“THE VERY GOOD VINEYARD”
Saint Matthew 20. 1-16
Septuagesima: 8 February Anno Domini 2009
Fr Watson SSP
The Kingdom of Heaven is where God reigns. The Lord reigns over the entire universe though He is not the universe. The Lord reigns over the earth though He is not the earth. The Lord is master of time and space though He is above and beyond both. Heaven is a place, IF, by "place" we mean "being with the Lord." There is no Christian version of Mount Olympus or Valhalla, but rather Heaven is to be in His presence for ever. The Kingdom of Heaven is called in Lutheran Theology both the Kingdom of Grace and the Kingdom of Glory. The Glory comes at the final advent when your glorified bodies join the Lord at meat-with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the place where there are no tears. The Grace is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church where you find refuge, strength, food, clothing, love and forgiveness-for the here and now. Grace is the foretaste of the feast to come, the anteroom to the banquet hall, and the appetizer to the meal.
Jesus compares this "being with Him" to a landowner hiring laborers to work in His vineyard. While one can find and appreciate many wonderful truths and insights by unpacking the details of His metaphor, let us this day focus only on the truth of His selection, His mercy and His unmatchable generosity.
The workers didn't choose to be employed; there is no activity of job-hunting in this reality. The Landowner (the Lord Christ) went out early in morning. Yes, He went out early: "let there be light" and made all that is out of nothing. But even earlier than that, at the "morning" even before time was made, the Holy Trinity pre-determined to hire and keep the elect employees of eternity. Your landowner owns all the land true enough: "Maker of heaven and earth," but He is also YOUR Lord: "Who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature!" The Christ went out early "in the fullness of time." He left the Mansions to come to the mud. He was born of woman to buy back (to employ) all those who are fallen by way of the curse of the first woman and man. He is the Lord of that Garden where to "care for it and tend it" is never tedium and chore but only delight and fulfillment. His dominion is Paradise of the New and Better Eden.
The devil is the dominus, the Lord, of sloth, indolence, and homelessness. His fiefdom is the desert; the wilderness. Satan delights in men standing around in the marketplace (the world) with nothing to do, that is, no truth to hold onto. Jesus wants all to be focused on Him and His vineyard.
You who are cradle Christians, followers of Christ by virtue of your infant baptisms and ongoing catechesis and nurture by the Supper; you were called early in the morning. Members of his Church of Grace, who have been converted by the Holy Ghost as teens, or young adults, have been "hired" at the third and sixth hour. Those saints who are brought into His fellowship later in their earthly, their temporary, lives are employed at the ninth hour. While the death-bed conversions and gracious gifts given to poor sinners who are dying (the thief on the cross) are the blessed workers hired near the "end," at the eleventh hour.
The sin, the foul brokenness is always in wanting things your way and not the way of the Landowner. Your way is always based on ego, self, and works. Your way is always based on your twisted concepts of fairness, which in reality, are simply adolescent and vindictive methods of pulling everyone else down into your pit of trespass tar. Your eye will be evil if you rely on it, rather than the free gift of the Christ. While you do not love your neighbor as yourself, your fellow laborer as yourself, He does-which is why He does give them His own things!
The Landowner is not concerned with fairness. If you really insist on getting what you've got coming to you, what you've earned, then be prepared for darkness and Hades-heat. The Landowner is after you! He deals with the injustice of your vanity and envy by satisfying justice with His own payment: "He has redeemed me…not with gold or silver but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom…" Only the Landowner has truly borne the burden of your badness and endured the heat of the day-the day of wrath.
He calls His kingdom a vineyard in this text. A vineyard produces vines which produce grapes which produce wine. Wine is not only the perfect drink for the on-going Wedding Feast, but also the means of Grace in the Church's celebration/communion of the Blood of the Lamb. Not a lecture hall, not a coffee shop, not a Fortune 500 corporate board room, and not even a monastery, but the Kingdom is like a vineyard. You too are like branches intertwined with the great vine Himself-growing out of His heart where He has grafted you into. For are you not watered, fertilized (fed) and cared for in this vineyard which is His church?
Born here at the font, pruned and shaped here by His Law, cared for Here by His steward, you are the fruit of His Word, His self, His Body and Blood.
While the world always considers many denarii, many shekels, many bars of gold, better than a single coin; in reality what the Landowner gives is Himself, His abiding presence, His Blood. You need only a single Jesus and you have everything, you have the Kingdom. He in His grace and love gives Himself to those Whom He chooses, and He does so with inestimable joy and goodness. He does so at the end of the day, at the eschaton-the close of the age. He does so this morning in the now and always New Testament.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost