Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or, do you begrudge my generosity? So, the last shall be first, and the first last. (vss. 14-16)

This Sunday we begin to make preparation with Jesus and his disciples for the travel to Jerusalem. This is the reason Jesus came into the world . . . to suffer and die for our sins and to be raised up for our justification. Our preparation will begin in earnest with Ash Wednesday which launches the penitential season of Lent. We enter the gesima Sundays where we our lessons focus our attention on how Jesus’ date with the cross is going to effect our life with God - how we shall live with the Father by Christ alone, through faith alone, by grace alone. This morning we are challenged to understand the last of these: How we shall live by grace alone, and how grace must be seen as absolutely outrageous when we try to measure it according to our worldly sensibilities of fairness. Just before the telling of this parable, Jesus had his unsuccessful encounter with the rich young man and indicated to his disciples that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. In response to this, Peter said to Jesus with great self-congratulation; See, we have left everything and followed you. (Matt. 19:27) You get Peter’s drift don’t you? See how poor we have become for your sake Lord. . . . This means we are really going to get the biggest reward in Heaven . . . right? And Jesus responds by saying that there are going to be some big surprises on Judgment Day. He explains that many who were first, shall be last, and the last first.

And then to illustrate what He meant by this cryptic saying, He tells the parable of the laborers. What does this parable reflect about the Kingdom of Heaven, and more importantly, what does it illustrate about how it will be ruled by grace? In what sense will the last be first, and the first last? To start off, lets explain some things that the parable does not mean. This parable is not intended to put Peter down. It is not saying that Jesus is going to be handing out rewards in Heaven in an inverse relationship to how much we may have sacrificed in this life for the cause of Christ and His Gospel. He is not saying that the less you did, the greater the payoff in Heaven and the more you did, the less you get. The first being last, and the last first intends to illustrate something that is paradoxical about those who live by grace. At the end of the day, we all have the same. If you do the math, nobody gets more and nobody receives less.

Secondly, this parable is not talking about rewards or compensation at all. This is true even though we are quite confident that we are hearing Jesus explain the parable in just such terms. The fact is, we only think that the Kingdom of Heaven is about God compensating us on the basis of what we have done, if we come to the parable thinking that way in the first place. This, of course is how the rich man was thinking in the previous chapter, and so was Peter in his responses. And, of course, that is also the way the laborers see things in the parable, and why most of them are offended by what happens at the end of the day. If you see the parable, and by connection, the Kingdom of Heaven, as a matter of obligation according to Law - then the Lord of Heaven comes off as being unfair. And of course you would be offended, but . . . you would also be right. In Heaven, nobody gets their just deserts. Jesus is indeed revealing that the fairness doctrine does not hold sway in the Kingdom of Heaven, and that for the most part, is the whole point of the parable. The parable was never intended to deal with matters involving reward or compensation in the first place. Let’s explain.

Remember, Jesus is ultimately trying to explain the reason for his date with Jerusalem. He goes there not to get from His Father what He has justly coming to him, or to see that we get our just deserts. He goes there to suffer great injustice, and to die for reasons that are completely unfair. He will be receiving wages, but not the fair wages of His labors; rather, the wages of what we deserve. He goes to the cross to pay for our sins. The wages of sin is death. Jesus goes both to pay those wages . . . and at the same time to receive them in our stead. From the injustice of the cross, Jesus will justify a world of sinners including each of us here this morning. The foundations of the Kingdom of God shall be laid by Jesus in Jerusalem, and they will be laid by grace. And while these foundations will have everything to do with God’s justice, they will have nothing to do with fairness. This is the great offense of the Kingdom: in God’s justice, everybody gets what they don’t deserve. The impact of the parable of the laborers is to drive home this outrageous truth about what it means to receive and live in the Kingdom of God by the grace of God’s justice - where we all get the same, and we all get what we do not deserve.

To really get the parable and not be offended is to come to terms with this truth: you are never in the position to labor in the Kingdom of God unless, or until, you first get there and remain there by the grace of God alone. When you get there and how long you will be laboring there is irrelevant. No one labors for grace, you only labor from grace. No one labors for that which by its very nature is a gift. That is absurd. Remember, the labors in the parable are told that they will be given what is right. They are not told that they will be fairly compensated. Thankfulness for receiving a gift, once it has been received, may involve a labor of gratitude - but none of this involves fairness and compensation. Gifts by their very nature are unfair - and so it is with the grace by which we are saved. All receive the Kingdom by the same equal gift . . . the saving grace and forgiveness of Christ that comes from his passion, atoning death and victorious resurrection. There are no degrees or amounts of righteousness. From the unfairness of the cross comes the unfairness of the gift of grace. The Kingdom of Heaven treats us all unfairly because the Father out of his great love for us treats his Son unfairly in Jerusalem. He is unfairly put to death. And we are unfairly put to life. He gets wrath, we get mercy. And all of this is explained of course on the principle that God is, of course, free to do what he pleases with what is His. This is good news! God is pleased to be merciful to you in Christ Jesus. Jesus is the good child and He gets the lump of coal. You have been most bad . . . you get the priceless treasure.

Let’s focus a little more about this business of laboring. In the parable some labor more, while others less, and some very little. Remember how Jesus described new life in Him, as the branch to the vine, we will be fruitful. And as in the parable of the sower and the seed, when the seed sprouts forth in the good soil, it brings different yields from thirty up to a hundred-fold (Matt. 13:8). So it is with us as we are fruitful in the world. We do not all enter the Kingdom at the same time nor do we labor for Christ in our vocations for the same amount of time. Some come to faith later in life and pass into the fulness of the Kingdom soon thereafter, have labored very little. Nevertheless, we are all heirs of same grace and we inherit the Kingdom even before they begin their labors. You cannot have a Christian vocation without first becoming a Christian. By grace you become Christian, and by grace you are privileged in gratitude to labor for the neighbor in Christ’s vineyard. The Lord gives you something worth while to do in life as you live by His grace. The only alternative is spiritual idleness and that is worthless and a bore. The order of things here is terribly important. The righteous become laborers, the laborers do not thereby become righteous.

But now, one more thing, and it is kind of the most outrageous thing about this parable. While everyone in the parable and in the Kingdom of God receive the same "pay" that is, they receive the same grace; nevertheless, in a strange sense. . . some receive more and others less. This is not a matter of mathematics, it is psychological. While we are all sinners dead in our trespasses, Jesus once remarked that those who have sinned little are forgiven little . . . and those who have sinned greatly are forgiven greatly. In this sense, the Apostle Paul confessed that He was chief of sinners. When looked at in this way, Paul could think that he has received the greatest measure of God’s grace. Soooo, while all sinners receive the same gift of Christ’s forgiveness, those who see themselves as chief of sinners receive more. So in this sense, the first shall be last and the last first. . . . But in the end when we add it up: it is the same grace, the same Kingdom, the same Savior, the same Cross, the same Jerusalem. Oh! the unfairness of it all!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.