MATTHEW 20:1-16

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 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?’ 7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “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.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘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.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Let us pray,

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be pleasing and acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer…

Does anyone know what the 10th commandment is? (Go ahead, shout it out!)

“Thou shalt not covet.”

The 10th commandment reads: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17)

Remember the ten commandments tell us how we are to relate to God. And how we are to relate to our neighbors. This is the commandment that spells out how we are to relate to our neighbors. We are not to covet, or desire, or wish we possess,anything that belongs to our neighbor. Wanting what is not ours will only lead to jealousy. And we cannot love our neighbors if we are jealous of them.

This morning our Scripture reading is the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In it, Jesus highlights the generosity of God, represented by the wealthy landowner.This parable also highlights our own inclination to covet what God chooses to give others. Like the laborers in the vineyard we covet God’s power to forgive. And God’s control over who is forgiven and how. This parable invites us to reflect on what we’re coveting, and how this is inhibiting our discipleship.

This parable is unique to Matthew’s gospel. It begins with a landowner hiring day laborers to work his land. Day laborers would have been readily available in the marketplace. But it would be unusual for a wealthy landowner to locate his own workers. That job was usually reserved for a manager. A manager would never have paid laborers hired at the end of the day the same wage as the laborers hired at the beginning of the day. The landowner can pay the laborers whatever he wants. It’s his land and it’s his money.

The ‘problem’ of this parable is that all of the laborers receive the same wages. No matter how long or how little they labored. The laborers hired at the beginning of the day accuse the landowner of being unfair. But they’re missing the point of the parable. The point of this parable is that God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness are God’s to give away as God sees fit. All we can control is our response to God’s action in the lives of others.

I think we’ve all done a fair bit of coveting during the Covid pandemic. How can you not when you have all of this time to spend scrolling through social media? It’s easy to forget that social media is not reality. It’s just the one perfect moment from an otherwise ordinary day.

One place that I’ve found myself coveting is when I scroll through Facebook and see pictures of my friend’s home gym. My friend has an autoimmune disease. She’s worried her body won’t recover well from covid-19. So she’s not comfortable returning to our gym just yet. She and her husband are in the process of building a gym in their backyard. Where she, her husband, their kids, and their neighbors can all work out in together.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, pastor, if you want a home gym so badly, why don’t you just cancel your gym membership and build one?”

Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. But there are several practical problems with me building my own gym:

1. I am not a homeowner. My landlord is wonderful. But even he isn’t going to let me drill a pull-up rig into his garage.
2. I live in a duplex. My downstairs neighbor is 22, and doesn’t get up until 11:30am. I can’t see her being very happy about me dropping a barbell at 7:30 in the morning in our garage.
3. Gym equipment is expensive. And almost impossible to get during a pandemic.
4. Even with a coach monitoring me, I still manage to injure myself. I don’t want to accidentally drop a barbell on myself with no one around to call 9-11.

In my head I know that a home gym isn’t practically possible right now. But that doesn’t make it any easier to stop being jealous of my friend’s gym. I know it’s ridiculous to be jealous of someone who is trying to make the best out of a bad situation. I’m grateful that I don’t have an autoimmune disease and I can leave my house before there is a vaccine. But more importantly, this jealousy of mine is not good for our friendship. If I’m jealous of her, I can’t be friends with her.

When I was a child, I had a real hard time with jealousy. “It’s just not fair!” I would whine to my grandfather when my sister got an extra scoop of ice cream. I remember my grandfather pulling me aside and telling me, “Rebecca, everyone is at a different part of their journey.” What he was trying to teach me was to not be jealous of other people’s good fortune. Life is hard for everyone. It is harder still if we cannot celebrate other people’s small victories.

Learning how to celebrate other people’s good fortune is the key take-away from this morning’s parable. This week I encourage you all to reflect on what things of others you are coveting. And consider how you might give that desire over to God. For me I’ve had to consciously spend less time on social media. Constantly comparing my real life to other’s make-believe lives on Facebook does nothing for my real life relationships. Maybe you have to make less trips to the mall, or not pick up the phone when a friend calls you for the third time that day. Whatever it is, naming and re-directing our covetous tendencies takes spiritual discipline.

Whatever you have to do, remember this. The goal of giving a desire over to God is not to make yourself look good to others. But to say that what God is doing in our midst is more important than my desire to have my own barbell. Coveting destroys community because it robs us of the joy of other people’s wins. Jesus’ parables are meant to get us to think critically about the world around us. One thing the world needs less of are people who are envious because God is generous.

Thanks be to God,

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.