Jesus tells what would have been a very familiar story for the people of his day. It’s a favourite story of mine in the Gospels. In fact, just before lockdown, I had an assembly all set up, ready to take into Kemsing Primary School to do, and then I wasn’t able to go in because they had to shut the school. I still have, in a tray in my study, a folder with all my visual aids prepared — even a packet of Blu-Tack — and I’m not hopeful that I will get to go and do that assembly that’s been prepared before I go. But you never know. It’s great fun, this story. You can get all the Year Sixes up to act it out and that kind of thing. It’s tremendous fun to bring to life with a bunch of primary school children. Love it.
The Story
What happens is this. It’s six o’clock in the morning, and there’s somebody who owns a vineyard and needs some workers to go and work in it. So he goes to the marketplace, which was the ancient equivalent of the job centre — so I can stick up my great big ‘Jobcentre Plus’ sign in one corner of the school hall — and he goes and finds people there who need some work for the day. It’s where you went to be hired. He says to them, ‘You go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you a denarius.’ That was a small Roman coin, and it was a perfectly good and fair — indeed a generous — wage for a day’s work for a manual labourer, or indeed a foot soldier. So off they go to work in his vineyard.
Nine in the morning, he goes back to see if there are any other people there in need of employment, and he finds some. He says to them — slightly differently — ‘Go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever’s right.’ And they know him to be a good man. They trust him. He’s a good employer. They don’t need to have the details clinched of the exact sum of money. They know it will all come out fairly. And off they go and work. Midday, he’s back, when the sun is hot, and there are still people there, so he hires them as well. Three p.m., the same thing. Five p.m., the same thing.
And then it’s pay time. In the ancient world, pay time was six o’clock in the evening, when the work is done and it’s about to get dark. Ordinary people back then had no access to bank accounts, so what happened was: you did a day’s work, and you got paid at the end of the day for the day’s work. And probably on your way home you stopped and used that money to buy the meal that you were about to eat with your family. You probably needed all of the money for that meal. And the next day, back to the marketplace, hoping somebody will employ you tomorrow, so you get money for tomorrow’s dinner.
So pay time comes. It’s six p.m., and the foreman hands out the money to the people who have worked. The people who started at five o’clock come first, and each of them gets a denarius. Now at this point the people who started at six in the morning are cock-a-hoop, because they think to themselves, ‘Lads, looks like the rate’s gone up.’ You see, when the landowner said to them he’d pay them a denarius, they assumed that was for a day. But it now looks like a denarius might actually have been the hourly rate, at which point they’re quids in — they could be up for as many as twelve denarii. Surely they’re going to get at least three. This is amazing. We’ll work for this guy again.
Only their opinion changes very quickly, because when they get to the front of the pay queue, they each get given exactly one denarius. And they are absolutely outraged. They are livid. Verse 12: ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour, and you’ve made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
It’s not fair.
And the landowner says, ‘Calm down. Show me your contract.’ Well, they don’t have one. ‘Okay. Never mind. What was it I said I would pay you for a day’s work? A denarius. So what’s the problem? You’ve done a day’s work. I promised you a denarius. Here it is. Take your pay and go and enjoy your meal. And by the way — are you seriously saying I’m not allowed to be generous with my own money if I want to? Who are you to tell me what I do with my own money?’ And off they go.
That’s Not Fair
Just put yourselves in the shoes for a moment of the people who were hired first. Be honest, and tell me you don’t feel just a little bit of sympathy for them. I mentioned on social media this week that I was going to be preaching on this passage. One friend of mine who’s not a Christian sent me a little message. It said: ‘The last will be first and the first will be last — Vic, I can’t help feeling empathy for the first workers who were paid last.’ I replied, ‘You’re meant to. That is exactly the point.’
Wouldn’t you feel hard done by? You’ve just done a back-breaking twelve hours’ work — believe me, in that part of the world, it is hot; that would be hard — and then some upstarts turn up at five o’clock, when it’s getting cooler, do an hour’s work, and get paid the same as you. I really only get the same as them?
Those of you who have, or have had, children know how quickly and easily the balloon goes up with the writing on it that says ‘that’s not fair.’ All you have to do is treat two children in your family a tiny bit differently from each other and it’s outrage. In fact, if you are a child — and there are a good number of children here — if you are a child, is it not true that if your brother or sister is not treated the same as you, it is outrageous, and you complain? Yeah. Good. Complain, because it is wrong. If you’re a school teacher and you’ve got a class of thirty children, and you don’t treat them exactly the same — if one of them gets two minutes more on the tablets — it’s carnage. It’s not fair.
