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In the parable recounted in Matthew 20:1-16, the owner of the vineyard wasn’t under obligation to employ the particular workers he hired at the first, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours.
He could have gone to a neighboring town and rounded up some laborers from there. So, they were hired by his choice, by his grace, as a favor. Clearly no one else was hiring, so working in His vineyard was a privilege, a gift, not deserved by the workers.
But the parable points beyond the realm of the workplace and economy. It is really about the Kingdom of God. The Lord is the one who seeks out, finds and chooses His laborers, and then He puts them to work in His vineyard. Here is how the parable applies to our lives: The Lord is the owner of the whole world, the Creator of the universe and of you in particular, and so it is impossible for you to deserve anything, since this world and your life are totally gifts from God. And then consider that we are sinners, who have rebelled against God and are by nature children of the devil, Eph 2:3, and the only conclusion we can reach is that we are not worthy in the slightest to be hired into the Lord’s vineyard, His Kingdom. For our sin, we all deserve nothing but eternal damnation in hell. “The wages of sin is death,” wrote St. Paul. And that is why we desperately cry out the Lord for deliverance from our guilt, for forgiveness and salvation, “Lord, have mercy!”
But even before we cry out, God the Father has already answered in His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, born of the Virgin Mary, our Lord. As St. Paul writes in Romans, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life,” Romans 5:8-10).
Christ died for us sinners — that means that He died in your place, under the punishment that your sins have deserved. Instead of treating you as your sins have deserved by condemning you to eternal death in hell, God treated Jesus as your sins deserve by pouring out His wrath against the sin of the world upon Jesus on the cross. Instead of punishing you for breaking His Law, God takes the perfect obedience of Jesus and credits it to your account. He takes the wages that Jesus earns and gives them to you for nothing. Instead of letting you be drowned in eternal death, God baptizes you into the death and resurrection of Jesus so that you are saved by His resurrected life, not by anything you have done.
Now does any of that sound fair? No way! Not to our worldly way of figuring things out, but God’s ways are higher than our ways, and it’s a good thing that He isn’t fair by our standards. If we got what is fair, what we deserve, we would be doomed. So, we give thanks to the Lord that His goodness and mercy trumps our standards of justice; His loving kindness accomplishes justice for us by Christ’s perfect obedience to the Law and His saving, bloody death; and He generously pours out forgiveness of sins and righteousness in the Word and Sacraments, by which He hires you into His Kingdom, His vineyard.
This is where the parable really starts for you, since in Baptism you have been hired on as permanent workers in the Lord’s vineyard, to serve in His Church and in your day-to-dayvocations as His child. Oh, perhaps you were hired at 6 a.m. in infant Baptism and you have labored for 80 or 90 years in the Lord’s vineyard. Or, perhaps the Holy Spirit brought you to faith later in life, at the eleventh hour. But, the point of this parable is that in God’s Kingdom, no one is before or after, the last and the first are treated the same, with the same incredibly generous gift of everlasting life in Christ Jesus.
And if you haven’t “hired on” in Jesus’ Kingdom yet, there’s still time, so repent and be baptized, trusting in your gracious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who assures you of His free grace and favor, that He has done everything to save you: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Amen.
