Matthew 20:1-16
September 22, 2002—9:00 Worship
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Across the street from our local Mollie Stone’s is our Kinko’s. Open 24/7, you can walk in there, swipe your credit card at a kiosk to use the copy machine and go to work. You can run off a copy of your term paper just in case your teacher loses the original. You can print and crop and copy color photos. You can even create a large banner to use for a surprise party.
It’s not quite right to call Kinko’s a mere copy store. The people who work at Kinko’s are not called employees or workers. Instead, they are called “coworkers.” Not coworkers among themselves. But they are the customer’s coworkers. When we go into a Kinko’s, the people behind the counter have been trained to be our coworkers. They’re supposed to be on our team!
Think about this, the next time that you are in there, your coworker might just ask you to take out the trash! I don’t think it works that way.
Vineyard Laborers
The laborers in our parable from Matthew today were far from being coworkers. Early in the morning, the landowner hires laborers for his vineyard. He rounds up a group, agrees to pay them the usual daily wage and then puts them into action.
The landowner goes out at 9:00 and seeing that there were laborers hanging out in the marketplace, he hires them for his vineyard. At noon, he recruits a third team, and then at three o’clock, a fourth team of laborers. Finally, at five o’clock, he finds still more laborers who are willing to work. He sends them into the vineyard to do what they can before sundown.
At the end of the day, the landowner instructs his manager to pay the workers, beginning with those who started at five in the afternoon. Their pay: one denarius, the usual daily wage. Then the three o’clock team is paid—one denarius. The noontime laborers—one denarius. The nine o’clock crowd—one denarius.
Finally, the laborers who were first hired early in the morning at the crack of dawn, the ones who worked a full day came to be paid. They have been watching what the others were getting paid. And it was the same—one denarius. This final group of workers was upset. They believed that they deserve more than the workers who began their work at the end of the day. “These last worked only one hour,” the sunrise crowd grumbles, “and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” (20:12)
The all-day workers were not acting like they were coworkers with the others. They couldn’t see themselves on the same team with the five o’clock workers. Instead, they saw themselves to be more deserving than the others.
The landowner said, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?”
“Well, yes, in fact I did,” admits the laborer.
“Take what belongs to you and go,” advises the owner; “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.” As unfair as it may seem to pay a one-hour worker the same wage as a 12-hour worker, we have to admit that the landowner is perfectly free to do what he chooses with what belongs to him. If he wants to be generous, he is certainly entitled to be generous.
World of Unequal Pay
We identify with the full-time laborers who worked all day. They have a legitimate complaint we would say. In San Francisco, we have a “living-wage ordinance” that raised the hourly wages of common laborers to $9 an hour, plus health benefits. How can we justify paying those who only worked one hour the same as those who worked a full day—12 hours? There’s a big difference between $9 and $108!
As Americans, we define our self-worth by the kinds of jobs we have and the amount of pay we receive. We take our work very seriously. The average U.S. worker, in fact, spends so much time at work that workers are putting in another week of work every year as compared to ten years ago. In 1990, the average American worked 1,942 hours a year, Today the total hours worked is around 1,978. That’s 36 more hours of work.
For some reason, the trend in American labor hours is running contrary to other industrialized nations where the total number of hours worked has been declining. People in Australia, Canada, Japan, and Mexico work an average of 100 hours a year less than Americans work. Britons and Brazilians labor 250 fewer hours. And Germans put in 500 fewer hours on the job per year. They probably don’t have 24 hour Kinko’s to work all night!
Researchers have found that when Europeans are asked who they are, it takes them longer to answer the question, because they go into details about their families and other aspects of their lives. But when Americans are asked to define themselves, almost immediately most tell what kind of job they have. We define ourselves by the jobs that we have.
So when we read about the full-day workers, we see ourselves. We’re the ones who got up earlier than anyone else to get the jobs. We demand unequal pay—more for us and less for those guys who were too lazy to get hire in the morning!
In this penetrating parable of Jesus, he leaves us with a lot to think about. We know that we are not supposed to be identifying with the full-day workers. We know that we can’t work our way into heaven. We can never do enough good in this life to earn everlasting retirement whether we start at six in the morning or at five in the evening. Our “Individual Righteousness Accounts” will never grow big enough to be fully funded in God’s eternal kingdom.
All Are Equal
The key point in this parable is when the disgruntled full-time workers complained in verse 12. It wasn’t as much about what each worker got paid because they all agreed to working for a daily wage—one denarius. What they were really upset about was that by paying them also one denarius, the landowner made the five o’clock laborers equal to the full-time laborers.
The first-hired were at the marketplace hiring center at dawn in hopes of getting a full day’s work and a full-day’s pay. They are the hardworking people, willing to work through the burden of the day and under the scorching heat. But if you showed up at the hiring center later in the day, you would expect less pay. Maybe you were too lazy to get up early or too irresponsible with your responsibilities to work for a living.
But the landowner’s generosity treated everyone equally. He saw all of his workers—those hired early in the day as well as those hired at the end of the day—all coworkers.
In God’s service, we do not have the same work to do. Some of us can teach, others sing, others lead games, others organize, others visit the sick, others evangelize, others serve the poor, others care for children, others clean the church. Like the workers in the vineyard, we have different tasks to perform, with different time frames, energy levels and abilities.
But the really cool thing is the equal-ness of the rewards. No matter how menial or glorious the task, we are all paid the same. In God’s eyes, you see, we are all equal. At the end of the day, we are all paid the same, and are paid what is right.
God’s Grace
Learning to accept God’s grace and forgiveness is difficult for many of us. I know that it’s true for me. Sometimes I think the reason why I get up early in the morning every day of week—even when it’s my day off is that I want to feel worthy and important. It’s like the world can’t start unless I get up in the morning to start it going!
God is the landowner who chooses to be gracious and generous with us. We don’t have to think more highly about ourselves in order to feel that we are significant. We don’t have to put other people down so that we may feel good. We’re all in need of God’s grace and forgiveness, every single one of us.
Even pastors. There’s a story of an English pastor who was retiring after 25 years in the church. As he started to clear out his home office, he found a small bowl with 5 eggs and 1000 pounds inside.
Baffled he called his wife and said, “Darling, what is this little basket under my desk with five eggs and 1000 pounds in it.
“Oh,” she said, “I must confess that every time you preach a bad sermon I put an egg in the basket.”
Secretly the pastor was pleased: “Not bad, five bad sermons in 25 years,” he thought.
“And what about the 1000 pounds?”
“Well, every time I get a dozen, I sell them!”
As pastors, we too have much to learn about our need for God’s grace and generosity.
Kinko Church
In the kingdom of God, every person should receive what is right—regardless of the work they do.
In the kingdom of God, all people are equal—rich and poor, wealthy and destitute, righteous and sinner, educated and illiterate, powerful and powerless—all people are equal because all people are loved by God.
And since this is true in the kingdom of God, it should also be true in the life of the church, whether we are leaders or helpers, teachers or students, pastors or members.
In the church, like at Kinko’s, we are all coworkers. And we all receive exactly what is right from a God who is notoriously gracious and generous.
Let us pray.
Gracious and loving God, thank you for blessing us with different gifts so that we may use them for your kingdom on earth. Help us to see that you love each one of us equally even when we can’t seem to love each other that way. Challenge us to accept those whom the world despise and call us into accountability to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with you. We pray in Christ Jesus’ name. Amen.