Okay. Let’s just slow this down, though, and think a little more carefully. What does fairness even mean? Let’s try and pinpoint fairness. It’s harder than you think.
Perhaps you’ve seen the cartoon drawing of three people who have at the bottom of their back garden, over their garden fence, a football stadium in which world-class matches are played, and they want to try and look over the fence and watch the match. Trouble is, they’re not all the same height as each other. You’ve got a seven-year-old boy who’s three or four foot, you’ve got a shorter grown-up who’s about five foot two, and then you’ve got a nineteen-year-old who’s six foot two. And the fence is six foot. So only the nineteen-year-old can see over the fence to watch the match.
The question is: what is fair in this case? Is it fair to say, ‘The garden was nicely levelled when they built the house, so they’re all going to stand exactly the same number of centimetres above sea level, and if only one of them can see the game, tough — that’s fair’? Is fairness giving them a crate each of the appropriate height so that their heads end up at the same level and they can all see — is that what’s fair? Is fairness giving them all an assortment of crates that is the same, so they can choose for themselves how they want to stand? How would you define what it means to be fair? Harder than you might first think, isn’t it?
But we sympathise with those who are hired first. But then we pause and say, what does it actually mean for the landowner to be fair? And is it actually what we want?
Now, just pause before we go any further. Let me tell you why this story is not here — just in case you’re tempted to draw conclusions that Jesus did not have in mind. This story is not told by Jesus to tell employers in the modern day how to pay their staff. This is not a trade union manual that tells you that you must pay all of your employees an identical wage regardless of ability, length of service, hours worked, or how hard they work at their jobs. In fact, if you tried to use this as a trade union manual for employment, you would cause massive unrest fairly quickly in your workplace, and you would not be a very successful employer. In fact, this particular landowner was probably not a very successful businessman. And that’s exactly the point. Jesus is telling a familiar story about the workplace, but within it are some very unusual and surprising twists that are exactly not how things happen — in order to get our attention and tell us that the way we treat one another in the world of work is not the way God treats us.
It is exactly the point that this is not the way things happen, or even should happen, in the workplace.
The story starts: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like…’ Jesus is saying, ‘Let me tell you how God does things, shall I?’
Fairness and Generosity
So before we object too loudly, ‘That’s not fair!’ — before we ask God to be fair — let me just ask the question: do you actually want God to be fair? Are you sure that’s what you want? Or would you rather he was generous?
One of the joys — or not-so-joys — of preparing to move houses is that you have to find yourself a house to buy to live in. And these days, of course, the way you do that is there are various websites on the internet where you can do searches. You can filter: minimum number of bedrooms, maximum number of bedrooms, minimum budget, maximum budget. And up comes — if you’re lucky — at least one house, or hopefully some more, that you can go and look around and choose between. One rather fun little game that you can play, until it gets too depressing and you have to stop playing it, is to turn off the filter for maximum budget and just see what comes up. If money was not an object — let me tell you, if you have a couple of million pounds to spare, there are some very nice houses in North Yorkshire. There are also some very nice houses in West Kent, only you need more than a couple of million pounds to spare to buy those.
But what happens if you contact the seller of one of these houses? Do you want them to be fair? Because what ‘fair’ does is this: the seller says, ‘You can’t afford this house. The price is X, so sorry, you can’t have it.’ That’s fair. Or would you quite like it if instead they were generous, and said, ‘Well, you know what, the price is X — clearly you can’t afford it, but let’s try to find a way to make this work for you, shall we?’ That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?
In fact, one of the pictures that Jesus uses for being in God’s family — being in God’s kingdom, being a Christian, going to heaven — is moving into a fantastic house. Jesus says, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms.’ So becoming a Christian, going to heaven, being friends with Jesus, is pictured as going to live as your home in God’s house with Jesus. And let me tell you, God’s house is a wonderful place to be. The food is awesome and limitless. And once Jesus comes back and that house is fully built, there are never again any health problems. There’s never the sound of a tear or a cry anywhere in the house. And it’s a place that is full of laughter and fun and friendship and productive things to do all day every day, and you never get bored, you never want it to end. That’s what life is like in God’s house. That’s a picture of living with Jesus.
