Not Fair!

Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 20:1-16                                 

September 20, 2026

Proper 20A                   

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        An hour’s pay for an hour’s work.  You reap what you sow.  You get out of it what you put into it.  A day’s work equals a day’s wage.  Those are the rules.  And we expect God to operate by those same rules.  We expect God to be fair—to recognize and reward our work.

        But today we learn that God is not fair.  He’s just.  He’s gracious.  But God is not fair.  And that’s good because grace isn’t fair.  The Law is fair; but the Gospel is grace alone.  Fairness means that means the first come in first, the last come in last, survival to the fittest, and the kingdom to those who achieve it.  But if it’s grace, then the first are last, and the kingdom goes to the least of all.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s go to the parable, shall we?

        A man had a vineyard and needed laborers to pick his grapes.  He went to the union hall at 6AM and negotiated for some laborers, promising to pay them each a denarius at day’s end—about $100—a crisp C note featuring Ben Franklin’s portrait.  So off they went.  At 9AM he noticed he was still shorthanded.  So he went to Home Depot and found some laborers looking for work.  He told them, “You go work in the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.”  (Note that: Whatever is right. Not whatever is fair.)

        He did exactly the same thing at noon and at 3PM—found some idlers hanging around and hired them for some unspecified wage.  By 5PM the sun was beginning to set and there was still work to do, and he needed more help.  So he went to the local tavern where some deadbeat losers had been hanging out all day, quaffing beers, because no one would hire them.  “You go into my vineyard too,” he says, not even promising to pay them a dime.  But they’re running low on funds for booze and weed, so off they go to work for one hour.  How hard can it be?

        Finally, at 6PM it’s Miller Time as they say in Milwaukee.  The vineyard workers all head to the foreman to receive their wages.  The owner has them line up in reverse order, from last-hired to first-hired, from the eleventh hour losers to the crack of dawn Grape Pickers.  The first girl in line (one of the deadbeats from the tavern) opens her envelope expecting maybe Alexander Hamilton.  But who’s she find instead?  Our good buddy Benjamin on a crisp C note.  And so it continues.

        Pretty soon word filters back to the end of the line—back to the guys hired first—that those who worked only one hour got $100.  So they’re doing the math: $100 per hour times 12 hours, that comes to $1,200. And so, one by one, they step up to the table, expecting the biggest payday of their grape-picking lives.

        But in all their calculations they hadn’t figured on one thing.  The payout from the vineyard owner is all based on his goodness and his promises, and not on their work.  And in his infinite goodness, this guy gives a hundred dollar bill to each and every worker, regardless of how much or how little they worked.  Here’s your denarius.  “Not fair!” declare the sweaty, dirty, exhausted guys who worked all day long.  But the owner reminds them that he didn’t promise to be fair, but only to pay them a denarius.  Promise made, promise kept.  End of parable.

        One of the toughest pills for religious superstars to swallow is the idea that God justifies the ungodly; and that our salvation at the world’s final Miller Time is not based on our works, our achievements and accomplishments, but on the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ who doles out a denarius of salvation to all who believe, whether a lifelong Lutheran or a last-second, deathbed convert to Christ.  The religious elite howl in protest.  Not fair!  But then grace wouldn’t be grace, would it?  It would be bookkeeping.  Score-keeping.  And if the world could have been saved by keeping score, it would have been saved by Moses with his commandments, and not by Jesus with His bloody cross.

        A day’s wages for a day’s work.  That’s fair.  And that’s what we expect in this world.  This world operates by the rule of law. But Isaiah reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.  His ways are not ours.  He deals with us not according to what’s fair, but according to His grace and His goodness.  If you want God to be fair—to deal with you according to your works and your accomplishments—then you will be damned.  That’s fair.  That’s the Law.  Hell is the one place where everybody gets exactly what they deserve.

        Some of us are like the workers hired first, or at least earlier in the day.  We were baptized as babies.  We grew up in the church.  There’s never really been a conscious moment in our lives when we didn’t know Jesus as our Savior.  We’ve worked in His vineyard our entire lives.  We’re not quite sure what to make of those eleventh hour converts who benefit from everyone else’s hard work—those who “got away” with never tithing, never serving on a committee, never attending a long church meeting, never having to get up early on Sunday. 

