Think of a time when someone you know was generous > you might have been on the receiving end, maybe it was someone else, supporting a good cause, giving to someone in need.
If someone is generous to you, how does it feel? It feels pretty good doesn’t it!
When someone gives you something you need, maybe they give you something you didn’t need but it was very nice to receive anyway.
When gifts are given for the sake of giving the gift, not to earn favour or complete a task or doing it because you’re obligated to or you feel you have to. Cheerful giving we might call that, as we know from 2 Corinthians 9:7 – ‘give… not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.’
We could say that’s true generosity, when a gift is given without thought or intention of getting anything back in return.
This is the sort of generosity we know a bit about as Christan people, as followers of Jesus.
We’ve heard about this generosity, we’ve received the generosity God offers his people > the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit working in and through us, the pretty generous gift of his son given to us to redeem us and make us God’s own children. Few important things there, ways God has been generous to us.
And we can make this even more specific to our own lives > the generous gifts God has given us through the people we love and who love us, all the things we have, the relatively comfortable lives we get to live in comparison with the majority of the world. Plenty of good gifts there, plenty to be thankful for.
And what about us? What about the generosity we show?
Are we cheerful givers, do we give of what we have to serve others, to help people in need?
And what do we give of? Our finances, our stuff, our time, our energy, our thoughts and prayers? ‘All of the above’ are part of our walk as Christian people, people called to be generous to others as our God has first been generous to us.
That’s what we’re thinking about this morning as we step into this parable from Jesus, this parable of the workers in the vineyard.
The generosity of our God, a God who offers to all what isn’t deserved, out of his own generous love.
Let’s have a look at what goes on here in this passage > The closer we look the more indicators there are here of the type of God we have!
Here are some indicators in Jesus’ words:
Verse 1 – ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out… to hire workers for his vineyard.’
This already tells us something about how God works!
We’re talking about a God – who is the king of the kingdom of heaven by the way – who like this landowner in the story goes out to find workers, he goes out to find his people.
Notice it’s not ‘the landowner calls people in to come and see him,’ it’s ‘the landowner goes to find them.’
I don’t think this is incidental, this is intentional > the way Jesus says things matters. Not only what he says but how he says it – that’s why we have to pay close attention not only to what he says in a particular verse or passage, but what he says across his earthly ministry and the ways he is present with us here and now through the Holy Spirit. It’s all connected, these are not isolated incidents! This is one big connected story, personified for us by and in Jesus. Need to remember that.
So we can understand that our God is a God who comes to meet us, where we are.
A generous characteristic for God to have there isn’t it!
Not a God who just says ‘come over here and do what I say because I want you to obey me,’ a God who says ‘I’m coming over to you because I care about you.’
That was verse 1, what else goes on here?
The landowner goes out 4 more times through the same day, to find more workers > another indication of the kind of God we have!
A God who doesn’t just go to his people once and that’s it, he keeps on going.
Our God is persistently generous, he keeps showing up, he keeps going out > this is starting to sound a lot like a God who wants a relationship with his people, he keeps going to meet them because he cares for them. That’s what happens in a good relationship isn’t it, those ones with people we love and who love us, those important relationships in our lives that are generous gifts from God.
And then we come to the issue of the landowners’ payment to his workers at the end of the day > pay that is accused of being unfair to the ones who had been working all day.
And the landowner has a brilliant response to that complaint: ‘Are you envious because I am generous?’ he says in verse 15.
That would have stopped them in their tracks, they wouldn’t want to admit to being envious – and the landowner is reminding them they should be thankful.
And the added layer to that thankfulness has to do with us too >
Here’s a question for us:
If a person knows Jesus their whole life, is baptised as a baby and goes to church their whole life, does that make them deserving of more love from God than someone who just walked in for the first time today?
What’s the answer?
Absolutely not, and this parable tells us exactly that >
This parable tells us that God has the same love for all of his people, whether they showed up first thing or are just walking in the door.
God’s love doesn’t change, it is not measured out in different amounts to different people, it can’t be earned or achieved by human effort.
God’s love is all-encompassing, sin-removing, life-transforming. We can do nothing to ‘increase our portion’ in God’s eyes, because we already have it all! We can’t get any more of something we already have to fullest extent.
Here’s line from the psalms that shows us this, Psalm 23 talks about a ‘cup that overflows.’
Not a half-full or half-empty cup, not a full cup to some and leftovers for others, we all get an overflowing cup – you can’t measure that!
Two more things to touch on in this parable, there is so much in this!
We can also see here how what we receive is not based on what we’ve earned, it’s based on who God is and how generous he is.
The workers in this story are not paid by how many hours they’ve worked, they’re paid by what they agreed to work for when they were first hired. Smart management there isn’t it, the contract is signed and the workers can’t deny that they do get paid what was agreed.
The purpose of this is to show how God is a generous God > the landowner gives as much of his own money as he chooses to whoever he chooses to give it to, whether they worked all day or just the last hour. Just like that God gives of his own love to those he calls his own children, not something they earn by good works but something that is given to them freely because God says so. Powerful image isn’t it.
And finally we can see the posture we should be taking up in our own lives as followers of Jesus > not being envious of others or complaining about them, but rejoicing when others are welcomed into the fold, when more people come to know the love of Jesus.
Seriously that should be exciting us, more people coming to know Jesus – at whatever stage they’ve showed up along the journey – we should be rejoicing about that, jumping for joy at the opportunity to play the role in peoples’ lives that God has given us. If that doesn’t excite you then I’m not sure what will!
And we all have the opportunity – we know there is no shortage of people out there yet to know the love of Jesus – we need to get serious about sharing that love, living it out, remembering our God is generous, remembering that he calls us to receive his generosity and to share it with others.
As Jesus says in the final line of this passage today, we need to be aware of how God’s love works.
‘The last will be first, and the first will be last,’ Jesus says.
This is not about cutting down those who have worked hard or been around longer and giving out freebies to people who haven’t earned it or anything like that – those would be some pretty cynical, surface level perceptions of what Jesus is on about here.
This is about reframing how we think about God’s love, to align what we’re doing with what God’s already doing. Receiving his direction and his guidance, not coming up with our own. We’re all on that receiving end together > and God might just want to use you to reach someone else!
God’s generous love leads us to seek to serve others, not only ourselves and what we want or need – if we are lifelong Christians we already know all about God’s love!
I’m preaching to the converted here, but how are we reaching those who don’t know Jesus yet?
That’s a really important question for us and our church, whatever age we are or life stage we’re in.
The people who haven’t been around as long or are not here yet are the ones who really need to hear this aren’t they, and they might be in need of a few of us thinking about them, praying for them, not expecting them to come to us but going to meet them where they are.
We’re like little landowners, called to go out and find new workers! We’re ambassadors of Christ, called to go to people and share the good news with them.
Let’s pray, asking our generous God for his help to know him more ourselves, so we can share the same love he has for us with others as he calls us to do.
Lord you are a generous God, a God who givse your love to us who can do nothing to earn it. Help us when we take the easy road of being happy or content with ourselves, and instead make your call on our hearts known to us that we are here to receive your love and share it with others. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
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Tom Kitson 