Text: Matthew 20:1-16 Proper 20
SN: 0030 09/24/23
That’s So Unfair
There are many days that I will be sitting at my house enjoying a quiet cup of coffee, and the silence will be shattered by an ear-splitting cry of, “That’s not fair! You’re cheating!” Both of my boys love video games and are very competitive, so when they feel like they are not being treated fairly, they make a big deal out of it. Or I’ll be sitting in the stands at a sporting event and hear cries of “Come on, ref,” or “Hey, that’s a foul!” And before I give the impression that I am not guilty of the same thing, I’m pretty sure that in a little bit, when I’m watching the Packers, I will be making the same complaints.
Why do we do these things? I think it’s because we are wired to want things to be fair. We want things to be equal. We don’t like it when people cheat. And we especially don’t like it when we feel that others are being given an unfair advantage. You even see this concept in some of our legal symbolism. This morning, I have a picture of Lady Justice. She represents our ideal of justice: it is blind (so she can’t show favoritism) and with even and fair scales that will judge things equally. This is how we want to be judged, fairly and equally. As humans, we have a natural desire to be judged based on our actions. We want to be rewarded for doing good, and while we don’t want to be punished for doing wrong, we understand that evil deserves punishment.
This natural tendency is one of the reasons we struggle with the parable of the workers. This story doesn’t sound fair to us because we can easily put ourselves in the shoes of the workers who were hired first. The vineyard owner went out early in the morning to hire workers. He promised to pay them a fair wage for their day of work, to which they agreed. This would have been a 12-hour shift doing hard manual labor in his vineyard. He then went out at 9, 12, and 3. Finally, he went out at 5 and hired a few more workers to help for the last hour. At the end of the day, he instructed his foreman to pay each worker, starting with the last one hired. They were paid one denarius, so the workers hired first assumed they would get more, even though that’s the sum they agreed to.
Let’s put this in a modern context. Imagine you’ve worked at a factory or a store for years. Your boss hires new workers and starts paying them the same amount of money you make. He’s not doing this to slight you; he just wants to be generous to the new workers. How would you feel? You’d most likely demand a raise or look for a different job. So, we understand the frustration of the workers who worked the whole day and received the same pay as those who only worked one hour. But what does the vineyard owner say? He says I have not been unfair, “I paid you the wage you agreed to; I have simply chosen to be generous to all those I hired to work in my vineyard and pay them the same amount of money.”
In this parable, Jesus is not giving us an example of how we should manage a business. He tells his disciples this parable to correct their misunderstanding about the kingdom of heaven. Just before this, a rich young man had come to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus replied that to be saved, he must keep the commandments. The rich young man responded that he had done this. Jesus then answered that he needed to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. The rich young man went away sad because he realized this was something that he was not willing to do. Jesus’s point was that God is not concerned with our outward actions but with the attitude of the heart.
The rich young man loved his possessions more than he loved God. When the disciples saw this interaction, they were amazed. Peter then had the idea that because they had given up everything to follow Christ, this made them better than the rich young man. Jesus responded that it is true that those who love God and put him first in their lives will receive the gift of eternal life. This does not make one group of Christians better than another. The parable of the workers illustrates the truth that God does not deal with us fairly in matters of faith. When it comes to salvation, God does not deal with
us fairly; he deals with us graciously. And when we start examining this concept, we realize that the idea of God dealing with us fairly should fill us with terror and dread.
Because of our sinful natures, it is very easy for us to want to compare ourselves to others. It’s very easy to fall into the same attitude as workers vineyard. We know we have toiled long and hard in the Lord’s vineyard. We want to receive more than those who have not worked as hard as we have. We want to think that we are better than others in God's eyes. We like to be able to look at others and say, “While it’s true that I am a sinner, at least I’m not as bad of a sinner as those people over there.” Or do we want to be like Jonah, sitting under his vine and lamenting that God is not destroying the wicked as they deserve? We want our God to be just. We want him to punish the wicked and reward those who do the most good. This satisfies our innate desire for justice and fairness. But the point of Jesus’s parable is that in matters of faith, we should not be comparing ourselves to others. God does not judge us by comparing us with others; he judges us according to the standard of his holy law: "So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
And how do we measure up to that standard? We have failed. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” When we view our lives and our conduct against the standard of God’s holy law or even just against the 10 Commandments, we realize that we are sinners. We understand how foolish it is to want God to deal with us according to his justice. If God dealt with us fairly, he would punish us as our sins deserve. He would condemn us to eternal death, for the wages of sin is death.
This is the point of the parable. It doesn’t matter how long or how hard we work. We can do nothing to earn our salvation. God gives us salvation as a free gift. “Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Think about it this way: Adam faithfully served the Lord for 930 years, Abraham faithfully served the Lord for 175 years; after his conversion, the Apostle Paul served the Lord for about 30 years, and the thief on the cross was a believer for only a few hours, and yet they all received the same reward: salvation.
From a purely human standpoint, this does not seem fair, and yet this is how God deals with us in grace. In order to save us, God did something that was incredibly unfair. He punished his one and only Son in our place. Think of the life that Christ lived for you. Jesus never sinned. He lived his life in complete obedience to the will of the Father. He kept every commandment. He never failed to show love and mercy to others. He did nothing that deserved punishment. And yet, what did God do? He punished Jesus for our sins and the sins of the whole world. Christ willingly offered his perfect life as payment for the entire world's sins. He took all our sins on himself and paid for them with his life.
This is the great injustice of our salvation. Instead of being punished for our sins, Christ was punished in our place. By his death, he made full and complete payment for all of our sins and gives us forgiveness as a free and gracious gift. By his resurrection, he defeated the power of death and hell so that we could receive the reward of eternal life with him. This is the generous gift that our Father in heaven gives to us. We are paid the wage of salvation because our God is generous and not because we have done anything to earn or deserve that gift. This is not fairness; this is not justice; this is pure grace.
As we consider the parable of the workers, we are tempted to sympathize with those workers who felt that they were being treated unfairly. We must daily struggle against that tendency to compare ourselves to others and think that we deserve more from God. We instead place ourselves in the place of the workers who received a full day's wages for only a little work. We understand that because we are sinners, we don’t deserve any reward but only the wrath and punishment of God. But we also know that our Savior has paid for our sins. We are forgiven! We have been born again through the waters of baptism and washed in the blood of the Lamb. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, we remember
that we have been redeemed in Christ. God did not need to give us anything, but in his love, he gave us salvation. This is the truth and joy that we cling to every day of our lives. This is the hope and confidence we have that we have been fully and completely forgiven in Christ.
Dear friend, we love to have things be fair. We value justice and want to be treated equally in all things. But our God doesn’t deal with us fairly. Grace isn’t fair. Grace is a merciful and undeserved gift given to us through Christ. If God dealt with us according to his justice, we would be lost. But God has dealt with us through his love and mercy. He has removed our sins in Christ, so when we are tempted to wonder why others have received the same reward, we remember that we have been saved not by our own efforts but by Christ.