Good News: God Isn't Fair!

[Below, you can find live stream video of both of yesterday's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Also below is the prepared text of the message shared during the services. God bless your week with faith in Christ and the certainty of Christ's presence with you now and of the eternal life with God He has secured for you through His death and resurrection.]

Matthew 20:1-16

In one of his sermons on today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-1-16, Martin Luther said, “This [lesson] is intricate, and very difficult for the young and the simple…”

But it’s not just the young in faith or the simple in thought who find the parable that Jesus tells us today difficult. In fact, I doubt that Jesus ever said anything more offensive to good church-going folks than what He says to us today.

Let’s set the scene.

Just before this parable in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a rich man confident of his place in the kingdom of God that, because he relies on his wealth and his good works for salvation, he must sell all that he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Him. The rich man walks away sad, knowing that he will be damned in eternity because of his unwillingness to let go of his favorite god. money, and his favorite sin, covetousness.

The disciples think, like many people falsely think today, that wealth is a sign of God’s favor. They ask Jesus if a rich person can’t enter God’s kingdom, who can? Jesus tells them that anything is possible with God; anyone who turns from their idols and sins and turns instead to Him for forgiveness and new life can have life with God.

Then Jesus tells them that in the kingdom of God, unlike the kingdoms of this world, “many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.” (Matthew 19:30)

Maybe in response to the troubled looks He sees around Him, Jesus then tells today’s parable. You know it well.

At the beginning of the workday, about 6:00 in the morning, a landowner goes out, presumably to the town square, and agrees to pay a group of men a denarius, the going rate for a day on the job, to work in his vineyard. This is the only time in the parable when Jesus mentions the landowner making any agreement on the rate of pay.

There’s apparently a lot of work to do because, Jesus says, the man goes out at 9:00 AM, at noon, at 3:00 PM, and, finally, at 5:00 PM, the final hour of the work day, promising only that he will pay “whatever is right,” (Matthew 20:4) literally, whatever is just, correct, or righteous, to the late-hires.

At 6:00 PM, when the workday is over, the owner has the foreman call the last men hired, the ones who have worked an hour or less, to receive their pay. They’re given a denarius.

The anticipation undoubtedly must be rising among the first-hired. If the latecomers are getting a denarius from the pleased landowner, how much more might they be able to expect?

But anticipation turns to anger as all the workers hired at different times of the day are given the exact same pay, a single denarius.

“These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ [the first-hires in Jesus’ story say], “and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.” (Matthew 20:12) But the landowner says: “Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one 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?” (Matthew 20:13-15)

At my first parish, a man approached me after worship when I preached on this text and told me, “I’ve always hated that parable.” “It isn’t fair,” he went on, “Is Jesus saying that someone who’s led a sinful life and shows up at church in their old age, all repentant and confessing faith in Jesus, is going to get the same reward as me? I’ve always believed. I’ve always given offerings. I’ve always helped when the church needed help.”

I was a young pastor and a bit afraid of offending this man I loved. But I silently prayed, then told him, “Yes, that’s exactly what Jesus is saying. In His Kingdom, all believers are equal.”

You see, friends, the old sinner who repents and trusts that Jesus died and rose for them is equal to all of you in the kingdom of God, no matter how long you’ve believed or how many good things you’ve done.

So, is the newly baptized baby.

So is the believer who has never been able to put much in the offering plate.

So is the believer who’s disabled.

The reason for this is simple: The God we know in Jesus Christ is NOT fair. Instead, He is righteous. In His kingdom, God doesn’t do the fair thing; He does the right thing, the good thing, the loving thing, the compassionate thing.

He gives the reward of eternal life not on the bases of what we do or how long we’ve been doing it, but on the bases of the grace He bears for all who, by the power of the Gospel Word about the crucified and risen Jesus, daily turn from sin and death and instead, turn in trust to Jesus for forgiveness and new and everlasting life.

Jesus tells us this parable in order to show us the difference between life in “the kingdoms” of this world–be it, the organizational structure of a congregation, a place of work, or a government–and life in His kingdom.

As long as we live in this world, there will be inequalities. It doesn’t matter whether as a people, we adopt the motto, “All people are created equal.” The simple fact of the matter is that in this fallen world, there are and will always be inequalities.”

Some people will be wealthier than others, some more powerful than others, some smarter than others, and some, even, more spiritually gifted than others.

But, as Luther points out, “...in the kingdom of Christ it is otherwise; there is no distinction there among believers; they are all alike, whether they be kings, princes, governors, masters or servants. All have the same Baptism, Gospel, Faith, Sacrament, the same Christ and God. They all attend divine worship in perfect equality; the servant, the mechanic and the peasant hear the same Word as the mightiest lord. The Baptism [by which] I was baptized belongs to every other child, whether rich or poor. Magdalene and the [thief] on the cross have the same faith which St. Peter and St. Paul had; yea, the [same] faith which you or I have, if we are Christians. All sinners, if converted, have the same God and Christ whom John the Baptist had. There is no difference here, though one may by far excel the other in his station in life, in his calling, or in his talents.”

