Septuagesima + 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5 + Matthew 20:1-16

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. The landowner is Christ. The vineyard is the Church. And the laborers are all those whom Christ graciously calls to work in His vineyard. Those whom Christ calls don’t earn their way into Church. They don’t merit their place in the vineyard. They’re called to enter the vineyard by Christ out of sheer grace. When the gospel call is proclaimed, that’s Christ calling men, women, and children to enter His vineyard and receive the denarius. The invitation isn’t because you’re a good person. “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Mark 10:18). You haven’t merited this place in Christ’s vineyard. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). He calls you into His vineyard by forgiving your sins and clothing you with His perfect righteousness. It is by grace alone that He calls you to enter into this vineyard, His holy Church, and labor in it.

And it is most certainly labor. It’s not the labor of board meetings, mowing the grass, and fixing banners, though serving the needs of the Church is a part of it. The labor which you are assigned in the vineyard of the Church is not physical labor. To labor in the vineyard means “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24). To put off the old man is to fight against your sins and work against them to subdue them through faith in Christ’s Word and fervent prayer. To put on the new man is to try each day, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in you, to walk in righteousness and holiness. It’s the putting away of sin and striving to live righteous and holy lives according to God’s Ten Commandments. It means avoiding God forbids and pursuing what God requires of you in each commandment. Instead of cultivating soil you cultivate your heart through meditation on the Divine Word. Instead of pruning grape vines you prune the wild shoots of sin in your heart, daily repenting, daily believing the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, and daily laboring against those wild vines. There are those who tell you the Christian life should be one of ease. But they’re lying to you. The Christian life, life in the Church, is laborious and difficult because our labor is to fight the sin of our flesh.

St. Paul shows us this labor and how difficult it is in the epistle lesson. He compares life in the Church to a race and to a boxing competition. “Run in such a way that you may obtain” the prize. Run strenuously. Don’t shadowbox; your combatant is real. The sinful flesh wants to sin. It wants to drive the Holy Spirit from your so that it can live for its own pleasures. “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another” (Galatians 5:17). Our flesh wants to lead us into sin and keep us there, enjoying our sins so that we minimize them and excuse them rather than repent of them. Paul struggled against his flesh. “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” This is the labor of those whom Christ calls into His vineyard by forgiving them their sins. You’re no longer to be idle. The unbelievers are the idle ones, standing in the marketplace of the world, not laboring for purity and righteousness but living for their sinful desires. You have been called from this idleness, your sins forgiven, so that you may labor in Christ’s vineyard against your sins lest they disqualify you at the end of the day.

That’s what we see happening in the parable. The landowner is rich in mercy and calls labors into His vineyard multiple times that day. He calls those who have been lazy and lethargic, even to the very last hour of the working day. The landowner’s grace remains consistent throughout the day, but the attitude of the laborers doesn’t. As they saw others enter the vineyard they began to forget that they were there only by the grace of the landowner. They began to expect that they would now earn more pay than originally promised. They trusted, not in the grace of the landowner, but in their own merit and work. They deserved more, or so they thought. At the end of the day, when the “Johnny-come-latelies” are paid the full denarius, they are irate. Their eyes are evil because of the landowner’s goodness. They look at His generosity and grace and despise Him. They hate His graciousness because even though they worked longer than the last and bore the heat of day, they earn no more than men who barely broke a sweat as the sun set. They forget that they were only in the vineyard because of the same grace of the landowner. But at the end they were sent packing because they wanted to earn it rather than receive in humility and simple faith.

So it is in the kingdom of God, Christ’s holy Church. He goes out throughout every age, calling men to repentance and faith in His gospel. He invites different people into His kingdom at different points in their lives. Some are baptized as infants and live their entire life laboring against their sinful flesh, while others enter through faith near the end of their life and have little time to labor. Those who have been at this longer must not despise the one who has come later in time. More importantly, we must always be on our guard against that natural belief of our hearts, that by our works and intentions we merit God’s grace and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ parable also points us to the example of the Jews as a warning against our spiritual arrogance. The Lord called the Jews into His kingdom from ancient times and they labored strenuously under the Law. But when Christ came later in time and began inviting Gentiles into the kingdom by sheer grace and mercy, the Jews were incensed. They despised God’s grace to the Gentiles who were called later in the day. The Gentiles received the same denarius the Jews were promised: the forgiveness of sins, life, and eternal salvation. Yet the Jews rejected the denarius because they had an evil eye toward the mercy of God and fallen prey to the notion that they could earn the denarius by their labor.

Jesus tells us this parable for two reasons. First, so that we understand that the Christian life is one of labor in His vineyard. We cultivate the soil of our heart by humbling hearing His Word and applying it to ourselves. We prune away the wild vines of sin in our hearts, forsaking our sins and fighting temptation by faith in Christ’s Word. If give into sin, if we willfully sin, we lead ourselves away from faith and disqualify ourselves from salvation. The second thing He teaches us is that as we labor, we must guard our hearts against the notion that we deserve His grace on account of our labor and work, our purity and righteousness, however much it may be. One of the sinful vines we must prune daily from our hearts is spiritual pride and haughtiness that wants to believe God owes us grace. This is why we weekly hear the Law and the Gospel, lest we become conceited and forget that we’re in God’s vineyard for one reason alone: His grace. He calls you again to enter into His vineyard and remain here, believing Christ’s sacrifice atones for your sins and that His righteousness is yours by faith. Labor vigorously to put off the old man. Work strenuously to put on the new each day, so that at the end of world you might receive the denarius: the salvation of your souls.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.