Septuagesima 2026

Text: “13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. (Matthew 20:13-14)

I. Introduction: Fairness — A False Refuge

Fairness is one of the first places you run when you are unsure where you stand with God.

You measure effort.

You compare outcomes.

You ask whether things are balanced, proportional, reasonable.

Fairness feels safe, because it gives you something solid to stand on. It allows you to say, “At least I know where I am.” If you have done enough, you can feel secure. If you have not, you at least know what remains to be done.

It is true of many things in life, but it is also how you are tempted to think about your life before God.

You assume that faith should work the same way everything else does: effort matched with reward, faithfulness recognized, commitment accounted for. You may not say it out loud, but you feel it instinctively—surely fairness must matter to God.

Which is why this parable should unsettle you.

But very often, it does not.

Very often, the first reaction is relief.

“Gosh, I’m glad I’m not like them.”

Jesus tells a story in which fairness does not function the way you expect.

Wages are not distributed according to effort.

Recognition is not tied to endurance.

Those who are constantly comparing themselves to others are exposed.

Those who calculate what their faithfulness should earn them are exposed.

Their subtle self-righteousness is laid bare for all to see.

And what becomes clear very quickly is this: fairness, which felt like a refuge, may actually be the thing that leaves you most exposed.

Because when fairness becomes the way you understand your place before God, it does not finally give you peace. It leaves you either anxious, resentful, measured—or despairing.

So Jesus tells this parable, not to teach you how to work harder or complain less, but to show you what happens when you try to take refuge in fairness before a God who insists on being generous.

II. Workers Seeking Their Wages

Jesus tells this parable because He knows how naturally fairness takes over once the question of wages is raised.

Workers are hired.

Hours are logged.

Payment is promised.

And perhaps you immediately begin to sort people.

A. Perhaps You Feel Secure—and Resent Grace for Others

Perhaps you hear this parable from a place of confidence.

You have been here a long time.

You have been steady.

You have shown up when others did not.

You have endured the heat of the day.

And when grace is given freely—especially to those who arrived late, whose lives still look disordered, whose repentance seems incomplete—you feel something tighten inside.

You may not say it out loud, but you feel it:

Look at all that I have done here. Look at all that I have given here. My years of service should count for something.

Let’s face it: other people can be really annoying. But they can also be useful.

Their sins reassure you.

Their failures steady you.

Their shortcomings become evidence that you belong where you are.

You may never put it this way, but you use what is wrong with them to feel better about what you believe is right with you.

If you started giving them grace—if you were willing to forgive them—then they would no longer be useful as tools for your own self-righteousness.

And without realizing it, you are no longer listening to the landowner’s promise.

You are measuring His goodness by how it reflects on you.

Grace starts to feel irresponsible.

Forgiveness starts to feel premature.

Generosity starts to feel unfair.

B. Or Perhaps You Believe You Have Done Your “Fair Share”

Or perhaps you are not resentful or anxious, but careful.

You give.

You serve.

You help.

You show up.

But you do so with an eye toward balance.

You know what is reasonable.

You know what is expected.

And you make sure you do your part—but not more.

You give your fair share of time.

Your fair share of effort.

Your fair share of generosity.

You would never say you are earning anything.

But quietly, you assume God must be satisfied with that.

And this parable unsettles you because it suggests that God is not interested in keeping accounts at all.

C. What Is at Stake

Jesus does not tell this parable as a harmless illustration.

When the workers grumble, the landowner answers them—and then He says something chilling:

“Take what belongs to you and go.”

You are paid.

You are not cheated.

But you are dismissed.

You receive exactly what you insisted on—and are sent away from the vineyard.

That is the danger Jesus is naming.

Because when fairness becomes your refuge, you stop listening to the promise and start arguing with the giver. And the tragedy is not that God fails to give—but that you no longer know how to receive.

At best, Jesus says, you may find yourself last in the kingdom—not because God delights in reversing fortunes, but because insisting on fairness always puts you behind grace.

And at worst, the danger is this: that you hear God’s generosity, resent it, resist it, and are finally sent away—paid in full with what you demanded, but separated from the joy you refused.

Jesus tells this parable because something real is at stake—for you.

III. Workers Despairing of Their Wages

But perhaps none of that quite fits you.

Perhaps you do not feel secure.

Perhaps you are not resentful.

Perhaps you are not even carefully calculating what you have given.

Perhaps you are simply aware that you have not done enough.

You look at your faith and see inconsistency.

You look at your life and see unfinished repentance.

You know that whatever you have offered to God has been partial at best.

And so fairness does not feel like a refuge to you.

It feels like a threat.

You know you have not earned a place in the vineyard.

And for some of you, it goes deeper still.

You have learned—sometimes explicitly, sometimes quietly—that grace may get you started, but it does not get you home. That Jesus may have died for you, but now it is up to you to prove that you belong.

You are forgiven, but never secure.

Accepted, but always on probation.

So you live with the suspicion that God tolerates you, but does not delight in you.

And others of you go even further.

You are honest enough to admit that if God were fair, you would not even ask to be among the last. You know your sin. You know what you have thought, said, and done. And you know that what you deserve is not a wage, but judgment.

This parable speaks to you as well.

Because the landowner does not go looking only for the productive, the consistent, or the impressive. He goes looking for the idle. For those with nothing to offer. For those standing around with empty hands.

And he brings them in.

IV. Jesus Puts Himself into the Parable

Jesus is doing more than tell you a story.

He places Himself inside it.

He is the One who has truly labored from the first hour of the day—not only in this parable, but in reality. Before the foundation of the world, He willingly took up the work that would lead Him to the cross.

From His first breath to His final cry, He lived a perfect life in thought, word, and deed. Every command kept. Every temptation resisted. Every moment lived in perfect trust toward His Father and perfect love toward His neighbor.

That life was not lived for His own sake.

It was lived for you.

He looked at you and saw your sin and your failure.

And rather than compare His righteousness to yours, rather than hold His obedience up against your disobedience, He carried your sin to the cross.

Not in theory.

Not symbolically.

But fully and finally.

There, He received what was truly fair: your guilt, your resentment, your fear, your self-righteousness, your despair. And there, the debt was paid in full.

But the Gospel does not stop with forgiveness alone.

Christ gives you more.

He takes your sin, and He gives you His righteousness. His obedience is credited to you. His perfect life counts as yours.

So when the Father looks at you, He does not see an unfinished worker. He sees the completed work of His beloved Son.

This is why God does not give you what is fair.

Fairness would condemn you.

Instead, He gives you everything.

And He does not wait until the end of your life to do it.

The Father pays out the wage of eternal life now—not because your work is complete, but because Christ’s work is.

Here, your sins are forgiven.

Here, you are declared righteous.

Here, you are given life.

Not tentatively.

Not conditionally.

But as a gift secured by Christ and delivered to you.

V. Jesus Still at Work — Through You

And yet Christ’s work does not simply remain in the past.

The One who lived perfectly for you—in thought, word, and deed—now continues His work in you.

Not to finish what was lacking.

Not to earn what has already been given.

But to let His finished work bear fruit.

And this is where something quietly but decisively changes.

You no longer need other people’s sins to steady you.

You no longer need their failures to reassure you.

You no longer need their shortcomings to justify yourself.

Because you no longer need to justify yourself at all.

Now, instead of scanning others for what is wrong with them, you are free to see them as they actually are: people for whom Christ was willing to labor, suffer, and die.

When their sins are obvious—and sometimes they are—you no longer need them to remain broken so that you can feel secure. You have something better to give them.

You have the healing balm of God’s grace.

The same forgiveness that has covered you.

The same mercy that no longer compares, but bears and restores.

And Christ does not limit this work to what happens here.

The same Gospel that freed you continues to go out beyond this place—spoken, proclaimed, broadcast, and carried into homes and lives you will never see. That is why Lutheran Hour Ministries exists: not to replace the Church’s preaching and not to pressure Christians into doing more, but to extend the same generous Word of Christ to people who are still standing idle, wondering whether there could possibly be a place for them.

And through ordinary acts of care and service, Christ continues His work of love in this world. Not to prove anything. Not to secure anything. But because life given bears fruit.

On the Last Day, He will even acknowledge what He Himself has worked through you. Acts of love and service you scarcely noticed will be named and received—not as wages earned, but as gifts His grace produced.

So you are not sent out as workers trying to secure a place.

You are sent as heirs who already have one.

God does not want to give you what is fair.

He wants to give you everything.

And in Christ, He already has.