking, “Why not me? Why should my friends get to stand around all day when I have to sweat through the heat of the afternoon? Why do other Christians have it easier than I do? When do I get paid?”
39. Isn’t it usually when I see God do something out of the ordinary for a close friend or a colleague that I get upset with the way God has dealt with me? It’s then that I may ignore completely God’s goodness in my life, and in my heart I accuse God of being terribly unfair. When I have a contract mentality, that’s where I end up.
40. (What is the solution to this attitude? How do I keep from grumbling against the generosity of God? How do I keep from getting upset when God in his goodness allows the last to be first and the first to be last?)
41. The laborers were satisfied as long as they dealt with the owner alone. As long as they focused on the denarius and the work they were given, they were content. It was not until the others showed up and received their pay that the haggling broke out. Then envy set in. Isn’t it true that our angry feelings about God’s goodness start when we look at the other workers in the vineyard and decide what God should or should not do in their lives compared to what God has done for us?
42. As long as you concentrate on working for the owner of the vineyard to gather his crop, nothing else matters very much. If you understand that he has given you productive work to do and always rewards you out of his generous goodness, you will be satisfied. Realize your Lord doesn’t work on the marketplace system based on “the first will be first and the last last.” His goodness turns that system downside up. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Meister Eckhart, the mystic, understood this when he wrote, “The foundation of spiritual blessing is this—the soul looks to the goodness of God with nothing in between.”
43. Years ago when our son Torrey was ten or eleven, he came home early one Saturday afternoon from playing with his friends. His mother was frantically trying to get things ready for company that evening. Without being asked, Torrey got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the whole house. Bonnie told me about it when I got home. I usually paid the kids fifty cents for a job like that. When I asked Torrey what I owed him, he replied, “Dad, I just wanted to help.” I pulled out my wallet and gave him two dollars. He took it and said, “Dad, I like being in this family. You gave me more than I would have asked for and more than the job was worth!” He honored me more than he knew. Over thirty years have passed since that incident, but I’ve never forgotten it. How satisfying to have a son who loves you and pitches in and doesn’t take your generosity for granted.
Now let’s look at the sermon with a series of questions and answers.
What are the subject, the complement, and the exegetical idea of the passage?
Subject: Why is the system of payment reversed in the kingdom of heaven?
Complement: Because God deals with people not on the basis of merit but on the basis of his goodness and generosity.
Idea: In the kingdom of heaven God reverses the human system of wages because he deals with people not on the basis of merit but on the basis of his goodness and generosity.
Exegetical Observation: The parable elaborates on the enigmatic saying in Matthew 19:30, “But many who are first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Notice the for that opens chapter 20 and tells us that the parable elaborates on that statement. It is the idea of the parable.
What is the homiletical idea of the sermon?
I played with several statements that I might use:
“God works on an upside-down system of rewards.”
“Don’t work for God’s favor; accept it.”
“Work for God, not a wage.”
None of these stirred my imagination. I decided, therefore, to go with Jesus’s statement, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” People may have heard that statement because it is occasionally used in common speech, but most would have no idea about where it comes from or what it means. I decided that if I explained the saying, then when listeners heard it again it would bring the theological truth to mind.
What was the purpose of preaching this sermon?
My purpose was to have listeners respond positively to God’s goodness in their own lives and respond to it positively when they witnessed God’s goodness in the lives of others.
What is the need for this sermon?
Many Christians feel that God isn’t fair. Usually that comes from comparing how God has dealt with them to how God has dealt with others. That leads to envy, which rots the soul. Just as the Pharisees were upset when Jesus welcomed sinners, Christians can be upset when God’s goodness is shown to others. We can feel that we alone should be the special objects of his generosity.
Did the sermon have an outline?
Yes, the outline looked like this:
Introduction: It raises the question, “What’s going on in this parable?” (paragraphs 1–10)
1. We are tempted to get into a contract relationship with God. (paragraphs 11–23)
Jesus didn’t offer this parable as a model for settling wage disputes in the twenty-first century.
The parable is Jesus’s response to two men who wanted to arrange a contract with God.
A wealthy young man approached Jesus with a question about the details of a business deal to get eternal life.
Peter and the other disciples asked another question that assumed a contract relationship with God for the service they rendered.
We often ask questions that imply that we are in a contract negotiation with God.
Jesus rejected the basic premise of those questions, which is that God enters into a contract with us.
Jesus responded to Peter’s question with grace.
He could easily have made Peter feel guilty for bringing up the question of payment.
Jesus assured Peter that he and those like him would be fully paid for their service.
Then Jesus made the statement: BUT MANY WHO ARE FIRST WILL BE LAST, AND MANY WHO ARE LAST WILL BE FIRST (19:30). (This principle must be pivotal in our thinking. It tells us a basic lesson about how God deals with us.)
2. We will be rewarded not on the basis of our merit but on the basis of God’s goodness and generosity. (Look at what this story shows us.) (paragraphs 24–35)
Service in the vineyard itself is a gift from God.
The workers standing idle in the marketplace just before sundown were not “the idle rich.” They were “the idle poor.”