And so the story: what we want is for God to say, ‘Let me be generous.’ You see, you can’t afford to go and live in God’s house, because the price to go and live there is absolute perfection. And if God was being fair, he would say, ‘The price to come and live here is perfection. You don’t meet it, so sorry, you can’t come in.’ But if instead God was generous, he would say, ‘The price to come and live with me forever is perfection, but you know what — it’s obvious you can’t afford it. You’re not perfect. Let’s try and find a way to make this work.’ That’s what we want.
And in this story, the landowner, who represents God, is generous. He is generous — for a start, he goes out to find workers not just once at the start of the day, but five times: six, nine, noon, three, five o’clock. Five times. Five o’clock in the afternoon — by then, surely he’s got enough workers. What does he really gain by hiring a load of other people who are only going to work for an hour? Surely it’s not worth the effort for him to go out and hire someone when he’s got the work he needs for the day by now. But the very fact that he pays them a day’s wage each, even though they’ve only worked for an hour, shows that he’s not motivated by ‘I have a need — how can these guys meet my need?’ He’s motivated by: the people who need work have a need; they need employment or they won’t eat — how can I help them? He’s driven by this desire to be generous, to look after others.
That’s where verse 15 comes in: ‘Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
The reason that God’s good gifts get distributed is not because we’ve earned them, but precisely because God is generous. So actually we want God to be generous.
The trouble that this story puts its finger on is this: we, having wanted God to be generous, then find his generosity and kindness sticks in the throat. We’re not so sure we want him to be generous any longer.
This story kind of teases out the way in which it’s so easy to resent the generosity of God that we wanted — for we did want it.
You start to see the problem with Jesus’s punchline: verse 16, ‘The last will be first, and the first will be last.’ If you see yourself as one of the last, well, God’s grace is such good news, isn’t it? You’re going to be first. But if you already see yourself as one of the first, maybe it’s not such good news after all.
Let’s drill into some of the details of the story. Those who were hired first — there are actually two distinct reasons here why they resent the landowner’s generosity.
Their Hard Work is not Recognised
Reason number one: their hard work is not recognised.
Verse 12: ‘You’ve made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ ‘We’ve been out there in the hot sun, slaving away for you, and frankly it feels like you don’t really appreciate that. You don’t realise how hard we’ve worked. It doesn’t count for very much in your eyes.’
And maybe you can identify with that. Some of you, maybe, have laboured in God’s kingdom. You’ve put in the hard yards. You’ve spent your time and your energy serving in the church, serving alongside others in the church, for the benefit of the wider world. You have slogged it. And all this talk of this kind of generosity could feel like a bit of a kick in the teeth — like your service doesn’t matter, it doesn’t count for anything, it’s not valued. Let me tell you straight away: that’s not true. We within the church hugely value everything that everybody does. And God values it too. But it can easily feel that way when we talk about generosity in these terms.
So that’s reason number one why those who were hired first resent the generosity: their hard work is not recognised.
Other Undesirables Get More
Reason number two: other undesirables get more.
‘Those who were hired last worked only one hour, and you’ve made them equal to us.’
Let me tell you a story. Many, many years ago, I was in a church a bit bigger than this one — not a lot, perhaps fifty bigger — an Anglican church. And like every Anglican church, you get families contacting you, contacting the vicar, because they want to have children baptised. Occasionally it was families within the church, because we had lots of young families; more often it was families in the local community who had no contact with the church but for some reason wanted the done thing done. So they got in touch. And like all good vicars, the vicar of the church at the time wanted to make sure that these families were properly prepared for their baptism — that they knew what they were signing up to, and the commitments that they would make. The way he did it: he had five or six of us who he would ask — one of us to go and see the family who had contacted him — and we would spend six evenings with the family concerned, and we would go through a little course with them, just one-on-one, that gently opened up what the Christian faith is all about.
One of the sessions is on God’s grace. I think it was week four. A lovely session — my favourite, I think. And we would talk about how none of us is good enough for God, and if it was down to us being good enough, heaven would be empty. We would talk about the fact, though, that Jesus died and rose again, so that actually none of us is so bad that we are beyond the pale — and that if even the worst person on earth turned to the Lord Jesus for forgiveness, they can come in.
