Matthew 20:1-16
Pastor Nathan P. KassulkeSeventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, September 24, 2023
“Tell Us a Story of Perplexing Generosity”
Don’t you love a good story? We may not all agree on what stories are good ones, but most people certainly enjoy a good story. There are entire industries surrounding movies and books and other media centered on telling us a story, each in its own way. And some of those stories seem to rise to the top, ones that many people agree, and for a long time, that those are good stories.
A psychologist by trade who has become an outspoken online figure named Jordan Peterson teaches that the best stories are those that get to the heart of human experience. The stories that stand the test of time are the stories that speak about universal goals and desires and probably have a lesson to teach people. Now Jordan Peterson doesn’t get everything right, and he certainly does not view the Bible the way we do or ought to, but he observes some interesting things about how people learn lessons that stick with them from stories.
Jesus used stories to teach people, too. He was a master teacher who used stories called parables. Out of the teachings of Jesus that the Bible tells us about, around one-third comes in parables. A parable is a story that touches on real human experience in order to teach a spiritual truth. But there are some challenges for us as we seek to understand and apply them. One challenge is that we live in a very different time and place than the people to whom Jesus first spoke these parables. It’s not that the message has changed or the lesson has changed, but our experience and the things we relate to may be quite different from theirs. We will at times need to stop and consider the historical or cultural contexts of the stories. Another challenge is finding the point that Jesus is driving home. Jesus doesn’t teach everything there is to know about spiritual matters in any one parable. He uses each story to teach a particular point. If we get too caught up in some details of the story, we could miss the point. Finally, we are also challenged to understand these spiritual lessons because we were born sinful and still struggle with our sinful natures. We need the Holy Spirit to help us understand every spiritual truth.
So it is not just because we love a good story that our service theme invites us to ask Jesus to tell us a story. No, instead we want to learn the amazing truths about God and his kingdom, so we say, “Tell us a story.” And the story we consider today tells us about perplexing generosity.
The story starts out in a rather routine way. A vineyard owner wants some day laborers to work in his vineyard, so he goes out to hire them. He agrees to pay them a fairly generous day’s wage, and they agree to do the work. That all seems to make sense. There’s nothing perplexing so far.
But it gets a little more unusual as it goes along. The owner goes back again and again to where the workers were looking for work. He hires more and more workers at regular intervals throughout the day. He even returns when there is only an hour left in the workday and hires another group of workers to put a bit of work in at his vineyard. And then the workday concludes.
It’s time to pay the workers, and the owner proceeds to do so. Now things get a bit surprising. The workers who were hired last are paid first, and they each receive a denarius, a generous amount for a full day’s work, even though they only worked for an hour. What a surprise!
And then the whispering starts. The wondering starts. If this landowner is paying one-hour workers for a full day of work, how much is he going to pay those who worked all day? These workers are getting excited as they slowly make their way up to the foreman’s table. They think that they hit the jackpot with this work assignment. They were working for a man who pays a denarius for an hour of work. And these workers hold out their hands and they each receive…a denarius.
It doesn’t seem fair, does it? They grumble and complain, and that seems about right to us. Why would the one-hour workers and the three- and six- and nine-hour workers all get the same thing? Why would the workers who had worked all day not get a penny more than those who had worked so little? It doesn’t make
sense! It’s a perplexing story after all. And the owner answers the grumbling workers who complain about what he had given them. He tells them that they had an agreement from the time he hired them and that he had kept up his side of the deal. They got their denarius, and there is no reason they should be upset that he had been generous to others.
And we admit that he’s right. There is no reason that the owner can’t be generous to people if he wants to be generous, but it still doesn’t make sense! That’s no way to run a business. How can you possibly keep a competitive edge and succeed in a marketplace if you pay a day’s wages, and a generous one at that, to workers who hardly work for you?
And asking that question helps us get to the point that Jesus is driving home. His point is that the landowner is generous to everyone. He didn’t have to hire a single worker. He certainly did not have to return to the hiring line again and again. And his generosity even to those who did so little is absolutely perplexing. And that is true of the kingdom of heaven, too. Jesus’ point is that we shouldn’t even try to compare God’s grace and perplexing generosity to our sense of fairness in the workplace. The disciples of Jesus were trying to do this. Right before this, they were discussing with Jesus a rich man and how hard it is to enter the kingdom and rewards in heaven for their faithful service. Their attitudes said, “Look at what I have done in comparison to that other person.”
But Jesus said, “Don’t bother with comparisons like that. Be blown away by God’s perplexing generosity and amazing grace. It turns everything upside down from your expectations. The last will be first and the first will be last.”
And that’s a hard lesson for us to learn. Fairness as we understand it really is important to us. And we like to play the comparison game when we can. “I go to church every week, or nearly so. How awful that this other person doesn’t. What about that family we haven’t seen for a while? And there’s no way that they are giving offerings as generous as mine.” We feel better about ourselves if we can find someone worse to whom we can compare ourselves. This story tells us to stop thinking that way about the kingdom of heaven. If you think that there is something about you that could earn the kingdom or earn a reward from God, you’re simply mistaken. Think about the kingdom of heaven as an amazing result of God’s incomprehensible and perplexing generosity.
It’s the generosity that chose Jacob to be his own, even before he was born, and to make him into God’s chosen nation, even though he had nothing more to offer than did his brother Esau. It’s God’s generosity that looked on the Ninevite enemies of Israel and wanted to send his prophet to call them to repentance. That generosity was so perplexing that Jonah was angry about it.
It’s the generosity that sent God’s own Son, Jesus, to live and to die for the world, including Jonah, including Jacob, including you and me. No one deserved it. No one earned it. God loved the world. He sent his Son, who after he died for our sins rose to life to guarantee our salvation. He sends his Holy Spirit so that we believe his Word and his promise of eternal life. He builds us up in our faith. His incredible, even perplexing generosity never stops.
So we need to hear our Savior’s story. We need to withstand our sinful nature’s desire to lead us back into old habits. We need to be careful not be envious of God’s generosity like Jonah was toward the people of Nineveh. Instead, we need to be amazed by God’s generosity toward us. And then we have a story to share with others, too.
It may not always be simple to understand the stories Jesus tells in his parables. But the lessons he teaches are incredibly valuable. By the power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, these are the best stories for us to hear. Thank you, Jesus, for telling us these stories. Thank you for telling us this story of perplexing generosity.
The Text: Matthew 20:1–16 (EHV)
20 “Indeed the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing to pay the workers a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3He also went out about the third hour and saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace. 4To these he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will give you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6When he went out about the eleventh hour, he found others standing unemployed. He said to them, ‘Why have you stood here all day unemployed?’
7“They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ “He told them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last group and ending with the first.’
9“When those who were hired around the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. 10When those who were hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But they each received a denarius too. 11After they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner: 12‘Those who were last worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have endured the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’
13“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not make an agreement with me for a denarius? 14Take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last one hired the same as I also gave to you. 15Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16In the same way, the last will be first, and the first, last.”