It’s a free world

Matthew 20:1-16

You can get the pdf file here, print it out and read it over a coffee!

Imagine your workplace

The average office or factory, school or hospital is a pretty hierarchical place. The communities at work can be run on almost tribal lines with a rigid pecking order and a legalistic atmosphere – step out of line and you are going to be unpopular!

So here is a case-study:

Imagine you work in an office with a mixed workforce of full time and part time staff. Some work 8 hours a week, others work 20, you are full time. Now imagine the day after pay-day; a dreadful piece of news spreads around the office; the full timers have been paid as usual but the part timers have been paid the same amount! Discuss this: how would the other full timers feel? How would the part timers feel?

We will write the words that describe your reactions on a flipchart.

Imagine a Kingdom where the normal rules don’t apply…

Matthew 20:1-16

The punch-line says it all, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first”: in the Kingdom of Heaven things do not work the way you would expect them to!

What is this about, and what is the kingdom like? Three words express the key ideas in the parable:

The kingdom is about equality

The kingdom is about Justice

The kingdom is about grace

Equality – social accidents give you no advantage

Normally, the guys who made it early to the marketplace were hired for a day, the rest were late and lost out. Jesus story tells us that this is not how the kingdom works.

Imagine two people. One is brought up in a well off home, goes to a nice school, has nice mates and does well at college. He is a nice guy! The other is born to parents who neglect him; he does badly at school, falls in with the wrong crowd and starts a life of crime as a teenager. Bump into this second person and he will not strike you as nice, you will probably feel the opposite!

How do these two people get into heaven? Religion says that if you live a good life then you will go to heaven, if you live a bad life you won’t. So the nice boy has a better chance than the guy who had few chances. Their accident of birth gives them a spiritual advantage.

What did Jesus say? Everyone had the chance to earn a days wage – even if they arrived at the square after the first wave of workers. Social accidents do not determine you spiritual chances. This is why salvation is by faith and not by good works – the nice guys and the bad guys all get the same chance!

Of course, this only works if they both get to hear the message of the gospel… what a pity if Gods generosity is stymied by our inactivity!

The kingdom of God is open to all.

Justice – no-one should go hungry

This story is based on an annual event in Israel; gathering in the grape harvest. The grapes ripen at the end of September and the autumn rains arrive soon after: there is a race against time to get the grapes in before the harvest is ruined. The men in the marketplace were desperate for work – even slaves had a steady supply of food but these men depended on being hired each day. Failure to secure a day’s pay was a disaster and their families would go hungry.

A denarius was the going rate for a day in the vineyards and it was just enough to feed a family for a day, no-one saved much on a denarius a day. Some of us in the room remember when life was like that in the north east of England.

The Landowner had made a decision: that no-one would go hungry while he had anything to do with it! There is an old hymn which goes like this:

The King of Love my Shepherd is,

whose goodness faileth never,

I nothing lack of I am his,

and He is mine forever.

The landowner was overcome with generosity towards those families who would go hungry if the men came home with half a wage-packet. The day-long workers got justice and the part timers received a just wage too. This passion for justice lies very close to God’s heart:

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Psalm 103:6

As the kingdom of God gets a hold of people, societies change through their salt-and-light influence; righteousness and justice take centre stage in public discourse.

So you have in this story a little illustration of this. Wonderful though this is, it is not the main point of the story: this is…

Grace… we get what we don’t deserve!

Here’s a question: how many of Jesus’ stories feature angry or very irritated people? The parable of the lost son certainly does, when the older brother goes ballistic at his dad for accepting his kid brother back. And this story, when the workers are outraged at the farmer’s behaviour; “You have made them equal to us!” Both stories teach the same thing – that God is outrageously generous towards those who do not deserve it.

Look at the words you used in the case study and see what I mean: You felt outrage, injustice, anger: the part timers felt smug, uneasy, guilty.

What was the landowner’s motive (15)? It was generosity. But generosity can be the most unsettling thing to experience – some people find it hard to receive, others find it hard to witness – all those emotions surface in these edgy parables.

You see, we all think we should earn what we have. Nothing wrong with that but in the Kingdom of Heaven it works differently. In the Bible we are told that “The wages of sin is death”, so you earn the inevitable, you deserve it because you have put in the sin and earned the reward.

Some reward! But this parable tells us that whe wages of grace (tho wages paid up by a generous God) is to find ourselves at the receiving end of God’s phenomenal generosity… we get what we don’t deserve:

We deserve death but we get… the faithful love of a Father who loves us.

We deserve death but we get… the lifeblood of the Son of God poured out for us to pay for our sin.

We deserve death but we get… the gift of the Holy Spirit to bring us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control.

We deserve death but we don’t get what we deserve!

That’s grace.

Summary

Here’s a parable packed with meaning!

  • The kingdom of God is open to all – do the people around you know that?
  • The kingdom of God brings justice – are you finding ways to express that?
  • The kingdom of God is driven by God’s outrageous generosity – have you sold him how grateful you are?