Parents can relate to the experience all too well. Mom or dad hasn’t yet made up their mind about whether or not dessert is on the menu for the night. Maybe it depends on how supper goes. Maybe the decision is based on how much junk food the kids have already had over the course of the day. Whatever the criteria, the kids pester with the same question all day – “Can we have dessert?” “Are we having dessert?” “Have you decided if we’re having dessert?” “So, how about dessert?” Finally, the joyous declaration resounds throughout the house, “Yes, we shall feast on dessert this evening.” And, as you would expect, cheers ring out and words of gratitude pour forth from the lips of the children. Only… that doesn’t happen. Instead it sounds like this: “He got more than I did!” “She got a bigger piece!” “We didn’t all get the same amount – it’s not fair!” What should be expressions of gratitude and thanks are instead replaced by outbursts of inequality and charges of unfairness. Parents wonder if their children will ever outgrow this phase.
But at some point it becomes obvious – or should, at least; we don’t ever outgrow that phase, do we? We spend our entire lives being concerned about the very same thing – making sure that everything is fair and that everyone gets the same or at least no more than they deserve. We find other ways to belt out the adult version of “It’s not fair!” It’s not fair that I got a speeding ticket and that other guy back there going fast enough to zip past me doesn’t get pulled over. It’s not fair that I always get picked for jury duty and she never does. It’s not fair that they got their food first when we ordered before they did. This isn’t fair. That’s not fair. It’s not fair.
“It’s not fair” had the hired hands up in arms in Jesus’ parable, too. It just wasn’t right in their minds. Person A who showed up at the crack of dawn and worked all day long should earn more than Person B who strolled in at the tail end of the work day. That’s how it is supposed to work. That’s fair. And it would be fair if this was a parable to teach us about economics. But, like all of Jesus’ parables as we’ll see the rest of this month, their purpose is not to provide some temporal takeaway, but to provide spiritual insight that gives us a clearer picture both of who God is and who we are. Our parable today achieves both.
Jesus introduces this parable using what for him is a typical introduction: something “is like” this or that. He is clarifying that what he’s about to say is not a literal occurrence or an actual historical event, but rather a story that is intended to illustrate a particular point or teaching. In this case, he is explaining what “the kingdom of heaven is like” (v.1). What is “the kingdom of heaven,” exactly? It is one way that Jesus reminds us that our sense of belonging in this world – a family name, a town in which we were brought up, or citizenship in a certain country, for example – is vastly different than what it means to belong to the Lord, to be his, or as Paul puts it in his letter to the Philippians, to have “our citizenship [is] in heaven” (3:20). The criteria for belonging to Christ’s kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, is unlike any criteria on earth for belonging in that it is based on one thing and one thing only: grace.
We love grace. We celebrate grace. We just sang a hymn about grace that is near and dear to many of our hearts. Grace is what we’re all about. We know forgiveness is extended to us because of grace. We know salvation is ours because of grace. We know that even the gift of faith itself which clings to all these truths is because of grace. From start to finish, through and through, it’s all by grace.
But it is the very thing that makes grace so attractive – that it is underserved – that makes it tough for us to swallow when others receive it. The real irony? It irritates us to see others receive grace when we don’t feel they deserve it! It’s the very definition of grace – undeserved love, that ruffles our feathers when we see it extended to those we don’t think deserve it. But no one deserves it! That’s just it. I don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. No one deserves it.
Yet God desires to extend it to everyone. “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). “All the ends of the earth” includes everyone – including you, if I’m not mistaken. But “everyone” also includes the estranged family member. Everyone includes that jerk from high school who treated you like garbage. Everyone includes the offensive co-worker. Everyone includes the alcoholic, the addict, the rapist, the racist, the sex-trafficer, and the pedophile.
Here’s where Jesus’ parable challenges us. We know that God wants everyone to be saved. We know that that means everyone needs his grace. So why is it that we can slip into the same thinking as the first hired hands who worked the longest and resent that those who worked the least got paid the exact same amount? Why should such resentment ever creep into our hearts? Well the truth is, it doesn’t creep into our hearts – it’s always been there. It resides there, and a parable like this just exposes it. But why would we ever resent God extending his grace to anyone else if, like him, we also want everyone to be saved?
I wonder if Jesus’ final words in this parable clue us in. He concluded with, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt. 20:16). And, if you look at how Jesus concluded his teaching in the previous chapter, he closed the same way. Why does Jesus need to make this statement repeatedly when teaching? Isn’t it rather obvious? It goes against our very nature. We are bent toward self first and foremost. When that happens, you know what we tend to do? We use ourselves as the metric by which we judge others. We are our own measuring stick. When that is the case, we lose our bearings and it throws everything out of perspective.
See what it did for those hired first in the parable? When they got paid the same exact amount as those who put in less time, “they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day’” (v.11-12). The metric by which they determined how things should be was on the basis of the long hard day that they had put in. By comparison then, the workers whose timesheet reflected fewer hours worked didn’t deserve the same wages.
Worst of all, their skewed sense of comparison led them to resent the landowner who had hired them in the first place. He even called them out for resenting his generosity (v.15). So an ego-fed hard day’s work as their standard resulted in their despising not only all those hired after them, but also the generous landowner who had hired them all in the first place. And, how quickly they forgot that they had even agreed to work all day for the payment that was promised!
Rather than using our inflated sense of self as the measuring stick, there is only one metric by which we can explain this parable, and really understand the kingdom of heaven. Only when grace is the metric does all of this make sense. Grace makes room not just for those hired last, but also for the resentful workers hired first. Grace hires those who never even applied for the job. Grace pays out the same wages to every worker. What a beautiful thing that is for us! What a beautiful thing that is for everyone! Hired first? Work hard, work faithfully, work as long as it is day, because you know that Jesus means your payment in heaven is never in question. Hired last? It’s never too late to get working in the vineyard. Though even the majority of your life may have been a missed opportunity to serve in the kingdom of grace, Jesus means your payment in heaven is never in question.
So what is our takeaway from this parable? Let it be two-fold: 1) thank God that he deals with us on the basis of grace and not our own standards, and 2) guard against allowing that grace to be taken for granted or despised when we see it extended to others. How do we keep these two points in our hearts and minds? We remember that it’s God’s grace. It’s his. Though he extends it to us, he doesn’t entrust it to us to determine who does or doesn’t deserve it. Then it would no longer be grace. For it to remain grace, it must remain God’s to give freely as he determines.
Notice the arrangements of those hired later in the day. They didn’t agree to work for a set amount as did the first hired hands, who agreed to a denarius. No, they agreed to work for whatever the landowner determined was right (v.4). They were excited to be asked to work, not even worrying about the payment. They were totally fine with the landowner paying them as he saw fit. So their joy wasn’t based on how much they stood to earn. In fact they weren’t even worried about that. Their joy was found in getting to work in the vineyard. They were elated to be chosen.
Actually, if we really want to get at the point of this parable, we have to admit that the landowner really was being unfair. Not only did none of the workers apply for the job or deserve to be hired, but none of them actually deserved to be paid. Yet they were all hired. They were all paid.
When it’s God’s grace, not ours, to dole out, it isn’t fair. No one deserves it. In fact we all equally DON’T deserve it. But rather than grumbling and complaining about God being unfair with his grace, let’s celebrate it, work our tails off in his vineyard, and then when the time comes, look forward to being paid something far greater than a denarius, far greater than even the dessert your kids pester you for… let’s look forward to finding out what it’s like to be on the other side of the kingdom of heaven. We will, by God’s grace.