Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Matthew 20:1-16
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  October 4, 2020

Roy Ratcliff sat alone at a table, waiting. It was a small room, no bigger than a doctor’s office. Nothing on the walls. Sterile. Beads of sweat began to creep from his hairline onto his forehead. His heart was beating in his throat. The door opened, breaking the silence, and in walked a man, about 6 feet tall, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and glasses. Roy gathered himself, stood up, and held out his hand. “It’s good to meet you.” He said. And as the prison guard closed the door, Roy Ratcliff sat down alone in that small room with Jeffery Dahmer.

Although Ratcliff was a little frightened to meet the serial killer from Milwaukee, he says that Dahmer was actually the more nervous of the two in that room at Columbia Correctional in Portage, WI. You see, Jeffery Dahmer had never met with a Pastor before and he wanted to be baptized. He had begun reading the Bible in prison and said that he believed in Jesus Christ. Pastor Ratcliff realized that Dahmer was serious about this desire. They arranged to use a whirlpool at the prison. Dahmer climbed in and, on May 10, 1994, three weeks after they had met, Pastor Ratcliff baptized one of the world’s most notorious serial killers. For the next seven months, they met each week for Bible study.

Ratcliff only met with him for 7 months, because, on Nov. 28, 1994, Jeffery Dahmer was bludgeoned to death while cleaning a prison bathroom. People across the country celebrated the news. It was a fittingly gruesome end for the Milwaukee Monster, the man who strangled, raped, dismembered, and cannibalized 17 young men. But according to Pastor Ratcliff, that wasn’t the end of Jeffery Dahmer. He believes we will see Jeffery in heaven. In the end, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, because the Bible says, whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but have eternal life.

Does that bother you a little bit? How do you like the thought of hugging the Milwaukee Cannibal next to God’s throne? What do think about seeing the glorified saints: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, & Jeffery? I mean, we shouldn’t forget about the 17 souls whose time of grace he cut short. We shouldn’t forget about the anguishing despair he caused their parents and loved ones. We shouldn’t be anything but repulsed by the truly heinous nature of his sins which were so far from what God desires for his people. Is it fair to them that God would forgive Jeffery Dahmer? Is it fair to us who spend our lives seeking to glorify God, that he would give a serial killer the same reward in heaven?! If you understand the tension here, then you also understand the complaint of the workers in Jesus’ parable. This is the crux of the issue; the lesson that Jesus wants to teach us today.

Jesus begins the parable by setting the stage: “Indeed the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning (6:00am) to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing to pay the workers a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. We might rush past it, but notice that for the first workers, there is a contract, so to speak. They agreed on a payment. This is unique. The other workers who are hired later in the day, just have to trust that the landowner will give them what is fair, but they have no specific salary. Jesus continues, “He also went out about the third hour (9:00am) and saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace. 4 To these he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will give you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 Again he went out about the sixth (Noon) and the ninth hour (3:00pm) and did the same thing. 6 When he went out about the eleventh hour, he found others standing unemployed. He said to them, ‘Why have you stood here all day unemployed?’ 7 “They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ “He told them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ Even at 5:00pm he hires more workers. They would be working an hour tops. Now understand that when those hired later here are described as “standing unemployed” it doesn’t mean they were lazy, necessarily. The urgency of the harvest accounts for the landowner’s frequent return to the marketplace to recruit more laborers and the excess of laborers hoping to be chosen. Remember, there were no resumes to send; no interviews; no networking.  You just had to wait and hope someone comes and hires you. 

When the work for the day was over in the parable and it would have been 6:00pm, time for the landowner to pay his workers. When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last group and ending with the first.’ (Notice the order!) 9 “When those who were hired around the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. 10 When those who were hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But they each received a denarius too. A denarius was a good wage for 12 hours of work. It wasn’t extravagant, but it wasn’t low either. So we can only imagine the joy of the 5:00pm workers when they line up and the landowner places a full denarius in their hands, equivalent to 12 times the work they did! The reaction of those hired at 3:00 pm is not mentioned in the parable, nor does Jesus include any comments coming from those hired at noon or at nine.  We can only assume they were all thrilled. The only workers in the parable to say something are the first ones hired. They complained. But not so much about what they got, as about what the others got. 11 After they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner: 12 ‘Those who were last worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have endured the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’ They’ve got a valid point, don’t they? In our world, hard work generally pays off. Or at least it should, right? If you work hard, do well in school, put all your energy into your work then you will be rewarded–in fact, if you do that you deserve more than those around you who are lazy, unmotivated, or uninterested in putting in the effort. This parable screams injustice when it comes to work ethic. And not only that, but it seems that Jesus is purposefully trying to upset us. In the story, the landowner could have paid the workers who had been there all day first and moved on successively to the last, but instead, he specifically pays the latest workers first, making sure the others got to see it. Jesus wants to upset our notions of fairness.

