Matthew 20:1-16 (NIV) 1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Does the feeling of gratitude come easy, or is it rare? Do we have to experience some sort of disastrous loss before we can know gratitude? In the parable about the landowner, it seems Jesus is telling us we should be grateful for what God does for others and not envy them or feel sorry for ourselves. But, “ought to” seldom gives us a true spirit of gratitude. This is not a story of “ought to.” It is a call to faith. You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right. Do we trust that God will do right for us? In this world where good fortune seems to go and come by chance it can be very difficult to believe God will do what is right for us. But we can believe God will do right by us because of what we see in Jesus, who died on a Cross, who seemed and felt as if He were forsaken. But God was there and God raised Him from the dead. And if God raised Him from the dead will God not give us all things in Him?
We have a choice. We can be thankful or we can grumble and complain about what we do not have, the way someone treats us, or what we believe we deserve. Trust that God will do right to us. It is in the trust that God will do right for us that we keep the soil of our soul loose so gratitude can easily sprout and grow.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 19, 2000
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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