No Fair! Matt. 20:1-16
Your Kingdom Come: July 13, 2003
Intro:
Growing up with an older sibling, one of the frequent cries out of my mouth was one some of you parents hear on a daily basis: “no fair!” You know, “How come he gets to stay up later? How come he gets to choose what to watch on TV? How come he gets to be in charge when we are home alone? How come we have to share the last piece of cake?” The most frequent, and least satisfying, response I heard to my heart-felt cries against the grave injustice I experienced was: “You’re right. It isn’t fair. Neither is life, so be quiet and live with it.” The most Solomon like response was to the sharing the piece of cake complaint – my mom always made one of us split it and then the other one got to choose which piece they wanted.
It reminds me of the story of a mother who was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5, and Ryan, 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake... Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.’” Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Context:
Our look at what the Kingdom of God is like continues today in Matt 20. The story arises out of a familiar incident in Matt 19 – the rich young ruler who approaches Jesus with the question, “What must I do to be saved?” The end result is that Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give it to the poor. He uses this opportunity to instruct His disciples that wealth is a huge impediment to entering the Kingdom of God, and in response Peter asks this question: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” (Matt 19:27). It is kind of a prideful question – almost like, “We’re not like that!! We’re good! We have left everything, we must be in for a pretty good reward!!!” Jesus answers first in the affirmative – “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much” (vs 29). And incidentally, while on holidays I went to church in Vancouver and heard a missionary speak who attested to the truth of this verse. He said he left his mom behind in England, and got a hundred moms in Rwanda. He left his sister, and got a hundred sisters. He left behind the occasional cold and bought of the flu, and instead got malaria and amoebic dysentery and all kinds of vile tropical diseases…
After making this affirmative statement, Jesus continues and tells a parable in Matt. 20:1-16. I will read the passage in a few minutes, but first let me tell you a modern version of the same story:
A Modern Version of the Parable of the Labourers:
A large, mulit-national, retail giant moved into a new city. We’ll call it “Stuff Mart.” They put an add in the paper inviting applications for people to work for one month to stock their shelves, and received 100 applications. The manager went through them all, chose the best 25, and offered them a job. “At the end of the month,” he said, “I’ll pay you $2000 cash.” They agreed, and went to work. One week into the month, he phoned another 25. “Come and work, and at the end of the month I’ll pay you a fair wage.” The next week he phoned the next 25, and made the same offer. Finally, the last week, he phoned the last 25. The ones with no education, lousy references, a series of bad jobs, many of whom hadn’t even filled out their application properly and obviously couldn’t spell. They too came and worked. At the end of the month, he called everyone together and lined them up to pay them. The lowly, poor workers who had come for only one week were first. They hadn’t been particularly productive, due to their lack of many very basic skills. But as they approached the table, the manager handed them each 20, $100 dollar bills. (for those of you struggling with the math, that’s $2000…). Imagine their reaction! Those who had been hired at the beginning of the month got excited!! We slaved all month long, we worked much harder and accomplished much more, I wonder what we will get paid!!! When their turn came, they also received 20, $100 dollar bills. They got upset, called Buzz Hargrove and the international StuffMart Union, and lodged a protest. “It’s not fair!” they cried. “We worked all month and accomplished much more than the losers you hired the last week. We deserve more than them.” The manager replied, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for $2000? Take your pay and go. I want to give those who were hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Not Fair!
We hear the age-old cry. “No Fair!” And we understand it. If you had worked the whole month, you might feel that way also. If you had only worked the last week, how might you feel? Blessed? A little uncomfortable?? A little guilty for getting the same pay for less work?
Jesus begins the story by saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like…” and then proceeds to tell this basic story. It seems like a story of unfairness. Injustice, even. Maybe my mom was right, life isn’t fair and I should just be quiet and live with it. Maybe that is Jesus’ point too. Maybe that is what the Kingdom of God is like.
Or maybe that isn’t what the parable is really about at all. Maybe, just maybe, the parable is not about the workers and their feelings, but instead about the generosity of the owner. Maybe it is not about us, but about God.
“Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
What do we deserve?
