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Sermon for Sunday, September 21st, 2008

Sermon Theme: The first are last and last are first.  

Sermon Notes: This sermon is based on Matthew 20:1-16. These sermons are always works in progress. Please look past any grammatical flaws or loose phrasing. We at Ebenezer hope you enjoy them in the Spirit which they were written. Peace in Christ, Pastor Joshua Haugen.

Today the Lord Jesus Christ confronts us with another parable. And parables can be confusing, but as we try to understand this parable we must remember that in the kingdom of God everything works in reverse. Here, in this parable:  

             The first are last and the last are first. 

So the parable begins: "The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard." Christ likes the location of a vineyard. We in North Carolina are becoming more and more used to seeing those little vineyard signs as we drive through Yadkin valley. This is helpful because it helps us understand vineyards as a place of beauty, as a place of rich earth, and as a place of bounty.

This is why the Lord time and time again uses the vineyard as a description of His church. In Isaiah chapter 5 he makes it very clear everything He has done for His people. It describes His love as he constructed the wall and prepared the ground and did everything necessary for growth. This reminds us of everything He has done for His church. How He has lovingly given us His word. How He has lovingly given us His sacraments. How He has loving given us Pastor's like Pastor Dan and musicians like Jason, and choirs, and covered dish, and Sunday School, and bible studies and LWML and LLL and all our groups and everything else. So we are living in the Lord's vineyard and it is truly a marvelous place.

The point of the beginning of this text is that the Lord is very concerned that His vineyard has workers. So the text says that the master of the house went out not just in the morning, not just around 9 o'clock or 10ish; he went out early in the morning. He was concerned that not a moment of sunlight be lost on his Church, His vineyard.

This first crowd that He hires they actually haggle about wages. And they all agree to a denarius a day. A denarius was the traditional day's wage. It was the day's wage of a soldier. So it wasn't spectacular but it wasn't bad either. This first group agreed to it. This is the part of the parable that the crowd, who heard it, would have understood very clearly. Christ has described the normal order of business for a master of a vineyard in that day and age.  

But here is where the story gets a little stranger. The master of the house goes back out around the 3^rd hour. This would be right about in the middle of the morning. This would have seemed a little strange to folks but what it would have said to them, and says to us as well, was that the master was overly concerned with making sure that his vineyard was fully staffed. But then the master goes back out again around the sixth hour, which would have been around noon, and then again in the middle of the afternoon. This searching of individuals so late in the day would have been surprising to the listener.

But then the master of the house does something truly amazing. He goes back out one more time around the eleventh hour, when there was only one more working hour in the day, and he finds more folks to hire. When He finds them He even asks them why have they been so lazy? Of course they answer back well no one has hired us. But this answer is a miserable excuse. It would have been a pitiful one to the hearer of that day and age. All these folks had to do was go to the market place and wait to be hired, and we know they weren't there because the Master of the vineyard had been to the market place not once, or twice, but now five times.

What we see in these workers is ourselves. The first group haggles and doesn't trust the master. The next groups have all reluctantly been brought to the work of the vineyard. They have drug their feet. The only difference between the groups is by degree. The peoples' reluctance is contrasted with the unabated love of our heavenly Father. Often different philosophers will try to convict God and say how unloving the Christian God is because He threatens to send people to hell. They say a truly loving God would just let everyone in.

But what we see in our Heavenly Father is not a God who wants workers outside of His vineyard. Instead we see a God who comes not just in the morning and says okay I got some folks for my church that is good enough. No, instead He comes in the morning, the later morning, the noon hour, He comes in the early afternoon, later afternoon, and finally at the very close of the day.

Our heavenly Father through His Gospel message never stops calling the world to Himself and too His church. He does not delight in the idle who stand in the alleyways of the world outside His blessed vineyard. He wants as many as possible to be brought in. So time and time again in the Old Testament He sent his prophets. In the New Testament He sent his apostles. Even today He sends out His Gospel message to a dying world. And He even sends His people who through their daily vocations are a light to the world.

