Forestdale Community Church
Title: “Parables: The Workers in the Vineyard”
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
This summer we have been preaching on some the parables
of Jesus,
-and specifically, at some of the more baffling ones Jesus
told.
Today’s parable is about workers in a vineyard harvesting
grapes, and it’s found in the Gospel of Matthew, 20:1-16.
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So imagine with me for a minute that we are out in the Napa
Valley of California and it’s late September.
Andy Beckstoffer is the owner of Beckstoffer Wineries, and
the founding director of the Napa Valley Grape Growers
Association.
He and his family own about 1000 acres of grape vines and
every fall they need to be harvested.
And when that harvest time comes in late September and
early October,
-Mr. Beckstoffer knows that he is going to need a lot more
hired hands than those he’s already got.
So maybe we can imagine him getting up in the early morning
-and getting one of his underlings to drive into town in the
old school bus he bought for just this purpose.
-He tells his guy to hire a bunch of Mexican day-laborers at
the parking lot where they gather at this time of year to help
with the grape harvesting.
Mr. Beckstoffer doesn’t know if they are legal or illegal
immigrants.
-He needs grape pickers, and he isn’t asking questions.
-He tells his guy to offer the workers $300 a piece for a good
day’s work.
So that’s what his guy does. He drives into town, and makes
the offer, and fills the school bus with migrant workers.
-The workers that are hired are happy about the job and the
pay.
-They gladly climb into the bus and consider themselves
the lucky ones to have been chosen for the job.
-So off they go with smiles on their faces, waving proudly to
the guys left behind without work.
When they get to the vineyard, Mr. Beckstoffer assigns them
to their work teams in various parts of the vineyard,
-and they get busy harvesting grapes.
-However, by midmorning, it becomes apparent that
-this year’s harvest is so good,
-and the vines are so loaded with ripe grapes,
-that Mr. Beckstoffer is going to need even more hands to
get them all harvested.
So he sends his guy back into town on the bus.
-And he hires another team of guys, promising them he’ll
pay top dollar for their labor for the hours they work.
-They, too, are glad to get the work, and off they go.
Well, as the day wears on, this happens a couple of more
times to get more workers: at noon, and again at 3:00pm.
Finally, an hour before quitting time, Mr. Beckstoffer can see
that it’s just possible he could get the whole harvest in…
…if he could just hire a few more workers.
-So he sends his guy back into town one final time.
Now as you can imagine, the only laborers who are left at this
late hour are the usual group of losers.
-These are guys that no one wanted to hire.
-And there they are drinking cheap Mexican beer, and
playing cards, and wasting time.
But at this point, the guy doesn’t care, and he knows Mr.
Beckstoffer doesn’t care.
-They’re only needed for an hour or two.
-So he offers them a chance to make some quick money.
And they think, “Hey, it’s only for an hour or two.
-Maybe we can make enough to buy another six pack.”
-So they accept the job and off they go together.
Well, what would you think if come quitting time, this is what happens:
-The guys are all hanging around waiting for their pay,
and they’re talking amongst themselves in Spanish.
And the guys who were hired late ask the guys who were
hired first what the owner had offered to pay them.
-And those early bird hard workers say, “He offered us
$300 bucks for the day, man.”
And the guys say, “Wow, that’s about $30 bucks an hour,
pretty good pay,”
-and they all start doing the math trying to figure out what
they can expect to be paid for how ever many
hours each of them worked.
But while they’re all trying to figure out the math, Andy
Beckstoffer has a surprise for them.
He is so happy that all his grapes have been harvested,
-that he has already opened a bottle of his 2011 Caberney
Sauvignon and has had a glass in celebration.
So he is a feeling pretty good as he goes to pay his day
workers.
-And he begins with the shiftless losers that he hired last,
and starts handing out their envelopes.
-And when they begin opening them, what do they find?
-Their envelopes each have three crisp $100 bills in
them.
Well, their eyes light up, and they wave them around, and
start dancing in celebration themselves.
And the same thing happens with the guys who were hired at
3:00 in the afternoon,
-They open up their envelopes and find three crisp $100 bills.
-And the same with the guys hired at noon.
And not one of them says, “Excuse me, Mr. Beckstoffer, but I
think you must have made a mistake.
-You’ve given us the wrong envelopes.”
No. They say, “Adios Amigos!” and are off to town in a flash
to spend their money.
But the guys who were hired first thing in the morning,
-they’re thinking, “Hey, if those guys all got paid $300 bucks
and they only worked in the afternoon and evening,
-then we’re probably going to get even more than the
$300 bucks we were offered when we hired on this
morning.
So how do they feel when they get paid last, and open their
envelopes and find the three crisp $100 bills,
-just like all the others?
They are not so happy, are they?
-They’re the ones who go up to Mr. Beckstoffer and have
something to say.
-They’re the ones who think there must be some mistake.
-They’re the ones who start grousing about the unfairness of
the way he runs his business.
But Andy Beckstoffer says, “Hey, guys, what’s it to you what I
pay anyone else?
-This morning didn’t I offer you $300 for a good days work?
-And this morning didn’t you think that sounded like a good
deal?
-And this morning weren’t you proud to have been chosen
for a job that would make you $300 in a day?
“So you worked the day, and got your money.
-Why are your noses out of joint?
-If I want to give the other guys that same amount, what’s it
to you?
-I felt like celebrating a great harvest.
-In fact, I still do. You want a try a glass of my 2011
Cab?”