When it comes down to it, I think the issue becomes our sense of fairness, or justice, is based on what we think we deserve. Those who worked all day felt they deserved to be paid more than the others, rather than what they had agreed to work for. So let’s think about that question for a moment: what do we deserve? Do we deserve to have nice homes, cars, clothes, toys? You might think, yes, I deserve those things. I work hard for them. Do we deserve to have a good job that enables us to have these things? You might think, yes, I deserve to have a good job. I went to school for a long time and/or I worked hard up the ladder to get to where I am. Well did we deserve to get that first job or have the luxury of a higher education? Did we deserve to be physically healthy enough to work every day, and to have the mental abilities to have some success? You might think, yes, I deserve to have the opportunity for a world class university education, because – well, all Canadians deserve to have those opportunities. So why do we deserve to be Canadians and live in a place of freedom and peace? We could continue down this road as long as we like, each road leads us to this place: we don’t deserve any of it. In fact, if we are to think Biblically about this question, the only thing we deserve is death and separation from God. Rom 6:23 and 3:23 (MSG) say this: “Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.” And also, “Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.”
Here is the simple truth: since we have rebelled against God, the only thing we deserve is death and separation from God. Everything else – absolutely everything else – is a generous, pure gift from God, of which we are to be good stewards. It is grace.
The Point:
That is the point of the parable. The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of grace. All those who worked for the master did so only because He invited them. Why those workers and not others? Why has God blessed us in this country with freedom and wealth and opportunity and safety, while across our world in places like Rwanda, as the missionary I heard in Vancouver shared, women are raped on the way to work in the morning and then raped again on the way home, and the next day they do it again because if they don’t their children will die of starvation? The point of the parable is that God’s Kingdom is one of grace, and that grace will be poured out on the “last,” who will be made “first.”
It might look unfair to us, but only as long as we maintain a selfish attitude that tells us we “deserve” to be treated according to our ideas of fairness.
You see, those hired at the end of the day were the “leftovers.” They were the ones nobody wanted to hire – they actually say that when the owner asks them why they are still in the marketplace at the end of the day. They were those with little to offer, the outcasts, the ones who kept making poor decisions. And in Matt 20, Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like a vineyard owner who pays these the same as those who have laboured long and hard for Him.
Getting Practical:
I believe there are two attitudes Jesus is trying to create within us through this parable. The first is an attitude that recognizes that all we have is an incredible, generous gift from God. We do not deserve it, we have not earned it, we have been given it as a gift. And we have been entrusted with the responsibility to be good stewards of it – to recognize God as the owner and to manage it all for His glory and not for our own. The second is an attitude of grace towards what Jesus calls “the last.” In our society, who are “the last?” I think it includes the unemployable, the street people and prostitute, the tough teens, those in prison, the single mom with 4 kids living on welfare, the mentally and physically handicapped, the poor immigrant or native person, and the lonely senior citizen.
Here is what the parable teaches – they, the last, will be first. At the end of the day, when handing out rewards, God in His Kingdom generosity just might take the prostitute who accepted Christ and forgiveness while dying of Aids, and give her the same reward that He gives Billy Graham and Mother Theresa. And knowing what little I do about Billy and Theresa, I think that will make them smile. I don’t think they will complain.
In the parable Jesus told, the workers hired first complain. Notice carefully what their complaint actually is: “you have made them equal to us.” (Matt 20:12). They couldn’t complain that they weren’t paid the agreed upon amount – they had. So instead, and perhaps in a moment of accidental honesty, the true complaint comes out: it is that the “last” were made equal to the first. “We want to be seen to be superior!” is their cry. “We want everyone to know that we are better than them. In God’s Kingdom, that is not how it is. Instead, the last shall be first. All are equal in the eyes of our generous master, all are loved the same. Think about that for a moment. God loves you as much as Billy Graham and Mother Theresa, as much as Paul the Apostle and Peter and James and John. Isn’t that great news! But there is more: God loves “the last” in our world as much as He loves you and I.
What about you? What is the attitude of your heart? Do you recognize all that you have as a gracious gift of God, entrusted to you to steward for the good of God’s Kingdom? Or do you see yourself somehow deserving of all those blessings? And when you look at “the last” in our world, do you look on them as does the owner, with compassion and generosity, or like the other workers jealous at even the thought that they might receive the same for their labor as you do for yours?
READ MATT 20:1-16.
Conclusion:
You might be at the beginning of your life, like those early in the day. Or you might be at the third or the sixth or the ninth hour. You might even be at the eleventh hour. The Kingdom of God has come to you, the owner of the vineyard stands before you. And He invites. “Come and work in my vineyard,” He says. “Come, and I will reward you. I am generous, my grace is available to you.”
What will you say?