We finished looking at this material together, and I said to them, ‘Go on, just tell me what you’re thinking. How does this strike you?’ ‘I think it’s brilliant! I love it. God’s grace is fantastic.’ Then they looked a bit sort of puzzled — not so sure. I said, ‘Go on, try and put your finger on it. What’s bothering you?’ And they said, ‘Well, I’m not sure we like it, to be honest, because it’s a bit of a shame — it means that we’re going to be in heaven with all the bad people.’
Now I can understand that. What they’d missed was: the fact that other people are getting more than they deserve does not mean that you are necessarily getting less than you deserve. He’s been generous to them, and he’s kept his word to you. What more could you ask for? And it raises the question: is it inherently unfair to be generous? If God’s going to be generous to someone, is that necessarily, automatically, an unfair thing for him to do?
God is Generous to You
But something else for you to think about. How about this: if they got paid more than they deserved, is it possible that you also don’t deserve what you got paid? Could it be that you too got paid more than you deserved?
You see, there are those two reasons why this generosity is resented — their hard work is not appreciated, and other undesirable people are getting more — but what underlies both of those problems is that the people resenting it have missed the way that God, or in the story the landowner, has been generous to them. Only if you miss the generosity that God has shown to you will you resent God being generous to others.
So for example: you would only think, ‘How can God not value my hard work? That’s not fair!’ if you miss the fact that even when you take into account all of your hard work, that suddenly does not make you good enough to qualify for God’s acceptance. You haven’t been good enough to earn heaven, even accounting for all of your good deeds. And therefore the only reason you’re there is because God is generous — not because of all the hard work you’ve done. Once you see that, you stop resenting the fact that God’s generosity kind of undermines your hard work.
And the only reason you could possibly think, ‘How can all those bad people have to go to heaven with me?’ is if you miss the fact that you are one of the bad people — and unless God let bad people in, you wouldn’t be there either. The only reason you’re there is because of God’s grace.
So you only resent God’s kindness to others if you miss his generosity to you.
Two Bible stories to illustrate this for us.
Jonah
First one: Jonah. Remember the story of Jonah? Jonah the reluctant prophet. God said to Jonah, ‘Go to Nineveh and tell them that their wickedness has come up before me and they’re going to be destroyed for being such a wicked city.’ Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria — Israel’s ancient arch-enemy. Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh, so he gets on a ship bound for Tarshish, which is in the opposite direction. God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh, so he sends a huge storm, so the ship can make no progress whatsoever and risks foundering completely. At which point Jonah confesses to the sailors on the ship that they ought to know he’s running away from the God who made the sea — and he thought a boat would be a really good place to hide. And the only way they can save themselves and the ship is if they throw him overboard. So the sailors do this — they throw him over the side of the ship — and instantly the sea goes flat. Instantly.
Jonah the great reluctant evangelist: at this point he converts the sailors, because they all start worshipping the one true God when they see what’s happened. He can’t help his evangelism. He even converts the sailors on the ship he runs away from.
He falls down into the sea, and God sends a huge big fish to swallow him up. Now you may have thought the fish was designed to be scary and was part of God’s judgement on Jonah. It wasn’t. The fish was the lifeboat. The fish was to stop Jonah from drowning, to rescue him. So the fish rescues Jonah, spits him up on the beach, and God says, ‘Let’s try that again, Jonah, shall we? Can we go to Nineveh?’ Smart lad — doesn’t get on a boat to Tarshish this time. He goes to Nineveh, and he tells them all that in forty days God will destroy this city, to the last man, woman, and child. Everyone in Nineveh is distraught, and they repent of the wrong that they’ve done, and God spares the city.
Now, how does Jonah react when that happens? You would expect him to be delighted that his preaching was so successful and Nineveh was spared. But no. He is absolutely furious. He says, ‘God, I knew that’s what would happen. I know what you’re like. You’re a forgiving so-and-so — and that’s why I didn’t want to come here in the first place. I knew you would spare them. You rotten God.’
Now, what’s Jonah missed at this point, when he’s so furious with the Ninevites? He’s missed the fact that if God was not the forgiving God he objects to, he would be at the bottom of the sea. Because it’s only because God is so kind and forgiving and generous that he even is alive to tell the tale. If he’d not missed God’s generosity to him, he wouldn’t be resenting it to others.
