Eleventh Hour
Matthew 20:1-16

September 22, 2002

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” One of the most memorable and important things Jesus ever said (one of the 17 authentic sayings of Jesus according to the Jesus Seminar) was not mentioned in the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. This spiritual maxim are the last words Jesus says before telling the parable and the first words he says immediately after telling it. Wordly bookends. That may mean something.

The run-up to the parable begins with the rich young man asking Jesus what he needs to have eternal life. Keep the commandments and sell all you own and come, follow me is the answer that was too much for the young man because he was too attached to his possessions.

Then who can be saved? the disciples ask desperately. Don’t worry, Jesus affirms, all those who have left their former lives and families behind to follow me will receive a hundred fold. “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

The algebra of heaven does not function through earthly calculations. We still calculate by the same values as the first century, believing that those who achieve more in this life deserve the highest rank. Isn’t it wonderful when a “successful” person is also a nice guy, because then we think everything in heaven is in its proper place. What Jesus says is that nice successful guys sometimes finish last.

The only preface Jesus then offers to the most outrageous of Gospel parables is the disturbing declaration: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.” This may be the Gospel, but if you know what’s coming this is not good news.

The scene is not set in the economics of a society we know. Nine to five jobs were not the rule. When the talk is of a subsistence society, here it is. The vineyard owner wants workers and knows where to get them at six a.m. A minimum wage employer he is - the usual daily wage, a denarius is agreed.

But work there is still to do. The grapes are ripe, so the owner returns to the market place at nine a.m. and finds a lot of idle men standing around. The word “idle” keeps surfacing, and doesn’t that make you a little irritated? Idleness has never been a religious value.

“I will pay you whatever is right,” the owner pledges, so we are starting to put the economic picture into order. He returns again at noon and three o’clock for more workers - the crop must be in an urgent state, every hour counts.

Five o’clock (the 11th hour by their count) and he still needs every hand he can get. “Why are you standing here idle all day?” “Because no one has hired us,” the idlers answer. The owner offers no promises about doing them right, just work, perhaps with a hint of impatience and disdain.

When pay time comes, you already have it all figured out. A promise of a full day’s pay for a full day’s work, and for the rest it’s obvious what is only right. This is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

The owner instructs the manager to begin with the last set of labourers and then go down to the first group. The last shall be first again and they receive the usual daily wage. The first ones are getting excited until they receive just what they were promised. They aren’t cheated, but envy and personal rivalry can play a role in labour negotiations.

The first guys start mumbalin’ and one is able to articulate clearly their complaint. We worked the whole day in the hot sun and these lazy ones worked only an hour and got the same pay. You’ve made them equal to us, they mumble, and there’s the rub.

Nobody has ever really made economic sense of this. Something always doesn’t fit. Sure, the owner may have known the idle eleventh hour workers still needed to feed their families, so he made sure they got what they needed. A just man, a just God.

Then he rebuts the complaints with a short and impatient tone of voice. Justice does not seem to enter the arena, for “am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

Yes, we are. What bugs us is not that the last shall be first and the first shall be the last, but that the first and the last are equal. There’s no advantage to a long and virtuous life if someone at the end of their life finally gets the idea and loves God and lives godly with the same fervor as the labourer out in the vineyard at the crack of dawn.

Is this the way to run a kingdom of heaven? Even our church doesn’t operate that way. We grant the most honourable positions to those who have been around the longest and done the most work. Above all else, we strain mightily to do what is right and fair. And we expect - and in our hearts demand - that God will do what is right and fair as well. That’s part of the bargain. That’s what we and the first labourers have bargained for with God.

Along with the “what ifs,” the favourite phrase in a lot of churches is “at least I....” At least I spend time with my family. At least I am sober. At least I come to church every Sunday. Stop trying to make all those bargains with God. I’d like to think coming to worship every Sunday is worthwhile on its own merits, but it won’t get you a place on the train to heaven. How many parables and jokes do we tell about a righteous man waiting for admittance at the gates of heaven, only to find out that a murderer who changed his heart at the eleventh hour got in before him? Kept him waiting no less.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Everything in God’s world is grace. You don’t earn God’s love, you can’t. You don’t deserve God’s grace, it’s free, no bargains.

This still probably doesn’t sit that well with most of you. What good does it do you and me to be good and upright and holy? You do have a choice. You can rejoice and accept God’s offer of a fair heavenly payoff for a fair life’s work, an undeserved but blessed grace, which you share with the last and the first. Or, just as the owner told the mumbalin’ first guys, “Take what belongs to you and go.” Insist upon what’s coming to you, what you’ve really earned. I don’t know, I think I would always take the first option. All you have to do is give up bargains and the “‘at least I’s.”

The eleventh hour still has a few minutes left for you and me to accept God’s amazing and unfair grace.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan