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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, a blessed Septuagintesma Sunday to you. And if you’re wondering what Septuagesma means and why we’re observing it, you’re probably not alone. I was right there with you, and it’s certainly not the main thing that I want us to talk about this morning. That will be the gospel lesson, but, you know, since the beginning of the church year back at Advent, we have started using the one-year lectionary. And so in its sequence in the next three Sundays after the observance of Transfiguration and leading up to Lent, we have these Gezuma Sundays.
So as you see maybe in your service folder, Septuagesma means 70th in Latin. And depending on who you ask, that could mean that this particular Sunday falls within 70 days of Easter. Although my math says we’re 63 days from Easter, so I guess that’s true. I’m not sure how the math works out on this. There may be also some attribution of this to a remembrance of the Babylonian captivity of 70 years.
Actually, just this morning as I was coming in, I was listening to a podcast that suggested this did come about sometime in like maybe the 6th or 7th century, particularly when the most pesky German tribes were coming down and trying to sail Rome. And so they were praying in penitence for deliverance. It does actually predate Ash Wednesday is an observance. It predates the season of Advent. So it’s not like it’s something pretty new. Yeah.
And in this, in the next three weeks, we are in this kind of odd time for us, I think, since we haven’t been doing this. We’re in this season of what, maybe mini-season of what we call pre-Lent. It’s this transition between Epiphany and Lent, and while maybe it’s not in and of itself a penitential season, it is certainly a good opportunity for us to maybe begin thinking that way.
And so maybe we look at Paul’s words in the epistle lesson today and start thinking about maybe what it is we should be doing or we could consider doing. We don’t prescribe fasting or anything like that, but we might want to exercise a little bit of self-control or discipline. We might want to train our bodies and our minds for this race that we are in that has been set before us. We confess, right? God’s grace is generously given to us, but we shouldn’t neglect that gift by neglecting it and being maybe lazy or slothful or idle.
And we certainly do not forsake it as something that we can earn by our own effort. And really, in this parable, this is what our Lord Jesus has to say to us today, that this grace that we’re speaking of is a gift. It is itself unearned and undeserved.
Now the parable, this parable of the laborers in the vineyard, it ought to be pretty familiar to us, but I fear that sometimes maybe there’s this common pitfall about how we want to interpret this. And it has to do with our inherent desire or even our demand for fairness, for things to be fair. And we hear this parable and we think, yeah, that’s not fair. It’s not fair that anyone should work more than another but receive the same amount of compensation. It’s not fair that those who stood around all day can kind of just spring in at the last minute and walk away with such a bountiful reward.
And maybe that’s a byproduct of ourselves, of our American way of life, our economic philosophy, our rugged individualism. Because we want what’s coming to us. We want what we’ve earned. We want what is coming to us. And so in thinking this way, we think, we fall into this maybe trap that the disciples fell into, they were guilty of. If we go back to the previous chapter of Matthew, we might remember this rich young man had come to Jesus and what did he ask him? What good deed do I do to be saved, to have eternal life?
And we remember he didn’t really like Jesus’ answer. Jesus said, sell all your possessions and follow me. Amen. And he went away sorrowful. Well then Peter proudly tells Jesus, see we have left everything and followed you, and then he kind of proudly, haughtily asks, what then will we have? And although Jesus doesn’t really rebuke Peter, he does then give the disciples this warning, which we see in this parable, this warning about their way of thinking about this.
So in this parable Jesus tells us about this master of a house who has an immediate need for workers to come into his vineyard to do work. Maybe the harvest is ripe, the grapes are ready, or maybe they just need to come in and dig up weeds or prune vines. We don’t know. We know that the master has plentiful work to be done. And whatever this task is, he is very anxious for it to be done. And so he goes out himself.
He goes out somewhere around 6 a.m., we would say, when this workday commences, and he goes into this marketplace and he goes looking for those who would gather there looking for work. Maybe today we would think of them as day labor. And today somebody hired this way they might be paid a daily wage, they might be paid by the hour dependent on the work to be done. In this time in Jewish society there were laws about wages and the standard daily wage was a denarius. It was this silver Roman coin and even the Roman soldiers, that’s what they earned every day.
