1. Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word on this 17th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Matthew 20:1-16, it’s entitled, “Generous to Everybody!” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. They all got paid the same. Did you catch that? The men who showed up at six in the morning and broke their backs in the heat all day got paid the same as the fellows who wandered in at five o'clock, worked one hour, and went home. If that happened at your job tomorrow, you wouldn't call it grace. You'd call your union rep. It offends something deep in us — this idea that hard work and lazy timing could end in the very same paycheck. We are wired, from the cradle, to believe that people should get what they earn. More labor, more reward. Less labor, less reward. That is simply how the world runs, and most days, it runs that way for good reason.
3. So when Jesus tells this parable, he is not describing good economic policy. He is describing something far stranger and far more important: how God deals with sinners. Remember what led up to this. A rich young man had just walked away from Jesus, unwilling to give up his wealth to follow him (Matthew 19:16–22). Then Peter, watching him go, essentially raised his hand and said, "We left everything for you — so what do we get?" (Matthew 19:27). It's a fair question, and an old one. It's the question every one of us asks, if we're honest: after all I've given up, all I've done for you, Lord, what's in it for me?
4. Jesus answers with this story of a landowner who goes out again and again through the day — at six, at nine, at noon, at three, even at five — hiring workers for his vineyard. To the ones hired first, he promises a denarius, a fair day's wage. To the later ones, he simply says, "Whatever is right I will give you" (Matthew 20:4). And at the end of the day, he pays the last first and the first last — and everyone gets a denarius. The early workers grumble. Wouldn't you? "These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us" (Matthew 20:12).
5. And here is the line that should stop us cold: "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?" (Matthew 20:15). That is a terrifying sentence if you think about it for more than a moment. God does what he wants with what is his. Everything belongs to him — the vineyard, the wages, the workers, your life, mine. "The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1). "Every beast of the forest is mine," he says, "the cattle on a thousand hills" (Psalm 50:10). "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself... whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8). We are not owners here. We are workers standing in someone else's vineyard, and he owes us nothing.
6. That ought to humble the old Adam in each of us, because if we're honest, we secretly believe our labor in the vineyard should count for something extra. Some of us have been in this vineyard a long time — baptized as infants, catechized, confirmed, faithful in worship and giving for decade after decade. We've borne the heat of the day. And we don't mind, really, when the Lord brings in latecomers — the adult convert, the friend who finally showed up after years of invitations, even that person we hear about who came to faith on their literal deathbed. We're glad for them... we think. But part of us wants to know: surely I get more than they do? Surely a lifetime of faithfulness outweighs a five-o'clock conversion?
7. The Lord's answer is no. Not because your labor doesn't matter, but because your wage was never actually earned in the first place. Isaiah warns us plainly: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways" (Isaiah 55:8–9). God's economy runs on a different currency altogether — not merit, but mercy.
8. Because here is the truth underneath the parable: even our best work in the vineyard is stained with sin. We've served with pride mixed into our devotion, resented other workers in our hearts, kept score even while singing hymns about grace. If God actually paid us what we've earned, none of us would want that wage — for "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). We don't want justice from God. We need something else entirely. We need what the landowner offers instead: undeserved generosity.
9. And that generosity has a name and a face — Jesus Christ, who himself entered the vineyard at the darkest hour and paid a debt that was not his own. St. Paul, writing from prison, could say, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), because he had staked his entire life on this scandalous generosity rather than on his own record. This is a Christ who fed five thousand with a boy's lunch and had baskets left over (Mark 6:35–44); who ran to embrace a son who had squandered everything (Luke 15:20); who looked at the men driving nails through his hands and said, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34); who turned to a dying thief who had done nothing to earn it and said, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). That thief was hired at the very last hour of his life, and he received the very same paradise promised to every faithful saint who came before him. That is not injustice. That is the gospel.
10. And this same generous God is still doing what he wants with what is his — right here, right now, in your midst. In Holy Baptism he poured his forgiveness on you before you had done a single thing to deserve it. In his Word he speaks that same forgiveness over you again during our worship service. In his Supper he does not ration out a stingy portion; he gives you his own body and blood, the full wage of eternal life, freely and generously, to first-hour saints and eleventh-hour saints alike.
11. So what do we do with a God like this? We stop keeping the ledger. The workers who complained are described as casting an "evil eye" on the owner's goodness (Matthew 20:15) — envy is what happens when we measure grace like a paycheck. Instead, rejoice that God's math doesn't work like ours. Rejoice that your standing before him was never about your hours logged in the vineyard, but about the death and resurrection of the one who hired you. As the Formula of Concord reminds us, we ought not to judge these things "according to our reason, or according to the Law," but instead "listen to God's revealed will" (FC SD XI 26) — the will made known to us in Christ, who has made known "the mystery of his will" (Ephesians 1:9) and brought it to light through the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:9).
12. They all got paid the same. Thanks be to God that includes you. Go back into the vineyard today — not to earn your wage, for it is already secured — but to labor freely, joyfully, and generously, because that is what workers do when they finally understand just how generous their Master really is. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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