“HE GIVES YOU WHAT IS HIS”
Saint Matthew 20: 1-16
Septuagesima: 5 February Anno Domini 2023
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
You all know that your God—Jesus—talked in parables from time to time. You can surmise some of the reasons, maybe, but Scripture also tells us that it was specifically to keep the proud, arrogant, and know-it-all Pharisees from instantly apprehending what Christ was saying. The mysteries of The Kingdom are for the Kings children—you!
And when even the “12” didn’t “get it,” The Lord was always quick to interpret and explain the parable.
Being saved, being a human being in Jesus’ sheepfold and household and temple, is like being a worker that has been selected, pre-selected even, and hired by a householder. The Lord is the man of the parable—the householder. It’s His House, His vineyard, His fields, His everything. You know all that.
Also, none of you are synergists. None of you hold to the false teaching of Rome and Arminian Protestantism that one must choose or decide or participate, or do something; take a step, a reach, in order to be saved. You have no problem recognizing that one cannot “hire oneself” to the job. God must, as the parable puts it, “hire labourers into His vineyard.”
Two specific points where Jesus’ parable, The Word of God as Law, condemns you.
First, though you take joy in the free Grace that has placed you, by Faith, into the vineyard—entirely by gift of the householders mercy, you don’t work as you should. You are lazy and you don’t do all that you should; all that has been prepared for you to accomplish. Now, none of this work is to “get you into the vineyard—nothing has to be done by you to get saved, to get to be a child, an heir; but rather you still have an obligation made inflexible by God Himself, to be about His business. You still must work your shift, i.e., Love Him perfectly and love your neighbor as yourself. You don’t do this. All the workers hired at the first, in the parable, don’t do this towards those workers hired at the eleventh hour.
And this sin of yours in not being the perfect worker, dovetails into the second sin which Jesus’ Law condemns—selfish greed; a coveting, miserly, self-entitled and domineering will a desire to not have God’s Grace given to all—even the late hired, that is, the drug addict, liberal, weirdo, smelly, oh, I don’t know, just search your own heart by The Holy Ghost and admit to yourself all those people you don’t like, can’t stand, loathe, and absolutely hate. It will people for the most part who don’t look like you, act like you, or, well, aren’t you! You know, the other sheep that Jesus came to search and save. Or, in the language of the parable—hire at the eleventh hour. None of these eleventh-hour hires, these damnable (like you) lazy (like you) and undeserving (like you) deserved to be hired in the first place. And yes, they don’t deserve to be paid the same wage as all of you cradle-Lutherans/Christians, saved since your Holy + Baptisms, i.e., hired “early in the morning.”
You are jealous of those that you think are getting something that they don’t deserve. I know I am. It just isn’t fair!
Thank your Lord Jesus Christ things are not fair. Thank God that things are not truly just to you and because of you. If you truly desire justice things will be much worse than for those grumbling, ungrateful workers hired at the first. They are told “take that thine is, and go thy way…” At best they can just amble away for a while, and hopefully repent. Mayhaps The Lord’s real meaning is “depart to hell you unmerciful unforgiving reprobates!”
No, you don’t want what you’ve earned, what you’ve got coming to you. You need mercy. You need forgiveness. You need somebody to step in and fulfill the work in the vineyard that you neglected, sabotaged, and half-completed. You need somebody to step in pay you Himself, His own perfect worth.
Jesus came “early in the morning.” He was born from the Virgin’s womb on that glorious Nativity day to be The Worker, The Man! He worked all the hours of the day—the full shift for sins and sin!
Jesus nailed to the wood of the crucifix at the third hour.
Jesus at the sixth hour, high noon, was in the midst of His suffering and agony—for every one of you—and then darkness covered the landscape.
Jesus at the ninth hour, (3 pm) hung His head in bloody, sweaty, Salvific triumph for “[it was] finished!” All the labor in the vineyard fully completed.
Jesus safely buried in Joseph’s hillside tomb by the eleventh hour. His sacred rest in righteousness for you—and now this morning given to you.
Jesus bore the “burden and heat of the day,” indeed the heat of God’s wrath, that you would be bathed in cool waters of Baptism.
A penny, a denarius, no. Everything. He does for you, He gives to you, as He “will(s) with (His own).”
The workers hired at the eleventh hour were made equal to those hired at the first.
You dear Saints are made children of God and co-heirs of Christ Jesus. In Him you are chosen. In Him you are first.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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