Eleventh-Hour Workers: A Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16 (Proper 20A)

This is about a week early, but Proper 20A happens to coincide with the 61st birthday of the US Air Force. I thought I should at least attempt a response…

The primary text is the gospel reading (Matthew 20:1-16), though there is a small piece of the alternate Old Testament reading from Jonah (3:10-4:11).

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When I was getting ready to deploy to Iraq, I was told that the area where I’d be was about as safe as Dayton, Ohio.

You’ve probably heard the recent news stories that tell of a much-changed Iraq, very different from the Iraq of 2004.

As we’ve all no doubt read and heard about the Iraq of 2004, that was a place in which it seemed—at least from the media coverage—that helicopters were shot down every few days, and bombs exploded hourly.

In the Iraq of 2008, we hear talk of a new government, and of a country becoming secure enough for 60,000 people to attend a soccer match without incident.

In the language of Matthew’s gospel account, I have gone into the field late in the day, perhaps close to the eleventh hour. I didn’t come in at the beginning, when violence waited around every corner and under every rock. I didn’t come in even at the third, sixth, or ninth hour, when the Iraqi government was reforming, the Iraqi people were rebuilding, and our people were regrouping.

In Matthew’s gospel, the hours were counted from sunrise toward sunset, much like the hours of our Daily Office. Jesus’ parable almost certainly refers to the time of the harvest, since there are so many laborers needed for the vineyard. And, if we recall, Jesus often uses the metaphor of the harvest in his parables. The harvest would have occurred near the time of the autumn equinox, when the day would have twelve hours of sunlight. So the first workers would have come in the early morning, and the landowner went out to hire more as the day rolled on, hiring the last at the eleventh hour—only an hour before sunset.

The eleventh hour is an especially appropriate metaphor for my arrival in Iraq, given the talk of our presidential candidates, that the work in Iraq is nearing completion, with so many workers in the field. As with myself, and the latecomers to the vineyard in Matthew’s gospel, we all sometimes find ourselves coming to work at the eleventh hour. Indeed, if we think of our own spiritual journeys, many of us have come to work for God at what might feel like the eleventh hour.

Do we deserve the full rewards for the work that all have done, given the lateness of our call?

The easy answer to Matthew’s account is to agree with the laborers who have been there all day, who have borne the heat and the burden of the day.

But the easy answer isn’t always the right one. God warned Jonah about worrying about that for which he did not labor and which he did not grow. Likewise, in the vineyard, both the eleventh-hour workers and the all-day workers reap what they did not sow.

We come to God’s church, and we find that it is already built. We have only to find our place in the church, to do the work we have been given to do, just as the eleventh-hour workers came to the vineyard to find that much of the work was already done. The challenge for those eleventh-hour workers probably would have been to find the work that still needed to be done.

Even though we come to the church at the eleventh hour, there is still work to do, not only in the church, but in the world as well. Among other places, we find our work laid out for us in our Baptismal Covenant, as well as the two great commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ:

First, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Even though we come to the church at the eleventh hour, God’s grace still waits for us.

Just as with the workers in the vineyard, we all receive rewards for working. But those rewards, those payments for working, whether for just the eleventh hour or all day long, are given by the grace of God, not for any particular thing we’ve done. God does not have to pay us. God is not required to give us anything.

Rather, God has given us our gifts out of divine love, through the breath of the Holy Spirit, and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As with a parent and a child, God gives us love, God provides for us, and God teaches us, not for anything we have done, but because we are God’s children and God loves us.

In a sense, we are all eleventh-hour workers. But there is still work to do in the eleventh hour. Otherwise, the harvest about which Jesus teaches would be complete.

As in the vineyard, it’s not too late for us to begin working, nor is it too late for us to receive the fruits of labor. Until the last great harvest, it’s not too late to work for God’s kingdom, nor is it too late for us to receive God’s grace and love.

Do we deserve the full rewards for the work that all have done, given the lateness of our call?

There are two ways to answer that question.

First, we realize that there is nothing we can do that earns God’s love, for God is not an object that can be bought or sold.

Second, we realize the value of community, that together we accomplish what separately we could not.

Those who came to work before us built the church, in structure, in doctrine, and in community. We who have come after them have additional duties. We maintain what they have built, we carry the church community into the world, we bring the world into the church community, and we continue to prepare.

For the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Amen.