So it was pretty standard. So it’s not really surprising that the first group that the master hires agreed to this daily wage. And they agree and so they go to work. A few hours later the master realizes he needs more workers. He goes out into the marketplace and he finds some as the text tells us standing idle. He calls them to work. There’s no agreement about what the amount of the wage will be, only that he will pay them whatever is right.
And this process repeats again at noon and then at 3 p.m. And then somewhere in the vicinity of 5 p.m., probably one hour before quitting time, the master calls this last group of workers. I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the fact that these workers seem to have actually wanted to work. They’re still there one hour before the workday is through. They’re still waiting to be hired. And it seems so that they say as much when they ask, Master asked them, well, why are you standing around? And they say, because no one has hired us.
So it seems they want to go to work and they go and they do so. And they’re not even really confident and assured of what their compensation is going to be. And then of course the end of the workday comes. The master, he calls his foreman. He directs him to pay the workers. The foreman wasn’t the one who had gone into the market and hired these workers, but he was the one who supervised their work. And now he’s the means of delivering the wage to them.
And strangely enough, the master says pay the last first. He does so, and to the shock of those who came to work first, they received the exact weight that they were promised, a denarius, and so this hardly seems fair and they don’t have a problem with voicing their displeasure with the master they grumbled at the master of the house they say we worked all day and yet you bring in these idlers and pay them the exact same wage this isn’t fair we toiled all day under the sun and this is how you reward us for our labor thanks but the master is not affected by their insolence.
And it sounds at first maybe like he’s being friendly when he says that, friend, but it’s really quite a rebuke because the next thing he tells them is to take what belongs to you and go. So the master reminds them as the master is he who gets to decide what he will give. And he asks him, do you begrudge my generosity? And the answer is, of course they do. But worse than that, they begrudge the master.
Now Jesus doesn’t really explain this parable to us. He doesn’t explain very many that he uses actually, so maybe when we think about it, we might want to think about what it isn’t. It isn’t about what is fair. It isn’t about the injustices or the perceived injustices of some particular economic system. It’s not a moral lesson on fair labor laws. It’s not about how our work here on earth will help us earn salvation or merit God’s grace.
And the parable is not even really about a vineyard. Here again Jesus words, the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house. So it’s about the master. And what is it that we see and know about this master? Well first of all, he is very active in managing his household. He knows all the work that needs to be accomplished, and so he himself goes out, and he goes and he searches, and he seeks for those who need to work for him. He does it himself. He doesn’t send his servant. He doesn’t even send his foreman. He doesn’t wait for anybody to show up at his door asking for work. He goes and finds him, and he is persistent in this search and in pursuit of his laborers.
He calls out loud and long. He repeatedly, time and time again goes into the marketplace looking for workers returning again to scoop them up and bring them and put them to work. And it seems that he’s especially looking for those who desire to be employed. And perhaps a little bit of admonishment to them, he says, well, why not do something? I’ve got a place for you to come work. And more so he does this without any kind of expectation of compensation. He knows that these, they’re simply glad to be working.
He could have just given them a denarius at this late hour out of his compassion for them, but he knows that even in this short period of work, they will find meaning and pleasure in the work that they are given. And this parable isn’t about the workers either. What does it tell us about them? First, there are some, those in that first group hired who are, they really focus solely on what they can earn, on what is expected. They care about that shiny coin, that denarius.
They put the focus on everything that they do on their toil, how hard they work, how difficult it is, what adverse conditions that they are required to work under. And so they beat their chest and they cry, look at what we’ve accomplished and look at how we’ve suffered for it. And then when they don’t get what they expect, even more, they get what others get. And they see that others get the same thing they have who haven’t worked the same as them. They are then content to leave the vineyard and to forsake the master and all that he has given them to do.