Whatever you make of them, for the love of God, don’t be jealous of them.  But do see God’s generosity in them and praise Jesus that it really is by grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Jesus Christ alone that sinners are made righteous.  Praise be to Jesus, because if there’s room enough in the kingdom for eleventh hour losers and deadbeats—for hookers, and tax collectors, and all manner of notorious sinners—well, then, there is surely enough room in the kingdom for you and me.

        Then again, let’s not overstate our position in the kingdom.  We really aren’t the first workers hired, are we?  Others have believed long before us.  Others have suffered before us—and much, much more than us.  There have been workers in this vineyard for two thousand years:  St. Matthew and St. Paul, St. Mary and St. Elizabeth, St. Polycarp and St. Augustine, Luther and Bach.  There were countless, nameless believers who bore the heat of persecution, who defended the faith, who suffered and died trusting in Jesus, who have now departed this life to be with Christ (which is far better).

        And now, in these last days, at the eleventh hour with the sun setting, with the fields still ripe and waiting for harvest, the Lord of the vineyard has been so kind and gracious to call YOU to work in this same vineyard.  We are, really, the last and the least.  We come to the scene when much of the work is already done.  Yet, you get the same denarius—not a C note, but the same forgiveness of sins, the same salvation, the same resurrection life in Jesus.  It’s not fair at all; but it’s oh, so gracious.

        While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  While we were still ungodly, He justified us.  Before you so much as lifted a finger to work in His vineyard, He prepared an envelope with your name on it, containing “your” denarius.  And even the work you’re doing now—the good you do each and every day out of love for your neighbor—it’s all really God’s doing in you and through you.  And all this is what we call the “gospel.”  Good news.  Grace, not works.  Gift given, not wages earned.

        It’s outrageous!  There’s no denying that.  Whether first or last—whether we have worked hard, or little, or barely at all—there’s a generous payday coming to all who believe.  It was won for each of us by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  He got the wages we deserve for our sins.  We get His free gift of eternal life.  That’s not fair . . . because God isn’t fair.  But He is good.  And He is gracious.  Thanks be to God. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Those Who Trespass Against Us

Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 18:21-35                               

September 13, 2026

Proper 19A       

Dear saints of our Savior~

        ‘Tis the season for sneezing, and some folks have been doing a lot of it lately.  Sneezes are the body’s way of expelling things that you’re better off without—dust and dander, pollen and mold.  Did you know that the air you expel when you sneeze is traveling more than 100 miles per hour?  Those are “category 2” hurricane force winds!  Some people believe that holding in your sneezes can be harmful.  Why hold in the bad things that your body wants to get out?

        Holding in a sneeze may or may not be harmful; but holding in forgiveness—refusing to share forgiveness with those who sin against you—that will definitely do you more harm than good.  Refusing to forgive is like a cancer on the soul.  It isolates and eats away at the one who refuses to let it go—to forgive.  If hell is the place where no sins are ever forgiven, then refusing to forgive is truly hell on earth.  Jesus comes today to rescue us from this hellish prison.

        Last week we heard from earlier in Matthew 18 that sin—even among brothers and sisters in Christ—is inevitable.  It is to be expected.  We also learned that confronting sin is an act of love—that we should go to the one who sins against us with the goal of reconciliation.  We should go to every length possible to forgive.  We are to set no limits when it comes to forgiveness.

        Peter, today, was looking for limits—and loopholes.  We all do it.  Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?  How about seven times?  When is enough enough?  The rabbis of Jesus’ day said three times was enough.  Peter’s suggestion of seven times had a nice Biblical ring to it.

        But, imagine if Jesus had said, “Yes, the limit on forgiveness is seven times.”  How many of our marriages would have ended long ago if Jesus had set the forgiveness quota at seven?  How full would the pews be this morning if in this congregation we only had to extend forgiveness to one another seven times?  Wouldn’t we all eventually be estranged from one another—brother against sister, husband against wife, elders against ushers, choir against organist?  I imagine if someone sinned against you six times, you’d be praying for just one more time so that you could write that person off completely.

        Forgiveness with limits is not real forgiveness.  Forgiveness, the way Jesus defines it, has no limits, no tally sheets, no keeping score.  Forgiveness “Jesus’ style” is outlandish and outrageous.  I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.  Jesus sees Peter’s seven and raises him to infinity and beyond.  And just about the time you start to lose count, you’re beginning to learn what it means to live under the Gospel instead of the Law.