If you and I are intent on nudging our ways past others in the kingdom of God, we will be disappointed. God does not bless and life with God does not come, to those with sharp elbows and unrepentant hearts, only to those who are like the repentant tax collector in another of Jesus’ parables. Jesus says the repentant man “stood a distance” from the altar of the temple out of trembling fear of God’s goodness and holiness, and “beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner..” (Luke 18:13)

There is good news, friends! God has had mercy on us sinners.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

And whoever and whatever sinner who heeds His invitation to life in His eternal vineyard–all who repent and believe in Him–will, on the last day, after Jesus has returned to the earth and raised the dead, receive the same reward: life with God that never ends!

And, in the meantime, just like Saint Paul, writing to the Philippian Christians, from a prison cell, his crime being his faith in Jesus and his proclamation of the forgiveness of sins and new and everlasting for all who repent and believe in Jesus, we know that God is with us even now.

It’s hard to understand God.

Hard to understand why He loves us, why He hasn’t given up on us, why He forgives us no matter how many times we come back to Him in repentant faith.

But thank God that He is Who He is.

God is not fair; He’s only right and righteous and good.

Because the God you know in Jesus is good, you can also live each day knowing that “it is by [His] grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

No one can boast, no matter how hard or how long God allows us to work in His vineyard on this earth.

But all who turn to Jesus can rejoice, for the grace He gives us freely in Jesus.

No matter our circumstances in this life.

No matter our position.

Friends, each day, you can claim the inheritance of your baptism and trust Jesus to be with you now AND to give you your eternal reward.

Amen

God Loves the Leftovers!

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on Sunday, September 24.]

Matthew 20:1-16
The title for this morning’s message is God Loves the Leftovers!

From today’s Gospel lesson, we can see that God loves the also-rans, the forgottens, the nobodies, the johnny-come-latelies-to-faith.

And He loves them with the exact same passion and provides them with the exact same eternal salvation with which He loves and provides to those who have believed in Him for as long as they can remember.

This morning, as we consider Jesus’ words, we should be grateful that God loves the leftovers. Because He does, you and I have a place in Jesus’ eternal kingdom.

So do all who turn from their sin and trust in Christ as their God and Savior. That’s good news, gospel!

So, let’s take a look at what Jesus says to us today.

A few verses before the beginning of our gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus tells the disciples that it will be harder for the wealthy to get into His kingdom than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. Peter, anxious to show that he and the other eleven apostles are worthy of being in the kingdom, reminds Jesus that they’ve given up incomes to follow Him. (As thought Jesus had forgotten that!) Jesus tells Peter and the others: “...everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:29)

In other words, anyone who has sought the kingdom above everything in life, will gain much more than the wealth that this dying world can offer. As Jesus puts it elsewhere: “...seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

Jesus caps His response off with these words: “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.” (Matthew 19:30)

You may have noticed that Jesus says similar words to these at the end of today’s Gospel lesson. That means that everything from Matthew 19:30 to the end of today’s lesson, Matthew 20:16, is about just this: In the kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ kingdom, God the Father’s kingdom, the first will be last, the last will be first.

The leftovers will go to the front of the line and the people who showed up first, who followed Jesus faithfully for years and years, won’t mind sitting in the back; they’ll just be grateful to be in the eternal kingdom God gives to all who trust in Jesus! 

To say that this is foreign to our way of thinking is an understatement. It’s revolutionary, it’s counter-cultural. Some might even call it un-American.

But let’s listen to what Jesus tells us this morning, starting at Matthew 20:1: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.”

In those days, landowners and employers had total power, the way that God has total power over His kingdom. When it says that the landowner, standing in for God in this parable, “agreed” to pay the workers a denarius, the common wage for a day of labor in those days, it doesn’t mean that there was any negotiation. This was the rate that the landowner decided on: The workers in his vineyard were going to be paid this amount.

Read on, please: “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.” (Matthew 20:3-5)

It’s been several hours since the landowner first went to the marketplace to find people to go into his vineyard. He mentions nothing about the rate of pay to this second group. He just invites anyone who wants to go to his vineyard to do so. They aren't sent to Human Resources. No interviews. No screening. No attempts to learn the qualifications of the workers. If the men milling in the marketplace are willing to trust the landowner and his offer, they go to the vineyard.

How often do church members want to screen out people they don’t think will “fit in”? How often do we keep people from becoming part of Jesus' kingdom because we thoughtlessly neglect to invite them?

True story: A man who had just moved into a community told me about attending a Lutheran church shortly after his move and having a pleasant conversation with one of its members turn unpleasant when the member told him, “You seem like a nice person. But we already have enough members here. Things are just the way we want them to be here. Maybe you should go look for another church.” He did.

That’s not the way it is with the God we meet in Jesus, the God portrayed by Jesus as the landowner in today’s parable. God invites everyone into His kingdom. Anyone willing to leave the square, with its sins and warped values, and instead, enter His vineyard will be richly rewarded in forgiveness of sins, the power to resist evil, the presence of Christ in their lives on earth, and eternity with God and His people.

Read what Jesus says next, please. “[The landowner] went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’” (Matthew 20:5b-7)

“Why aren’t you in my kingdom?” the landowner-stand-in-for-God asks. “Because no one has invited us in.” These are the leftovers, the people nobody else wants. But God does!

