“GRACE UNDESERVED”
Saint Matthew 20: 1-16
Septuagesima: 24 January Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord uses agricultural parables not because He thinks you’re familiar with the subject, but because He is The Farmer, Gardener, Vinedresser, Arborist, and, in fact, The Creator of the very dirt—the rich earth—Himself!
He made dirt a perfect heavenly garden called Eden. He made all the seed bearing and fruit bearing trees and vegetables grow from the earth. He picked up dirt, with His own, one day to be pierced, hands, and breathed His spirit into the soil, His soil, moistening it with His spittle; and from the mud-man He made Adam—perfect and in His likeness.
If you can read, study, and learn that corn seed or wheat seed produces great stalks of the mature plant only when it happens, and only when the soil is good and the water is sufficient…and there’s no frost, hail, insect horde, or other natural or man-made catastrophe, i.e. stuff grows when it grows if God so wills it, otherwise it doesn’t…then Christ expects you to understand, believe, and most importantly, rejoice in His parable!
When you break one commandment you shatter them all. When you fail to love your neighbor, to serve him, to protect him, to speak well of him, and to forbear him, you are ALSO failing to fear, love, and trust in God. To ignore and toss aside one table of the Law is to have both of them pierce through your blackened heart.
But while our sinful hearts are black with satanic pitch and hellish tar, Christ’s heart is red, shining White, in the red compost of His suffering on your behalf; dark black rich earth—blackened in His death and burial in your place.
The tenants hired first, “early in the morning,” wanted to be paid for their work; not unreasonable as that was the contractual agreement. Those who desire to live by the Law may do so…may try so. But in the Kingdom of God, unlike an orchard or row-crop field, the wages don’t get rewarded for simply showing up, moving around, and doing “something”—even if it’s ones best efforts. In The Kingdom of God those who wish to live by the rules, the list…must be perfect. Do the Law and live, fail to do the Law, and be damned. The wages of sin is death. You are sinners and you will get what you’ve got coming to you, what Adam had coming to him. You will die. BUT…….
Though you may be acting, every day, today, now, like those controlling, bossy, and selfish workers hired first, you are not treated that way by your Savior—He found you truly at the 11th hour though you think you’ve been following Him since the beginning, working for Him with all your effort and talent, and just your “wonderfulness;” He found you, not just standing around and unemployed, but dead, naked, and filthy. He “hired” you not as an hourly worker but adopted you as His brother and sister. Under His Grace and Mercy, drenched in His love—His Blood, you do not begrudge His peace and overflowing generosity to all of your other brethren—it’s a large and thankful (if not always happy) family. Beware an “evil eye.”
Begrudging the Master’s beneficence and generosity to others, especially those who don’t deserve it, and most especially those you don’t like because—well, fill-in-the-blank, is to murmur against Jesus. Don’t murmur against He Who bore the burden of your sin and bore the heat of the day; Who made you equal to God by giving you not a penny but a peace eternal. Mayhaps, what really “chaps” and infuriates the Pharisee in all of us is that we think God does not “see” what’s going on… “This man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner.” [Lk. 7.39b] Jealousy…and self will…selfishness…ingratitude…
Jealousy rears its serpent head in the youngest of the brood, toddlers, and it drags down Christians in thought, word, and deed until their release at the second death.
The Spirit through the Word, turns you from your heart to His Sacred Heart. He planted it in you at + Washing, and Waters it with His Word and Blood in Gospel Absolution and Evangel Eucharist!
The Man, Christ Jesus, is The God/Man. He is called “householder” because His House is His Body united to Himself—Church in “time” and Heaven hereafter. This “goodman” of this House says that the last, the least, the sinner who repents because He has been saved, shall be first. You are forgiven. You are chosen. You are bid to be equal with The King at His Table
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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