Sermon for September 20, 2026, Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 20:1-16 (Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 20—Series A)

“God’s Grace is Just and Fair”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

September 20, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 20:

¹The reign of heaven is like a man, a certain householder, who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ²And when he had agreed with the workers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. ³And when he had gone out about the third hour, he saw others standing in the marketplace, idle, ⁴and he said, “You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right, I will give you.” ⁵And they went. Again, when he had gone out about the sixth and ninth hour, he did likewise. ⁶And about the eleventh hour, when he had gone out, he found others standing and he said to them, “Why have you stood here for the whole day idle?” ⁷They said to him, “Because no one hired us.” He said to them, “You go also into the vineyard.” ⁸And when it had become late, the lord of the vineyard said to his steward, “Call the workers and give them their wage, beginning from the last ones until the first ones.” ⁹And when the ones hired about the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. ¹⁰And when the ones hired first came, they thought that they would receive more, but they themselves also each received a denarius. ¹¹And when they had received it, they began to grumble against the householder ¹²saying, “These last men worked for one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and its heat.” ¹³And he answered one of them and said, “Friend, I have not mistreated you. You agreed with me for a denarius, didn’t you? ¹⁴Take what is yours and go. But I wish to give to this last man as also to you. ¹⁵To do what I want with the things that are mine is lawful for me, isn’t it? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” ¹⁶In this way, the last ones will be first ones, and the first ones will be last ones.

          “IT’S NOT FAIR!” 

          Oh, how many times have you and I said that! And how many times do we get to hear those words from our children? To which we may very astutely reply, “Well, son, life’s not fair.” Okay, well if life isn’t fair, at least God ought to be, right? What kind of a God would be unfair? I don’t think I’d want a God who isn’t fair and just. Yet today we are presented with a parable of Jesus that has some rather good evidence that God might not be fair in the way that we consider fairness.

          “The reign of heaven is like a man, a certain householder, who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.” Here is a story about what life is like in God’s reign and rule. The householder and the Lord of vineyard is God. Now in the story there are five different occasions when workers are hired: first at sunrise around 6:00 a.m., then 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m. and finally the eleventh hour, 5:00 p.m., with only an hour left in the workday until sunset around 6:00 p.m. The vineyard owner agreed with the first group hired that He would pay them the standard wage for a full 12-hour day, a denarius. The others hired were promised, “Whatever is right I will give you.” So far everything seems good, right, and salutary. It’s all fair. But then comes the time for the owner to pay the wages.

          The householder tells the foreman to call the laborers and pay them, beginning with the last ones first. So pay is to be given out in reverse order of hiring. Interesting! Those who had only worked one hour received a denarius, an amount that they should have received only if they had worked the whole day! That is major generosity on the part of the owner. The men who worked only an hour got paid for a full day. Now, all the other workers see this extreme generosity. They were all standing around calculating how much more they had done in comparison with the little work done by the last group. Surely that must mean that they are going to receive more pay than originally agreed upon.

You work longer and harder, you get paid more than those who didn’t. That’s how we understand fairness. I’m not going to pay you for a day’s worth of work if you only put in an hour. I’ll pay you for your hour, but it won’t be the same as I pay the person who worked for eight. Is there anyone who would disagree with that practice? I think we’d all do the same because that’s what we consider to be fair. But against all conventional wisdom and expectation, the workers who were hired first and had worked the 12-hour day also received a denarius! THAT’S NOT FAIR!

Those hired first got upset. Wouldn’t you? “Those guys only worked an hour. We worked 12, in the heat of the sun. And you have the audacity to make them equal to us!” These workers were not happy. They were outraged. The vineyard’s owner who hired them treated everyone the same. All received identical pay no matter how long they worked in the vineyard. This is scandalous.

Or maybe we humans don’t really understand fairness. Maybe we don’t really understand true generosity or even grace itself in the reign and rule of God.

“You get what you deserve. That’s fair,” people say. I work for 8 hours; I get paid for 8 hours. That’s fair. I work 4 hours; I get paid for 4 hours, not 8. That’s fair. We get what we deserve and what we have earned because it’s fair. But God’s not fair in that way. And for that I am truly thankful. He doesn’t give me what I have earned. God doesn’t give me what I deserve. I have earned eternal death and hell. I deserve eternal punishment. I deserve to be condemned by God because I am a sinner. You and I stand together on that issue. We deserve to be treated the same as far as our sins go. My sins might be quite different from your sins, but it doesn’t matter. Sin against God in thought, desire, speech, and action all condemns. And it is God’s Word that defines what sin is. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tell us that lust is just as evil as the act of adultery and hatred just as wicked as murder (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-28). The Bible tells us, then, in Romans 3:23, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We want a God who is just and fair, and we indeed have one. The Triune God’s justice and fairness demand our punishment. We must be paid in full for our sins and that payment is eternal death and condemnation! It doesn’t matter if you are prince or pauper, rich or poor, male or female, young or old. God’s fairness demands it.

Those who worked in the vineyard only one hour didn’t “deserve” a denarius. But if the owner is going to pay them a denarius, it is because of His gracious generosity. They get what they don’t deserve, as do you and me. We deserve punishment and death and instead get forgiveness and eternal life! And no, it is not fair! It is grace! “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

God has taken us as sinners and made us equal in His sight. And rather than pour out the punishment on us that His justice and fairness demand, He chose, out of pure mercy and grace, to punish His Son Jesus in our place. God’s justice and fairness must punish sin and sinner. But God chose Jesus to be our Substitute. Jesus really took our punishment of death and hell upon Himself as He suffered and died on the cross. We heard that truth last Sunday as well. It wasn’t fair that the perfect Son of God suffered and died because He had done no wrong. Jesus is without sin. But it was grace and mercy for you and me and every other sinful human being of every time and place. Jesus’ death and the shedding of His blood has saved us from death and hell forever. On account of the blood of Jesus Christ, you and I stand before God forgiven. Our sins were charged against Jesus and so we have no marks against us. We receive eternal life with our Lord and God at no cost to us.

The Lord looks at us and sees us as His children with no distinctions. Christians receive the same forgiveness and the same eternal life whether they have been in the kingdom 80 minutes or 80 years! We read God’s Word in Galatians 3, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28). In God’s reign and rule there is no room for self-promotion. There is no occasion and no basis on which one believer can say to another, “I’m more important than you are.” We have all received the identically same grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ because God IS fair and He is GRACIOUS to all of us equally. Remember the words of Psalm 103? “Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not always accuse; He does not keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us as our sins deserve, and He does not repay us as our iniquities deserve. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so His steadfast love is strong toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”

This is especially important for our life of faith together in this congregation and in Christ’s Church. While we all have unique gifts and abilities, we all receive the same grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. While we all have different personalities and ways of doing things, we all receive the same forgiveness and eternal life from our heavenly Father. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12: 13, 27).

As Christians, we work together in the “vineyard” of God’s reign because the Lord has called us in our Baptism to be His people. In His Gospel Word He equally speaks to each of us His abundant forgiveness. In His Supper, the Lord equally feeds us generously with the very Body and Blood of Jesus whereby we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Perhaps this goes against all our earthly notions of what is right and fair. And praise God that it does! He doesn’t work according to our standards of what is fair. God gives to us generously, by grace, things we have not deserved. We all receive the same “wages,” and not the “wages” that we deserved, but the free gifts of God’s grace: forgiveness of sins and eternal life. In joy and gratitude, we live always in the Father’s fair and generous grace to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.