The leftovers called by the landowner are like David, at whom the prophet and judge Samuel looked, and saw, not a king, just a scrawny afterthought. But God told Samuel: “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7) Samuel anointed David king.

The leftovers are like ancient Israel to whom Moses said: “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you…” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)

The leftovers are like the thief on the cross, a criminal who had wandered in the marketplace, stealing and killing all of his life, but on the brink of death, encountered Jesus, acknowledged His sins, and asked for a place in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus told him as they both died on their crosses: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43)

The leftovers are like the apostle Paul, who had rejected Christ and yet came to believe and would speak of himself as “the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” yet…”by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).

I am a leftover, someone who had once rejected the crucified and risen Jesus and His grace. Yet God still kept calling me. Why? Because God loves the leftover people of the world. He wants everyone of them in His kingdom. And He wants His Church to keep calling all people to repentance and new life as long as this brittle, dying world still turns on its axis.

Look at what Jesus says next. “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, 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.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one 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?’”

"The Workers in the Vineyard" by Kazakhstan Artist Nelly Bube. 

 We know, good Lutherans that we are, you and I, that we are sinners only saved by the generous grace of God, brought to us through our faith in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, God has ushered us into His vineyard, His kingdom, and it’s a privilege. We know that we don’t deserve life with God. It’s a free gift which He created for us. The apostle Paul reminds us: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

But sometimes we forget about grace. Sometimes, we may want to pray like the self-righteous Pharisee in another of Jesus’ parables: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector.” (Luke 18:11) Life in God’s kingdom belongs to all who hear Jesus’ call to follow and like the tax collector in that parable in Luke’s gospel say to God: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13)

No matter our sins or failures, God wants us in His kingdom.

Whenever we have the guts to acknowledge our sins, turn away from them, and follow Jesus, we are in His eternal kingdom.

It’s true that God loves leftovers. But the deeper truth is that in His kingdom, there are no leftovers.

As Jesus says at the end of today’s Gospel lesson: “...the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16)

Speaking for myself, as long as I can be in Jesus’ kingdom forever, I’m not particular about the seating arrangements. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Living in An Unfair World

On Sunday, I presented a sermon on Matthew 20:1-16, in which I said that God isn't fair, but gracious. If God were fair, judging us according to what we deserve, none of us would merit His forgiveness.

Or the opportunity to know God's love given in Christ.

Or the chance to spend eternity with God.

We could never be part of God's kingdom.

That's why, Jesus shows in the parable contained in those verses, we should never begrudge the forgiveness and patience God gives to others. He grades the lives of repentant believers in Christ on the same grace curve He employs with all repentant believers in Christ. Only Jesus Christ makes it possible for the human race to experience the unfairness of God's grace and favor and eternity.

But there's another sense in which God may seem unfair and, to tell you the truth, after nearly thirty-five years as a Christian and almost thirty years as a pastor, I can't explain it away. Only try to deal with it.

I'm talking about the seeming unfairness God allows to be visited on those who experience horrible tragedy, despite their faithfulness to Him. Despite their prayers. Despite their desire to live for God and to put God first in their lives.

Their loved ones die too early. Or suffer over long years of pain.

Their grown children turn from parents, God, and the values they've been taught from birth, seeming to mock the words of Proverbs 22:6. ("Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.")


Their marriages become battle zones or somber theaters of quiet sadness and resignation and some Christians in these circumstances feel themselves "trapped" by promises made to God and their mates, although their mates have proven to be far from the loving, committed people they promised they would be.

Their friendships die under the weight of life's numerous obligations and accelerated mobility.

Their careers abruptly end as corporations downsize, relocate, or seek ways to cut their costs.

I don't know why God, Who I have seen intervene in many circumstances that were, from every rational, empirical perspective, completely hopeless, doesn't choose to intervene in more situations. It doesn't seem fair.

I don't have any answers. And it would be presumptuous for me to think that I do.

When Job, in the Old Testament, challenged God to tell him why he, a man whose faith and virtue God Himself had bragged about, had lost all his children, all his property, and all his livestock (and heard his wife advise him to throw in the towel: "Just curse God and die."), God ended up telling Him, in essence: "It is what it is. You wouldn't understand it if I explained it to you."

God didn't deny the unfairness to which Job was subjected. And the unfairness seems to continue. And it can't be explained.

But I am comforted (sometimes) by the following thoughts. Maybe they'll help you too.

First: When we trust in Jesus Christ, we never experience unfairness alone. (Though it can seem that way.)

No one has suffered greater unfairness than Jesus Christ. True God and true man, Jesus was sinless. Yet He suffered and endured a horrible death. He did it voluntarily so that a perfect human being could bear the guilt of us all, killing the power of death over all who turn from their own sins and believe in Him.

Through that act of love and empathy, we can be certain, God gets unfairness. He's been on the receiving end. And this is the God Who promises, "I will be with you always."

Second: It's OK to get mad at God for the unfairness of things. The supposedly patient Job was so angry at the unfairness to which he'd been subjected that he challenged God to a kind of trial in which both would present their cases. Though God ultimately put Job "in his place," He didn't withhold His love or grace from Job for being angry.