But the workers refuse his offer, and stomp off wanting
nothing more to do with Mr. Beckstoffer.
-They say, “Adios,” but with an attitude.
And so would we!
But Jesus ends the parable saying, “So the first will be last
and the last will be first.”
This is another of Jesus’ rather baffling stories, isn’t it?
-It goes against the grain of the way we think.
-It goes against our assumptions of what is fair and right.
That’s because it’s a parable about this funny attribute of God
called “grace.”
But what’s funny about grace is that it looks like an
extravagant and undeserved gift for the guys hired last in
the story.
But it looks like an unfair kind of judgment for those hard
working guys who were hired first, doesn’t it?
-They go off hurt and mad at the end, and don’t feel good
about the grace that was bestowed at all.
You see, grace is funny that way.
-It’s a wonderful thing when we receive it undeservedly.
-But there’s something within all of us humans, which is often
not so thrilled when we see other people given grace.
-Especially when they are people we think “really don’t
deserve it,”
-like those last guys hired in the parable.
But everywhere Jesus went during the three years of his
ministry in Palestine,
-he preached the grace and mercy of the Kingdom of God.
-And He brought that grace to all kinds of people in the form of
-healing for the sick,
-sight for the blind, restoring the skin of lepers,
-forgiving tax collectors and sinners and wanton women for
their obvious sins.
But guess what? Everywhere he went, Jesus aroused the
anger of the good religious people.
-They were not thrilled to see the grace of God being
bestowed freely and generously on sinners and tax
collectors and wanton women and undeserving men.
They could not understand how Jesus, as a Rabbi, could
hang out with and bestow this kind of grace upon
such unworthy, ir-religious and unreliable people.
The religious people felt just like those migrant workers in the
vineyard who had worked hard all day in the hot sun.
They felt they had been serving God faithfully and reliably
and responsibly all these years.
-Who did this Jesus think he was to start giving away all the
blessings of the Kingdom of God to people
who done nothing their whole lives to deserve it.
It just wasn’t fair. And it made them angry.
-Angry enough to hang that Jesus out to dry himself.
Have you ever felt like that?
-I mean, how do many good law-abiding American citizens
feel about illegal Central American immigrants trying to gain
access to the blessings of our country at the moment?
There’s a lot of angry Americans at the moment claiming it is
just not fair that:
-they are taking our jobs,
-and taking advantage of our welfare system,
-and taking advantage of our health care systems,
-and not paying taxes.
-And the list goes on and on.
There’s a lot of talk about fairness, and the rule of law.
-And fairness and the rule of law are good things.
-No one is saying they are not.
But Jesus says there is something about the Kingdom of God
that is above “fairness” and beyond “law,”
-and is not about one’s “rights” or what one “deserves.”
-And this parable says pretty clearly that what that
something is, is the generous grace of God.
-The master of the vineyard is unbelievably generous!
He is generous above and beyond all the bounds of fairness.
-He lavishes His blessing on every worker who came into his
vineyard to join in the harvest.
-It doesn’t matter when they came, how long they worked,
how hard they worked, how responsible or reliable they
were.
And some people see the generosity of the Master and delight
in it.
-Others see the generosity of the Master and grouse about
it.
-And I know that I personally need to be careful when I find
myself grousing about the generosity of God to people
that I don’t think deserve it.
In fact, at the end of verse 15 when the Master of the vineyard
says to the workers hired first,
“Are you envious because I am generous?”
The Greek literally says, “Is your eye evil because I am
good?”
-That’s the Greek idiom.
-Do you know that “evil eye?” Or some people call it the
“stink eye.”
-It’s that eye that is always keeping score,
-always judging others, looking askance at the behaviors
of others,
-always making a determination about who is deserving
of blessing and who is deserving of curses.
Jesus says in this parable, “Don’t fix your eyes on what
everyone else is doing, or what anyone else is getting.
-Fix your eyes on the master of the vineyard, who is
incredibly generous.
-Look at his lavish generosity to YOU, to all of us!
-And ask him to take that stink-eye, and turn it into a
wide-eyed smile.
For in the Kingdom of God, Jesus says, it’s not about
-earning our way in
-or deserving a place, or getting what we are owed.
In fact, if the Kingdom of God were about getting what we
were all owed,
-we would all get God’s judgment.
But because of the goodness and abundant kindness and
generosity of God,
-in Jesus Christ we are given forgiveness and grace and
mercy.
-And there’s not one of us who has received that grace and
mercy from God,
-who can look down our noses at someone else and say,
“Why should the master extend kindness to her?”
“She doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”
No. None of us deserves to be forgiven in Jesus Christ.
-But because of God’s amazing generosity, it is available to us
all.
We need to be so thankful that God doesn’t treat us fairly.
-He doesn’t treat us as our own sins deserve.
-He treats us mercifully, and graciously, and as this parable
says, generously.
And He does so whether our particular sin is of the lazy,
irresponsible, last-person-hired type,
-or whether our sin is of the first-one-hired, hard working,
proud, self-righteous type.
In Jesus, God gathered up all of our sins and nailed them to
the cross.
-And he has invited all of us to come to his party,
-and share in his joy of the harvest
-and join in a glass of His Cabernet Sauvignon at the
wedding feast of the Lamb.
-At the end of the day he wants us all to rejoice and be glad
-that the master was so gracious to have chosen us sinners
to be a part of the harvest at all.
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