But these others, they are just happy to be employed, to be given something, anything to do. They don’t have any kind of expectation of a temporal reward, and so they focus on the job at hand and not the wage. And yeah, the work they do is still labor, but it’s not toiling. It’s not, they are probably more like Adam was in the Garden of Eden before the fall, when he was placed there to work it and keep it. It was pleasurable work. But when sin came into the world, he became himself, and all mankind, a creature of toil, eating bread by the sweat of our faces.
But this work here, this work in the master’s vineyard, is joyful work and meaningful work, and it is heavenly work. Now this parable is book-ended in the last verse of chapter 19, verse 30, where Jesus says, But many who are first will be last and the last first. And Jesus then goes to repeat this at the end of the parable, but he reverses the orders. So the last will be first and the first last.
And so just as the foreman paid those who came into the vineyard last, so that the first who were hired would see that he treats them according to his will and not to their work. Those are the ones who are prideful and they are resting on their works of the law, and they will be among the last. But those who are humble and knowing that it is the gospel that has freed them and been freely delivered to them will be among the first. And this is such a beautiful picture of God’s grace.
And it is a beautiful picture of the church, which is this vineyard. How many different people are brought into the church despite their faults or their perceived social status or even how hard they are able to work. Jesus, after all, ate with tax collectors and sinners. But we struggle with this because we still want things to be fair. We don’t like it when someone gets more than we do. We don’t even really like it when things are even.
And so our jealousy and envy often makes fairness an unachievable objective. And it simply cannot be this way in the church and in the kingdom. It doesn’t work the way we think it ought to or the way we want it to. And so this parable ought to make us think about how the things of the kingdom of God transcend the things of the world.
And I think it’s why Jesus begins his parables with the kingdom of heaven is like this. He’s using temporal examples to illustrate eternal purposes. And it is here that Jesus shows us the great inestimable grace of the master, grace that, as we hear… He delivered to the people of Israel when he brought them out of Egypt, and he sustained them in the wilderness when many drank from this water that came out of the rock, but they despised that gift. And so they did not live to see Canaan.
It is this grace that brought the nations, the Gentiles, in places like Corinth, into the church and into the kingdom. And it is the grace that has brought us to faith by the work of the Holy Spirit, and which bids us to come into the vineyard and work. So God forbid that he would ever tell us, take what belongs to you and go. And thanks be to God that he doesn’t give us what we deserve or what is fair. He gives us quite what is undeserved and what is not fair.
He gives us his grace. He gives us life and forgiveness. Because he himself took what was not fair upon himself, the burden of the sin of the world which he took to the cross to suffer the most unfair and the most unjust of punishments he earned the wages of sin paying what we could not pay for the price was far too high and we remember that on one side of him on his own cross was one who had not worked in the vineyard and in fact he had taken from those others but did not belong to him and yet grace was extended even to him when he asked the lord to remember in his kingdom and that doesn’t make sense to us it doesn’t seem fair even to us christians that jesus he didn’t even hesitate he didn’t say you haven’t earned it you haven’t worked long enough in fact you haven’t worked at all no jesus simply spoke words of absolution and grace to him and this is what the kingdom is like.
And so this parable of the laborers in the vineyard is our picture of justification. How we are declared righteous on the account of Christ’s suffering and death and not by our own word, by grace alone. That by the blood of Christ we have been declared free from suffering and death. And that now we can work together in some kind of purposeful labor in this life, not for our own glory but for the glory of the kingdom.
So brothers and sisters, don’t stand by idly saying, there’s nothing I can do. The Lord has called each of us in his own way. He’s called some of us for our talents, some of us for our treasures, some of us even for our physical labor. And all of us certainly to offer our prayers and thanks and praise for him for this privilege that we do get to have for serving in his kingdom.
And what’s our reward? Well, our reward is… one that he gives freely and without conditions on our ability, and it is greater than any daily wage that we could ever expect to receive. For it is in this Christian church, this vineyard, that he daily and richly forgives us of our sins and the sins of all believers. Grace alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.