You never get mad at a God you don't believe is there. Anger at God is never displayed by an atheist (at least not consciously). Only people who believe in God get mad at God.

God is a good listener. And as long as you're talking to God, even if your words and sentiments are filled with anger at Him. you're giving Him access to your life, an invitation to bring you His peace in the midst of your storms. Romans 8:26-27 says: "...we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints [saints are what the Bible calls repentant believers in Christ] according to the will of God."

Third: When we suffer life's unfairness, we find ourselves equipped to listen to, pray for, and befriend other people, Christians and others, who have experienced that same unfairness. We can, if we allow God's Spirit to soften our hearts, become the empathetic hand and voice of Christ for those whose hurts we more clearly understand because we ourselves have "been there."

A friend of mine has suffered many losses, losses so unfair that I have complained to God about it more than once. She doesn't claim to have made sense of any of it or to not sometimes feeling God has been unfair. But she makes a point of reaching out to others suffering at the hands of life's unfairness. It's become a ministry from God for her and she doesn't really understand how powerful it is.

Fourth: This world is and will remain unfair to all people until the day Christ returns. It's part of the landscape of earthly experience. The universe groans under the weight of sin, death, and darkness. That's why good news of any kind--a kid volunteering at a homeless shelter, a billionaire spending millions to educate young people, a priest starting a community garden that feeds poor people and gives others a sense of purpose--comes as such a surprise to us. We live in a bad news world.

In our bones, we know that we can never count on this world to be fair or to make sense. Especially for those who know the gracious, loving God of the world Who has come to us in Christ. We know that all have been made for more and that only in eternity will we experience all for which we were made.

When our time on earth is done, we can count on God to treat all who have endured in following Christ to the ultimate unfairness: A life of perfect peace, joy, and purpose lived with God and all the saints for all eternity.

That truth, that secure promise, ultimately, is the only thing that enables me to plunge into each day with hope and purpose while living in this unfair world.

A Lot More Than Fair

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio on Sunday, September 21, 2014.]

Matthew 20:1-16
Once, like I’m about to do this morning, I preached on today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-16. There, as we’ve seen, Jesus tells a parable--a story--about what one Bible scholar called "the eccentric employer" who pays the people who worked just one hour for him the exact same amount of money that he pays those who spend the whole day working in his fields.

After the service that day, a lifelong Christian and member of that church waited until I had shaken everybody’s hand, then approached me. “That Gospel lesson has always bothered me,” he said. “It’s not fair! Is Jesus saying that a mass murderer who repents and trusts in Him just before the executioner flips the switch is on an equal plain with someone like me? I’ve been a Christian all my life.”

I tried to tell the man: “It’s hard for us to accept, but no, God isn’t fair in that we can never earn what He gives to us. We can earn no more and no less of the grace He gives to those with faith in Christ.

"And, yes, the mass murderer who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith is every bit as much a part of the kingdom of heaven as any other sinner who repents and believes.”

Our conversation started there and didn't get any better, frankly.

Few sayings of Jesus more reliably offend many faithful Christians than those found in these verses from Matthew. Yet, if we only stop to think, we realize that this isn’t the only time Jesus has delivered the same message.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son. In it, a good-for-nothing son returns home to his father, begging for a job as a hired hand and is instead, welcomed home with a feast of forgiveness and welcome, assured that He is an heir once more. The message is clear: Even the worst sinner can, with repentance and faith in Christ, receive all the perks of eternity that Jesus died and rose to give repentant believers in Him.

But sometimes overlooked in the parable is the older brother, a guy who had always obeyed his father, always towed the line, and so resented his father’s grace toward the prodigal son that he refused to come into the party, representing those who resent God’s grace and forgiveness for those they deem beneath them on the righteous-meter. He reminds me of Christians and non-Christians I've known through the years who have refused the grace of God or the fellowship of the Church out of the same sense of self-righteousness.

Later, on the cross, Jesus would demonstrate the very things He proclaims in these parables. A thug hung on the cross next to Him. He acknowledged His sins and Jesus’ kingship and Jesus promised this undeserving man, who came to repentance as he was breathing his last, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.”

The God we know in Jesus Christ is not fair. He forgives sinners who will turn from sin and trust in Him no matter when they do that in their lives. 

But there’s more to this parable than giving hope to johnny-come-latelies. Let’s take a few minutes to unpack Jesus’ parable to find that something more.

By way of background, turn please, in the sanctuary Bibles, to Matthew 19:27-29. Jesus has just encountered a rich young man who wanted entry into God’s kingdom. Jesus could see that the man’s wealth was his god, the most important thing in his life. After Jesus tells the man that he clearly must sell everything he has and give to the poor, then follow Him, the man walks away from Jesus, sorrowful. The rich man's identity was too wrapped up in wealth to let go of it, even if doing so meant taking hold of eternal life with God.

Jesus mourned the man’s decision. Just as He mourns it today whenever we turn from Him and His grace. He talks about how hard it is for those with wealth to follow Him, how we must divest ourselves of our dependence on anyone or anything other than God if we are to have life with God.

Defensively, Peter asks Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

Can you hear the pathetic tone in Peter’s words? “We’re good guys, right, Jesus? We checked off that box, right? We gave up everything to follow You.”