        To forgive literally means to “let go” of the sin committed against you; or to “send away” the offense to some other place where it’s no longer on your radar.  To forgive means to go on as though the thing hadn’t happened.  The sin has no power over you because you’ve let it go.  You’ve sent it away—no ifs, ands, or buts, no contingencies and no quid pro quos.  To forgive is to step into freedom—the freedom that is yours as a blood-bought child of God.

        Forgiveness is so important that Jesus devotes an entire parable to it.  A servant owed the king an astronomical amount of money.  His house was probably mortgaged three times over, credit cards maxed out, dealing with the neighborhood loan shark, a chapter 13 nightmare.  He begs for mercy from the king, tries to cut a deal:  “Be patient with me and I will pay back everything.”  Yeah, right. The king could have tossed this deadbeat into debtor’s prison—could have liquidated his every possession.  But he didn’t.  The king did an outrageous, crazy, reckless, insanely generous thing.  He forgave the entire debt.  Let it go.  Sent it away.  Told the accountants to get out their erasers.  And the servant walked away free and clear.

        That forgiven servant went out in his freedom and found a fellow servant who owed him, basically, pocket change.  But instead of forgiving him, he began to choke him, and demanded payment on the spot.  His fellow servant pleaded for leniency with the very same words the first servant had used with the king.  But instead of forgiving him, he had the man thrown into prison.  When the king heard about it, he threw a fit, called the servant back in and asked, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”  In anger the king handed the man over to the jailers to be tortured until he paid back his astronomical debt.  There was hell to pay for his refusal to forgive as he had been forgiven.

        When we refuse to forgive as we have been forgiven, we put ourselves in prison, we torture ourselves, and the King isn’t happy.  Few things anger Him as much as our refusal to forgive as we have been forgiven.  How many of us are already living in a kind of self-inflicted torture because we are holding on tight to all the slights and all the sins and all the insults and all the pain and abuse that people have inflicted upon us over the course of a lifetime?  And don’t try to tell me that dragging around that load of sin every day is enjoyable or that it gives you pleasure.  It’s a kind of torture and it’s killing you.

        One thing’s for sure, that’s not the way of Jesus.  That’s definitely not the kind of life that Jesus Christ hung on the cross to win for you.  He’s the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the whole world.  Every sin committed against you is atoned for in His death.  Every sinner is reconciled to God by His blood.  When you look at that person who sinned against you—see that person as one for whom Jesus died.  See that person as someone who is reconciled to God in the death of Jesus.  Does he know that?  Will he know that from you?  He’ll never know it from you if you’ve got your hands wrapped around his throat.  He’ll never know it from you if you keep throwing his sins right back in his face.  But he may yet come to know it with your hands on his shoulder and with the words, “I forgive you.”  When was the last time you said those three little words?  I forgive you.  Nothing is harder.  Nothing is more powerful.

        As for you, you leave here this morning debt free.  Your sins are as far from you as the east is from the west.  The books are closed.  The debt is paid in full.  The slate is wiped clean.  All this thanks to Jesus who paid the debt, “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.”  You are forgiven.  You are free.  You are forgiven and forgiving.

        I learned about forgiveness in an unforgettable way as a child.  I was perhaps eight years old, circa 1977.  In the little church where I grew up, I did something destructive—intentionally destructive.  My guilt was quickly discovered and parental punishment was swiftly applied.  But then I was ordered to go and apologize to the pastor of our church.  This I dreaded with horror, for the pastor was just one notch removed from God Himself.  At the appointed hour I appeared before the Pastor and mumbled my apology, expecting the preacher’s full fury to be unleashed upon me.  But he said: Mike, since Jesus forgives you, I forgive you too.  I had not expected that.  At that exact moment, I learned more about the Christian faith—more about the gospel—more about grace—than all my future years at seminary could ever convey. 

        We forgive others—not to be forgiven by God—but because we already are forgiven by God in Christ.  Whenever you forgive someone you become like Jesus.  You become like Joseph who forgave his brothers the evil they had done, but with tears in his eyes said, “You meant it for evil, but God intended it for good.”  Even when you get shafted by someone, God makes sure that everything works for your eternal good.  You’re already ahead of the game.  So why not let it go and forgive from the heart?  Don’t pooh-pooh the power of forgiveness.  It’s nothing to sneeze at.  It’s Jesus Christ at work in you and through you. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.