So late in the day. This is a sermon on the parable of the labourers in the vineyard from Matthew 20:1-16 (text below). It’s for a small congregation in rural Warwickshire who only meet once a month and use the Book of Common Prayer for their worship. Interestingly there is a local landlord and the villagers are his tenants.
So late in the day I am realising how earth shattering Jesus’ teaching is, shaking us to our foundations. None more so than this parable of the labourers in the vineyard in which the time of the day is so important. It is late in the day.
Preparing this has shaken me up – me, now so long in the tooth and late in the day.
I am in my 70s. I’ve been preaching for 50 years. I am white, educated, male. I have been privileged, among the first chosen, and never short of work.
So, so, so late in the day I come to this parable and I am shaken to my core by Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of heaven where the last come first and the first come last.
I realise that even so late in the day I have much work to do. At last I realise I am among the last. It has taken me so long.
The landowner in Jesus’s parable of the kingdom seems outrageously unfair and the labourers who have worked the longest hours are right to complain that they could have worked for just one hour for the same pay. They complain: “You have made us all equal”.
Imagine your local landowner doing something like that.
Now, remember the horrors of your school PE lessons when two people were chosen by the teacher to pick sides. You may have been one of the lucky ones to be amongst those picked first. You may have even been one of the gifted and talented privileged to choose the teams. Or you may have been the one picked last with your arm forlornly over your head the longest calling half-heartedly “pick me”. It was always humiliating to be amongst the last to be picked – to be one of the “also rans”.
We easily understood how those decisions and choices were made. Those who were “best” were chosen first because they were “winners”, or they had friends in high places. Those chosen last are the “losers”, who, because they are “losers” are the Billy-no-mates. If ever they complain they’re told to get over it, “life’s like that”, “get used to it”. Life isn’t fair, Everybody isn’t equal.
This parable uses the labour market as its backdrop. The labour market works pretty much the same way as teams are chosen in PE. The strong candidates, with their strong applications, with their right qualifications and their right experience are the ones chosen first. They’ve often been to the right schools and know the right people. Other candidates show their weaknesses and carry penalties such as their not-so-good education possibly because of the poverty of their childhood, or the way they talk, or look, or the colour of their skin, or their gender or their age. There will always be people who are chosen last, who might eventually be told that there is a little job they can do to help. That little job will keep the wolf from the door, but the gap between those who are chosen first (the well paid) and those chosen last (the poorly paid) gets wider and wider.
This is the economic order we live with in the kingdoms of this world. This is the rule: the first will be first and the last will be last.
In the parables treasured by the church, Jesus points us to a different kingdom – the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is nothing like the kingdoms on earth because in the kingdom of heaven the rule is not that the first will be forever first and the last forever last. The rule of the kingdom of heaven puts the first last and the last first.
The landowner is strict in his instructions to the manager. He tells him to call the labourers and give them their pay. “Begin with the last, then go to the first.” This is how the last come to be first and the first come to be last. It is the deliberate choice of the landowner who, of course, is God.
Jesus’s teaching really does shake us to our foundations.
Here was something for them to really complain about – those complaining would have been those who were first – those who had lost out in the landowner’s deliberate discrimination in favour of those hired at last. It’s their complaint that makes them last. They complain “you have made us all equal”. That is a complaint against the landowner, against God and against the last. It’s a complaint that makes them unfit for the kingdom of heaven. Of course they will be last in that kingdom where the truth is that the first will be last and the last will be first.
It’s not the first time in Matthew’s gospel that we have heard that the first will be last and the last first. In the previous chapter (19:16-30), when Jesus is explaining to his followers how difficult it is for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (as hard as it is for a camel to climb through the eye of a needle!), he uses the same rule. “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And he says that this will happen “at the renewal of all things”.
What can we take from this?
The first thing is that there is hope for those who are last in the choices and power dynamics of the world and that they have every reason to fervently and faithfully pray for the “renewal of all things” because they are the first choice of God.
The second thing is that those who have been used to the privileges and power of being among the first have a choice to make. They (we?) can choose to complain or not complain. They (we?) can choose to join the complaints about the apparent injustice of the rule of the kingdom of heaven (which puts the last first), implying that they will have no part in such a rule or kingdom.
Or they (we?) can choose to celebrate with the last at the renewal of all things. They (we?) can help them (us?) to be first. They (we?) can take their side. Even so late in the day they (we?) can take the side of the refugee, the poor, the sick, the disabled, the weak, the voiceless, the excluded, the ridiculed, joining their prayer for the renewal of all things, joining God’s pleasure in those otherwise forgotten and often forsaken.
All of us have that choice to make – and we make that choice in our prayer. There are people who always come first in our way of thinking and there are people who always come last. If we pray as our Saviour taught us, for his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, we will be praying for those who are the last or seldom chosen. When we make that choice we join Jesus and Mary in their prayer.
Mary’s joy in God is captured in her song. Her soul rejoices that God has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant, that he scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, that he brings down the powerful from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. (Luke 1:46-55)
These are the people Jesus has chosen to be uppermost in his mind. He names them in his teaching (Matthew 25: 31-46) in the parable of the sheep and the goats. Those chosen are the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner. These are the people who come first to Jesus and they are the ones who come first in the prayer of the church. Among them are those who want to join Jesus in his prayer for the renewal of all things.
It’s not that we don’t also pray for those who come first. We do pray for those who come first, our leaders. Our prayer for them is that the last will always be first for them, that everything will be for their sake. So we will pray this morning for King Charles and the government that their governance will be governed by the rule that the last come first and the first come last.
In the parable the landowner, the owner of all, gives very careful instructions to his “manager”. The instruction is: begin with the last then go to the first. The question for all those who hear the parable is CAN WE MANAGE THAT? Can we manage to do that and manage the complaints and grumbling that come our way for always beginning with those who come last in the kingdoms and empires on earth? It is, after all, teaching like this that crucified Jesus.
St John the Baptist, Lower Shuckburgh – September 24th 2023
Matthew 20:1-16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Grits and Grains 