Jesus doesn’t answer Peter’s question directly. Instead, He speaks words that challenge Peter to some prayerful reflection (maybe they challenge us similarly): “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Tough words! Those who follow Jesus--who repent and believe in Him and keep believing in Him--will reign with God over the new creation that will come about on His return.

But He defines those who follow Him as all who are willing to rid themselves not just of their dependence on wealth, but also dependence on their closest kin, even their spouses, if those dependencies prevent them from following Him.

Followers of Jesus must be willing to lose what the world counts important in order to gain eternity. The last will be first. The first will be last. God isn’t fair. He’s gracious.

Jesus then tells the parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson. You know the story well. A wealthy landowner goes to a public square at about 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm, and even 5pm, just one hour before the end of the workday in order to hire people to take care of his harvest.

It was common for landowners to go out to such places at the beginning of workdays to hire laborers. But no landowner would keep going out every several hours through a workday in the way the owner in Jesus‘ fictional parable did.

In verse 6, we’re told that the owner went to the square at 5:00 and asks why no one has yet hired the men still there. It’s a good question. At harvest time, there should have plenty of jobs for willing workers.

In verse 7, the men reply: “Because no one has hired us.” The owner doesn’t stop to think, “Are these guys loafers? Are they troublemakers? Did other landowners let them go because they're unreliable?” He simply hires the men on the spot. He has a whole harvest field and he needs more harvesters.

At the end of the parable, as we’ve seen, those sketchy latecomers get the same pay as the ones who toiled all day long in the sun.

 Because God isn’t fair, but gracious, as long as there is breath, there is hope that those who don’t believe in Christ will turn to Him and live. And their place in eternity will be as secure and as joyous as the places of people like Paul and Peter and Stephen and Martin Luther and Billy Graham and Mother Teresa. That gives us a great hope, not only for ourselves, but for those loved ones for whom we pray Christ will become Lord.

But the parable is about much more than that. Remember that this is a parable about the “kingdom of heaven.” “...the kingdom of heaven is like...” Jesus begins. The laborers are saved not by what they do but by their trust in the landowner.

Yet, the landowner doesn’t call them to a life of ease.

Being citizens of the kingdom of heaven is not about strumming harps and hangin’. The God we follow in Christ intends to put us to work on the same saving mission that God was on when Jesus was born, when He died, and when He rose again.

When we sign on for salvation through Christ, we also sign for holy assignments from God.

In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus tells the disciples: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

Jesus was saying that there are lots of people in the world who need the good news of John 3:16. And people really only come to know and follow Jesus Christ--people only come to know Jesus as their God and Savior and Lord--in life-to-life encounters with Christians who have been sent out into the harvest by Christ.

And the New Testament makes clear that that is every Christian, not just the people wearing collars. The apostle writes in 1 Peter 2:9: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Every Christian has been entrusted with the great commission to go into the harvest and make disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you...”



But even though Jesus couples the commission to make disciples with a promise--”...I am with you always, even to the end of the age”--I find the whole idea of living life-to-life with other people in order to help them become disciples of Christ intimidating.

I love the idea of being part of Jesus’ kingdom. I’m really shaky on being someone who tries to go harvesting for disciples among skeptical family members, cranky neighbors, or hostile strangers.

“I want to be in your vineyard, Lord. But instead of being a harvester, could I just be an encourager of harvesters? A spectator of harvesters?”

Maybe you have similar feelings. But according to Jesus, we don’t have those options. To be all in with Jesus is to receive all of His grace and all of partnership in His mission to win all the world to faith in Him.



Fortunately, for we squeamish disciples, help is on the way. Your church council has recently voted to sign on to a three year process of the North American Lutheran Church called Congregational Discipleship Ministry.

Not a program, this ministry teaches us--first the pastors, then a group of about twelve people called the life and learning team, then more and more people of the congregation--how to live as disciples, how to harvest the vineyard, how to make new disciples.

The focus is on being not members of the Church, but disciples within the body of Christ, empowered by God to reach those who, without saving faith in Christ, will be lost for all eternity.

For the first nine months or so, you’ll hear little about this discipleship ministry. A coach will be working with Dan Mershon and me, helping us learn how, using the gifts, abilities, experiences, and personalities God has given to us as individuals to share our lives and Christ’s life with others, so that we can help you to do the same.

This is precisely how Christ envisioned the Church to work. In the Church, Christ created the first pyramid scheme, disciples multiplying by one-to-one contact with the Gospel present in the lives of of believers in Christ.

This is the life to which the One Who bought us out of slavery to sin and death has called us to live.

We are called, no matter when Jesus Christ calls us to faith in Him, to be Christ’s harvesters.

Pray everyday, please, that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to fulfill that call. Nothing is more important. Amen

Select, Pray, Invite; Select, Pray, Invite

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on Sunday morning, September 18, 2011.]

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Every Sunday School student knows the story of Jonah, an eighth century Israelite prophet.

God told Jonah to cry out against the evil perpetrated by the people of the city of Nineveh in Assyria. Assyria was the menacing evil empire of its day. For Jonah, as a Jew, to go to Nineveh and tell the people how rotten their sins were would be a bit like God sending you or me to go tell the leadership of al Qaeda that terrorism is evil. That would be a scary mission!

No wonder then that in chapter one of the Old Testament book named for him, after being given his marching orders with God’s message for Nineveh, Jonah got on board a ship and headed instead in the opposite direction, for the Spanish port of Tarshish.

[This map shows Joppa, where Jonah received his marching orders from God, and that Nineveh is a relatively short distance to the east, while Tarshish was well to the west in Spain.]

You know what happened next. God caused a fierce storm that terrified everyone on the ship. When the other passengers and the crew learned that it was Jonah’s refusal to go where God had sent him that had roused God’s anger and brought on the storm, Jonah said that the only thing that could save them was to throw him into the sea.

Reluctantly, they agreed and tossed Jonah into the drink. That solved things for everyone but Jonah. But God had a solution, a special taxi service in the form of a great fish. Eventually, God caused Jonah to be disgorged by the fish. After that, Jonah went to Nineveh, in the heart of enemy territory to deliver God’s message for the people there.

Jonah clearly didn’t spend a lot of time polishing it. He made no attempt to give his listeners any background. And he showed them no compassion. He simply went to the city and said: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

That’s it. The whole city, knowing almost nothing about the God of Israel, nonetheless repented for their sins and trusted (or believed) in God. The Ninevite king voiced their faith when he said, “Who knows? God may relent and change His mind; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

What happened in Nineveh after Jonah preached his pathetic sermon is analogous to one of us, without a megaphone or advertising or press releases or billboards or web sites or interviews on ‘Good Morning, America,’ going to Times Square in New York City, uttering a one-sentence message from God, then seeing the entire city turn from sin and turn in faith to Jesus Christ!

The power of a message from God is not in the human messenger God uses to bring that message. The power is in the message-sender, in God Himself! We see that in Jonah.

I once heard Lutheran pastor Don Abdon talk about one of the first times he shared Jesus Christ with another person. He asked the man, “Would you like to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior?” The guy answered, “Yes.” Abdon, aware of what a disjointed mess his witness for Christ had been, couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you sure?” he asked. Fortunately, despite this opportunity to weasel out of it, the man repeated, “Yes.”

Jonah should have looked at what happened in Nineveh with awe and gratitude. God’s Word had turned a whole city from sin and turned it to faith in God!

How would we feel if we saw that happen in Logan and Hocking County today?

Wouldn’t we be happy with the changes that would take place when those of low self-esteem walked confidently in the grace of God?

Or when gossip and backstabbing were seen as something to repent for and not to encourage?

When community leaders sought to think less of their own agendas and more about what the will of God might be?

Or when young people saw their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit and not places to dump drugs?

Or when everyone prayerfully enlisted the power and help of God to resist temptation and keep the gift of sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman?

I think we would be happy if our whole community and we ourselves were totally sold out to the God we know in Jesus Christ, if our community were, not perfect, but repentant and believing.

Jonah wasn’t happy to see these kinds of things happen in Nineveh. He was angry!

Scan our first lesson, printed on the Celebrate insert. As the lesson begins you'll see that Nineveh has repented and turned to God. God changed His mind about the calamity He had planned to bring on the city for its sin.

This leads to the strange prayer in Jonah 4:2. (If you can call what Jonah utters a prayer.) Jonah claims that the reason he'd at first headed for Tarshish in the first place wasn’t because he was terrified to go to Nineveh, but because he knew that this was the kind of stunt God would pull. Jonah recalls words that God had used of Himself some six centuries earlier, speaking with the people of Israel in the wilderness when Moses was their leader. I didn’t want to come to Nineveh, Jonah says, because I knew that You are the God Who is “gracious…and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Jonah accuses God of being too wimpy, too lacking in backbone, too willing to forgive sinners!

These are stupid words coming from a man who had personally experienced the power of God.

And they are ungrateful words from someone who had rebelled against God, yet been forgiven and helped by God.

Jonah seems to have forgotten that, like the people of Nineveh, he too had been saved by God’s grace.

I’ve mentioned before the conversation I had after worship at one of my previous parishes with a man who was upset with the passage from Matthew that makes up today’s Gospel lesson, which recounts a parable Jesus told about a wealthy man who gave the same wages to workers no matter how early or late in the day he had hired them.

My parishioner understood Jesus’ point. “Jesus is saying that someone who’s led a rotten life who repents for their sins and believes in Jesus Christ is given eternal life just the same as someone like me who has always believed,” he said with considerable feeling. “Someone like me,” he went on. “Yes,” I said. “But that’s not fair!” he replied.  

Listen: God isn’t fair.

But the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, affirms two things about God.

• First, that God is just. “The wages of sin is death,” the New Testament book of Romans says. And Jesus tells us emphatically, “Unless you repent, you will perish.” 
• But the Bible also affirms that God is gracious and merciful. God is charitable for us. The Old Testament tells us that God remembers that we are dust, created beings in need of help and desperatelt dependent on His charitable love.

Jesus died and rose again so that all people who will turn from sin and believe in Him will have life forever with God. Jonah wanted God to give no opportunity to the Ninevites to repent or believe in Him.