The Prodigal Sons
Second story: the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Remember the story of the dad who had two grown boys. They know that one day they will each inherit half of their dad’s estate. The younger one says, ‘Could I have my half now?’ — in other words, number one, the money I would get when you died, I’d like it now please, I.e., ‘I wish you were dead,’ and the second thing he means is, ‘I value your money more than I care about you.’ So neither is a particularly great thing to say to your dad. But the dad, being generous to a fault, says yes. So, loaded with all this money, the younger one goes away and has a fantastic time. He splashes all that cash, parties everywhere, he’s very popular, and has a tremendous life — until he runs out of money. All his friends desert him. He’s not got anything to eat, can’t buy any clothes to wear. Gets himself a job on a pig farm, feeding pigs. Only they don’t pay him enough, so he’s actually so hungry he wishes he could eat the food he’s feeding the pigs — but if he did that, they’d sack him. He’s desperate. He’s just hit the bottom of the barrel.
And suddenly he wakes up and says, ‘What am I doing? I’m an idiot. My dad’s slaves eat better than this. Why — forget being a son, I’ve blown that one. Let’s go home to my dad and say to him, “Look, Dad, I’ve blown it, but at least have me back as a slave.” At least that way I’ll get to eat.’ So he heads off home.
Turns out that his dad has been staring out of the window every day since his boy left, waiting for him to come back and hoping he will. Down the end of the lane he spots him coming. And his dad — forgetting the dignity due to an older person in that culture — goes out the door and he runs, and he embraces his boy, and says, ‘It’s so good to have you back.’ He’s so eager to welcome his boy back that the younger boy doesn’t even get to deliver the sorry speech that he’d been rehearsing. And the dad throws the most amazing party — the party of a generation. Food, drink, music, laughter. The best party that neighbourhood has known for a hundred years is thrown because this boy is back.
Now, what does the older brother think? You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that the older brother would be thrilled to have his younger brother back. But no. He says, ‘All these years I’ve slaved away for you, and you never once gave me a goat to celebrate with my friends. You never once let me go out for a pizza with my mates. How can we do this now? When this son of yours — he’s got nothing to do with me; he’s your son, he’s not my brother — this son of yours squandered your wealth, and comes home, and you throw the party of the century? It’s outrageous.’
What does the dad say in reply? ‘My son, all I have has always been yours. But we had to celebrate, because this brother of yours was lost and is found.’
Again — what has that older brother missed? The fact that for his whole life, his generous dad’s wealth, and food, and estate, and everything — that wonderful life he lived on — it’s all been his to enjoy to the full. But he’s been too blind to see it. He’s been too busy slaving away trying to earn his dad’s approval to notice that his dad loves him and wants him to enjoy all this stuff. Again, because he missed the generosity that he’s had, he resented what others were shown.
Reacting to the Parable
People react to this story in different ways, and I’ve reacted to it in different ways in different seasons of my life.
If you’re deeply wedded to the idea that your hard work, your good deeds, your church-going, your acts of kindness should in some way, to some degree, contribute to your standing before God — should count for something when it comes to admission to his eternal kingdom — you will be deeply offended by this story. This passage levels the playing field in a way that is deeply humbling and highly offensive.
If you are deeply wedded to the idea that your acts of service, your deeds of kindness, your ministry in public and in private, official and unofficial, should be noticed and rewarded by other people and by God, then you will also be deeply offended by this story.
If, on the other hand, you are aware of your failings, and you feel either dirty or unclean or guilty or unfit before God and his people — such that you wonder why he, or we, would ever want to know you, if we knew the stuff in your heart, the thoughts that you have at night, the things in your past — then you will be deeply relieved, because this story says that you can come to God at five o’clock in the afternoon, or 5:59, and receive the same as those who are more deserving than you. In fact, they actually aren’t more deserving than you.
And if you know of God’s grace and have lived a life of service in response, and you are spent and exhausted by what you’ve done for others, you will be deeply refreshed — because good though those things are, they are not what make you acceptable to God. God loves you. He accepts you. He welcomes you into his kingdom based solely on what Christ has done. It’s sheer gift. It’s sheer grace. In Christ he has freely adopted you as a son or daughter, and he loves you.
Now, some hate this truth. But to others, it is the most precious thing on earth.
‘So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’