Jesus comes to the idle, the unemployed, the lost and offers us meaningful work to do in his vineyard.
There is great fulfillment in serving the Lord in his vineyard.
Contract service—legalism—loses track of the fulfillment of having productive work to do.
(A second thing this story tells us is:)
God’s goodness always determines his rewards.
The workers received unequal treatment, but it was never unjust treatment.
God in rewarding us always does so out of his great generosity.
Justice forms the background against which God’s goodness appears as goodness and not unfairness.
When God deals with us, he doesn’t want to give us wages; he wants to give us rewards.
(There is something else that comes clear to us in this story:)
We have no reason to want to strike a bargain in our dealings with God.
3. Only a Self-Absorbed Person Grumbles against God’s Goodness. (paragraphs 36–41)
(How do you react to God’s generosity and goodness?)
All of us appreciate God’s goodness to us and respond with appreciation to it in our lives.
The question that tests me, however, is “How do I react to the goodness of God when it is shown to others?”
All the workers were completely satisfied as long as they dealt with the vineyard owner alone.
Conclusion: Just as a father is honored by a son who works but doesn’t work out a “contract,” God is honored when we serve and leave the reward to him. (paragraphs 42–43)
What shape does this sermon take?
It is an inductive-deductive sermon. The idea doesn’t get stated until paragraph 22, which is well into the sermon. Once the idea is stated, it is briefly explained in paragraphs 23 and 24. Everything after that relates back to the idea and is deductive (as it always is when the idea is stated).
What types of supporting material have you used in the sermon?
There is a great deal of restatement throughout the sermon. It appears, for example, at the close of paragraphs 9, 10, 23, and 40 in the form of questions that form transitions from section to section. There is restatement that states again the idea of the previous section at the close of paragraph 30. All of paragraph 10 is basically restatement. That is true for paragraphs 17 and 37 as well.
There is also repetition throughout the sermon. (Remember restatement states the same thing in different words, and repetition says the same thing in the same words.) There’s a great deal of repetition in paragraphs 12–18 in order to focus on the question, “What’s in it for me?”
There is explanation in the sermon. Paragraph 11, for instance, explains the importance of the context. Part of paragraph 24 is an explanation of “the first will be last and the last first.” And paragraph 32 explains how all the workers in the parable were treated with justice.
There is only one quotation in the sermon. It is the quote by Meister Eckhart found in paragraph 42. I used it because it was a helpful insight and not to quote an authority. Most people would have no idea who Eckhart was.
The sermon contains narration. The opening eight paragraphs narrate the parable with some modern touches. Dialogue is a special type of narration, and it is sprinkled throughout the message. It’s in the conversation that Jesus had with Peter in paragraphs 19 and 20. It’s in the questions and answer in paragraphs 37 and 38.
Three formal illustrations support the sermon. There is a brief illustration-quote from the Tartar tribes found in paragraph 30. (That is the only one that came from my files.) The other illustrations I used are personal. There is a brief illustration of a friend who lost his job in paragraph 26, and the sermon ends with a longer anecdote about my son in the final paragraph that I used to sum up the central idea.
What about the introduction to the sermon?
An effective introduction should accomplish three objectives. It gets attention, it surfaces a need, and it orients the audience to the body of the sermon. I tried to do that. (You can judge whether I was successful.)
The opening statement, “Jesus made a wise midcareer adjustment,” was designed to get attention. Most people don’t think of Jesus having a “career” or changing jobs.
I also tried to create need based on an appeal to curiosity. I tried to tell the parable so that listeners would ask, “What’s that all about? The whole thing doesn’t seem fair. Why would Jesus ever approve of an arrangement like that?” If it works, it is because the listeners are saying to themselves, “He’s got some explaining to do this morning!”
In spite of the old adage that “curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back again,” I know that simply satisfying curiosity won’t change lives. Later in the sermon, in paragraphs 13–16, I tried to surface a deeper, more personal need. Many people feel that God doesn’t treat them fairly. That’s the fundamental need this parable addresses, but I didn’t know how to get at it directly. That’s why I started with curiosity.
While I oriented people to the Scripture passage from the start, I oriented them to the body of the sermon in paragraphs 9 and 10 by raising the question, “Why did Jesus tell this story?” Because this sermon takes an inductive, rather than a deductive, development, I didn’t orient listeners to the central idea or even to the subject of the sermon. Instead, I oriented them to the first movement in the message.
How about the conclusion? What were you trying to do there?
A strong conclusion brings a sermon to “a burning focus” on the great idea of the sermon. The congregation should be brought back to the concept again and feel its weight and think of its implications. I attempted to do that in two ways. First, in paragraph 42 I summarized what I had been driving at throughout the sermon. I used the quote from Meister Eckhart to repeat the main idea in a fresh way. Then in the closing illustration about my son, I tried to get listeners to feel how God regards our positive response to his goodness.
To sum it up: Strong sermons should be bifocal. They must focus on the idea and the development of the text. Yet they must also focus on the listener. Through bifocal preaching, those who hear come to understand and experience what the eternal God has to say to them today.