I sometimes wonder whether we don’t have the same attitude about the world we live in as Jonah had. I wonder whether we modern believers don't just want to hunker down and quietly believe, and wait our lives out until we can get into heaven. Polling consistently shows that something like 1% of all Lutherans ever tell a spiritually disconnected person about Jesus, even though Jesus commands all Christians to be His witnesses and to make disciples.

We don’t tell others about Jesus because, like Jonah, I think, we’re afraid.

There may be good reason for our fear. After the church of my friend, Pastor Steve Sjogren, started doing kindness outreaches regularly, an influx of visitors started worship there and the congregation saw many people coming to faith in Christ. Not all of the people coming to Steve's church played well with others initially, though. Many conformed to the description of the Ninevites that God gives at the end of our lesson, they didn’t know “their right hand from their left.”

One day, Steve was shocked when a family attracted to the church through the outreaches started a knock-down, drag-out fight in the church parking lot. The elders had to call the cops to break things up. It could have been a terrible turning point in the life of the congregation. The people of Steve’s church could have been so revolted by the behavior of these sinful people that, like Jonah, they could have sulked and kept to themselves.

Instead, they decided that if they were going to continue reaching out to people whose lives were made messy by sin and being disconnected from God, it would be best to have some police on the church parking lot every time they got together for worship. They didn’t stop sharing Jesus!

From that point on, Steve’s church grew from several hundred people, about the size of Saint Matthew, to a congregation that welcomed 6000 to worship each weekend.

Now, in a city like Logan, whose population is 6000, I can’t envision Saint Matthew becoming a megachurch, although maybe God can.

But I do know that the people of our community need the God Who is both just and gracious, the God Who will demand punishment for people’s sins unless they receive the free gifts of His grace and forgiveness by faith in Jesus Christ. 

And I know that God has called us to share this message with our neighbors. God wants to use us to transform the life of our community by calling people to repent for sin and believe in Christ.

So, here’s a simple plea from your pastor. Make it your aim every Sunday night to select one spiritually-disconnected person you know, to pray over the next three days that God will make that person receptive to Jesus, and then on Thursday of that same week, invite them to worship, Sunday School, the women's group, or Bible discussion group.

Don’t be spooked if they say no. Keep praying for them and pray that God will give you another crack at inviting them later.

Then, the next Sunday, select another person who has no connection to Christ’s Church, start praying for their receptivity to your invitation on Sunday night, and then on Thursday, invite them to worship, Sunday School, women's group, or Bible discussion group.

Keep doing this week-in and week-out: select, pray, invite; select, pray, invite.

While you know lots more people in Logan than I do, I promise to go through this same procedure—select, pray, invite—as best I can.

God used a reluctant Jonah to save a whole city once steeped in sin and far from God. How much more might God be used by the people of Saint Matthew as we willingly share the Good News of new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ with our community?

God is looking for Saint Matthew members willing to say, “Here I am, Lord; send me!” May we be those people!

God Isn't Fair!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 20:1-16
This morning, I’d like to invite you to hear a summary of Professor Daniels’ class, Life 101. Here it is: Life is unfair. You don’t need to enroll in the course, do you? You already know that life is unfair. You know often people whose only qualification is the ability to butter up their superiors become successful. You know that kids who toil away at getting good grades and being good citizens get far less recognition than the ones who can shoot a basketball or hit home runs. You know that bad things happen to good people.

Life is unfair, meaning that when we come to a passage of Scripture like our Gospel lesson for this morning, we get upset. In this parable from Jesus, the landowner stands in for God. Jesus says that this parable tells us what the Kingdom of God is like and it dawns on us that God is unfair too. It isn't fair that people who work for one hour get the same wage as those who baked and sweated while working in the hot sun all day long.

So, here’s the summation of my Life 102 course: God isn’t fair; God is gracious!

Grace is a word we throw around a lot in church. But what is it? Well, an old acrostic takes the letters of the word—G-R-A-C-E—and says that grace is God’s redemption at Christ’s expense.

In other words, because of His charitable love for us, God buys us out of our slavery to sin, death, and pointless living through Christ’s death on the cross.

We don’t deserve the grace of God—it isn’t fair for Him to give us blessings we haven’t earned and can’t earn, but God gives grace to all who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

So, in addition to revealing that God isn’t fair, the parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson also shows us that God’s grace is an absolute gift. He does this by showing us several truths I want to talk about right now.

First: God seeks us out and extends grace to us. God reaches out to us with grace.

I meet people all the time who say that they’re looking for God or looking for the answers to life’s questions.

Now, God and life will always be shrouded in some mystery for us. After all, we’re all only human. There are limits to our wisdom, our strength, our brainpower.

But we don’t have to look for God or for the meaning of life. In Jesus Christ, God has reached out to us. God can be known by anyone who is willing to be found.

Jesus says: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father but through Me.” No mystery there!

And this Savior Who has died and risen for us comes to us to extend His grace, a freely-given passport to a daily relationship with God in this world and in eternity beyond.