This often is what really bothers me is that some people say well unless you are actively a church worker or a part of some organization, or leading some Christian band that you are not helping the Gospel. Being a worker in the vineyard of the Lord definitely means coming here and receiving the good gifts that the Lord has given you. It definitely includes Sunday School, bible study, the choir, and our service events.

But it also includes being a faithful parent, being a faithful child, working well in your career, working well in school, and generally being a light through word and deed in whatever you do. The reason this is so important is that a pastor can only talk to just so many people and he can only know about just so many folks. But all the folks that you come into contact with and who you deal with are infinitely larger.

Every now and again a college student will come up to me and say I am really torn about what to do because I don't know whether I should go to seminary and become a pastor or a deaconess or whether I should do something else. Am I letting God down if I choose one over the other? I always respond, the vineyard still needs faithful lawyers, and faithful accountants, and faithful teachers, and faithful mechanics, and faithful construction workers, and faithful... fill in the blank for your own career, because through you and through an infinite number of other means which we never see and never understand on this side of heaven does the love of our heavenly father reach out to people in the early morning, in the 3^rd, sixth, ninth and even eleventh hours of the day.

And then evening came in Christ's parable and the true reversals started to begin. First, the foreman, Christ is giving out the gifts of His heavenly Father. What the Father wants is the first who worked all day to go last. This would have seemed strange to the ears of Christ's listeners as it seems strange to us. Then the truly amazing thing occurs. He gives from the least to the greatest the same amount.

The first workers grumble, just like the Israelites grumbled in the wilderness and the people grumbled around Jesus. This just isn't fair compared to human standards. People should get paid for what they deserve, right! Of course they grumbled. They should get more then the folks who didn't even break a sweat, after-all they were working all day long, outside, in the North Carolina heat.

But here we come into the true radical nature of Christ and His church. Christ simply responds, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius a day." Even that word "Friend" is a loaded word. Christ never calls his disciples friend. He may call them brother. He may call them disciple, servant, children of the heavenly Father but never friend. The only other living person he ever calls friend is Judas Iscariot when Judas meets him to betray Him. Then He says, "Friend... do what you came to do."

So by this simple word Christ tells us that the ones grumbling are not friends but instead they are concerned with only themselves. For the radical nature of the church is that all who come all receive the same gifts of Christ. We all receive Christ's forgiveness. We all receive the same amount. When it comes to forgiveness it doesn't matter if you were brought to Christ late in life or as a baby. It doesn't matter if you had a rebellious stint or whether you had the joy of never wandering away. For Christ does not look at your tally sheet and say well you only were a Christian for ten years hence you receive ten years of forgiveness but the other forty you still have to work off.

No, when it comes to Christ and His gifts he simply says, "I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" Since, Christ died for all the sins of the world He truly has the right to give out forgiveness and complete forgiveness to all who He brings into His vineyard.

So the last will be first and first last in Christ's church. What those first workers didn't like about this concept was they thought the more they worked the more important they should be than everyone else. They thought they should have gotten a special measure of the master's gifts. Really, the opposite is true. The more we work in God's vineyard the more of a servant we all become. And hence when people look at Pastor Dan what you so often do not see is an authoritarian leader, but instead you see a servant.

So those people and thoughts that come in and try to inject authority and power into the church are wrong from the start. You cannot inject the world into the vineyard. It simply won't go. For at this place the longer you work in the field the more of a servant you become. The more you serve, the more you work, the more you are blessing to all around you.

This message of the first will be last and the last will be first is so important to us today. In a world were we see economies tipping and instability at the gas pumps and war abroad, it is easy to become worried and to even despair. But we must always remember the marketplace is built on the first are first and the last are last and that philosophy always eventually tumbles and falls. But Christ's vineyard where the first are last and the last lifted up to be first has survived multiple empires, multiple difficulties, and it will survive until Christ returns.

So let us not grow tried of our wages, the forgiveness of sins, and all the good things that Christ gives us. Let us not grow tried of serving the Lord, and working in His vineyard because the time comes when we will see our Lord face to face and where he will not call us a friend, but say, "well done good and faithful servant." Because in heaven only those who have been made last, who have been buried with Christ, are made first in life everlasting. Amen.