Especially because Jesus started by saying this is what the kingdom of Heaven is like…this is how God works. If anyone is fair, shouldn’t it be God? You realize what Jesus is saying, right? The parable is quite clear. Even if I have been a believer my entire life, even if I have worked hard for the Lord, endured persecution, witnessed and sacrificed for him, even if I have given up money and opportunities for him when it comes down to it, he will give me the same reward as some thief on the cross who slips in right at the end? I get the same reward as the atheist who gets scared by his mortality and converts on his deathbed? That’s right. Jesus is saying that someday when you line up for heaven, he’s going to put a denarius in the hand of Jeffery Dahmer and he’s going to put a denarius in your hand. He is going to get the same reward as you. We say, “Really? You’re making them equal to me?” We grumble and complain, too, don’t we?

The landowner’s reply is instructive: “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not make an agreement with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last one hired the same as I also gave to you. 15 Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ The Landowner here reminds these workers that they were the ones who wanted to agree on a price. In the end, you aren’t complaining about what is fair, you’re envious because I am generous. 

We all want to know if our sacrifices for Jesus will be repaid. But Jesus warns us not to set up a contract with God. Jesus says, be careful that you don’t ask God to judge you based on your own merit. If we really want to be judged on merit, we’d find out quite terrifyingly that God would be just. He would say, “Take your pay and go.” And what would we get? The wages of sin is death. As in eternal death in hell. Sin definitely varies in degree, but ultimately in a moral sense, a sinner is a sinner. Don’t ask God to make a contract with you, because you’ll find to your eternal regret, that he will keep his end. He will pay you exactly what you deserve. The Bible clearly states, “The one who sins is the one who will die.” Last time I checked, I may not have sinned in the same way that Jeffery Dahmer sinned, but I am one who sins. And so are you. Let’s not ask God to pay us what we’ve earned! Remember, the denarius in the parable represents eternal life, which is something we could never earn.

As a way to illustrate this, we are acutely aware of the difference between 12 hours of work and 1 hour of work. We are acutely aware of 80 years lived as a faithful Christian and someone who comes to faith for the last five years of their life. And from our perspective, this seems like a huge difference! But if you look at it from an eternal perspective, there is no discernible difference. The further you go into eternity the smaller that distinction of time becomes in comparison. I literally cannot illustrate how insignificant it becomes, because I cannot illustrate eternity! What I’m driving at is, whether you believe in God 90 years or a single second, neither could earn eternity in God’s presence. How can we be envious of another Christian if we understand the value of eternal life?! How can there be any comparison or murmuring in light of God’s grace!

Jesus brings home that very point by saying, In the same way, the last will be first, and the first, last.  This reminds me of a certain day in eighth grade. Mrs. Seidl told us to line up for lunch. Some of the students, I may or may not have been involved, began crowding around the door to get in the front of the line. Mrs. Seidl found this quite amusing and so she decided to reverse the line. The end of the line became the front and those vying for first place were the last to eat that day. For a few seconds, as we walked to the cafeteria, the 8th graders of Black Creek Elementary experienced the reality of the Kingdom of God. “In the same way, the last will be first, and the first, last.”  This is a sword thrust into the heart of self-justification. We want to be rewarded, vindicated as more deserving than others in God’s sight, but the Lord refuses to play along. His kingdom is about grace, not merit. And so he makes a show of it. He pays the 11th hour workers first. He reverses the line. Remember, Jesus showed up at the back. He showed up as the lowest of the low, he suffered, he served, he bled, he died a shameful death in our place. And he was then vindicated as Lord and exalted above all things. The last became first. He made the back of the line, the front. There should be no envy, no fighting for the top in God’s kingdom because it’s all grace.

Because “what was right” in his eyes was to give up his own life for your sake. The very one who told this parable shed his blood to atone for your sin. Praise God that he doesn’t pay us by contract. Thank the Lord that he has chosen to be generous. It’s all grace, whether he comes to us in the morning hours of our lives through Baptism or in the middle of our lives standing in the marketplace, or at the eleventh hour of our deathbed. We are all just crazy blessed to work in the vineyard! It’s not a contract, it’s pure grace. And grace is not fair. Thank God for that!

Amen.