Many of you know Fred Meuser, the former president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary. One day, Fred took several seminary students, including me, out for lunch. He told us, “I was raised in a Christian home and I don’t remember a single moment in my life when I didn’t believe in Jesus.” I read a few years ago that nearly twenty years into retirement, he’s a volunteer tutor in an elementary school in Florida, teaching kids how to read. Fred heard the call of God to His vineyard as a baby in his parents’ arms and he’s spent his life serving in Christ’s Name.

Someone you wouldn’t know is a man I'll call Roy. Roy lived in Clermont County, where we lived for seventeen years. Roy spent most of his life running away from God. And he made a mess of most of his relationships along the way. Then in his seventies, Roy was dying of cancer. He’d read about a new Lutheran church in the area and about the crazy pastor who was going door-to-door to invite people to worship. Roy called me up. “I haven’t been in church for forty years or more,” he said. “I was never baptized. I want to be right with God.” He invited me to his home and we talked about God’s gracious offer of new life to all who believe and are baptized. A few days later, with several family members and friends on hand, Roy was baptized in his living room. Roy opened his ears to God’s call to His vineyard on the brink of death.

It isn’t fair, but it is gracious that the same promise of life with God belongs to both Fred and Roy...and to you and me. In Christ, God is in the business of reaching out, extending grace to all. No matter when we receive it, it’s ours!

So, truth #1, God extends grace to us. Truth #2: God doesn’t give grace based on what we do. The early hires in Jesus’ parable didn’t like the fact that the last hired were given the same pay they received.

Often, we in the Church act as though membership should have special privileges. And of course, there are privileges associated with being part of the Church: We have an extended Christian family with whom we share worship and service in Jesus’ Name, with whom we receive Baptism and Communion, and with whom we can laugh and cry and grow strong in faith. Those are huge privileges.

But these are gifts God grants to us not because we have seniority or because we’ve served long terms on Church Council or because we’ve worn holes in the same pews for fifty years. And they don’t come to us because of all the work we’ve done at church. They are free gifts that God is also willing to give to all who turn to Jesus Christ. Paul writes in the New Testament book of Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” God doesn’t give grace based on what we do. God gives grace based on the fact that He is unfair: He loves everyone and wants all to turn to Him and live.

Here’s Truth #3: In God’s grace, all who believe in Him are given useful work as a way of honoring God. In Jesus’ parable, the landowner calls otherwise idle people to work in his vineyard. You know, God never meant for work to be seen as punishment. From the beginning, before the fall into sin, God gave Adam, the first man, work to do. It’s partly because of this that my heart aches for the people here in Hocking County and the people across our state and nation who are unemployed right now. We human beings were made to work, each of us using our talents not just to provide for our families, but to glorify the God Who gave us those talents.

For the Christian, whether in our daily work or in the mission of the Church, work is a calling from God, a way of expressing thanks to God for all His blessings. And, folks, within the Church, there is a lot of work to do, many ways for you and me to thank God for those blessings.

I learned this lesson well from a member of my former parish. Steve is the last guy in the world you’d expect to teach a children’s Sunday School class. His own kids are mostly raised and he spends his days doing highly technical work, developing new products for a company that produces thermostatic instruments. (I have no idea what that means.) For kicks, he coaches high school kids in rec league basketball and restores cars that have been totaled. He chaired our congregation’s building program a few years ago. He led the men’s Bible study. In other words, Steve lives with a full plate. But when we were having a hard time recruiting anyone to teach the third, fourth, and fifth graders on Sunday mornings, Steve stepped up. There’s no razzle-dazzle in Steve’s lesson plans. But he’s been at it for several years now and the kids love being in his class. God has given him useful work in the kingdom.

Just this past week, Ann and I met a man who is eighty. It somehow came out in our conversation that last Sunday, he worked in the church nursery. I learned that he has a three-announcement rule. If announcements asking for volunteers have been made three times at church and nobody else comes forward, he volunteers. “I like to read Bible stories to the kids,” he told us.

The examples of Steve and that man and so many other faithful workers in God’s vineyard confront me with a daily question, “What might I do today to tell God, ‘Thank You’ for Jesus Christ and His cross and the new life that’s mine as a gift of grace?”

I hope that whenever there’s an opportunity to serve or be part of a ministry, whether here at Saint Matthew or in your daily life, you’re asking yourself what you might do to honor and glorify God.

Don’t say...
I’m too old,
I’m too young,
I’m too inexperienced,
I’m lacking in talent,
I don’t have the time,
I don’t know enough about the Bible,
I haven’t been trained.
Just heed God’s call and God will give you not only useful work, but a way to do it.

One thing I tell myself is that if Jesus can make a meal for thousands from a few fish and scraps of bread, He’s surely able to make something good of my measly efforts. God can do things through you—can give you useful work—when you heed His call.

God isn’t fair. Thank God for that! Instead God is gracious.

• God extends grace to us, reaching out to us, happy whether we come to follow Him as children or as senior citizens.
• God doesn’t give grace based on what we do, instead loving us just as we are.
• And by God’s grace, all who follow Him are given work to do that uses our gifts, honors God, and extends Christ’s love to others.

This week and every week, hear God’s call to work in His vineyard and, working side by side with Christ and the Church, experience all that it means to be fully alive!

[A portion of the outline for this sermon was inspired by one from Michael Duduit, which appeared here.]