Sermon by Pastor Brian - August 26, 2026
Sermons
Working Class
Matthew 20:1-15
With grapes swollen on the vine, the harvest isn’t going to pick itself. Determined, Jesus cranks on the ignition until his farm truck coughs to life. At first light, he drives to the pawnshop side of town, stopping at a gravel parking lot. The labor pool is already assembled: men with curved knives and disfigured skin, reapers in overalls and broken boots. Jesus calls out, “If anyone wants work in the vineyard, jump in the back. Pay is $10.”
After dropping the morning shift off with the field boss, he circles back. More crews are waiting at 9:00, 12:00, and 3:00. They climb in and slam the tailgate shut, relieved to be on the clock. At 5:00, one hour before quitting time, Jesus finds a few unhireables waving handwritten signs pleading for a day in the dirt. Rolling down the window, he asks, “Why haven’t you been picked up?” “No one,” a man says, “needs our sweat.”
“Get in.” Sixty minutes later, the whistle blows. The foreman gathers the early and late comers and begins distributing their earnings. “Ten bucks for you,” he says, “ten bucks for you; ten bucks for you; ten bucks for you.” Once the morning shift realizes what’s happening, they organize a grievance committee: “We’re senior staff, entitled to make more because we worked harder. How dare you cheat us?”
Once the bellyaching stops, Jesus responds: “Brothers, please accept your recompense and excuse yourself for the evening. Payroll is not your responsibility. No one came up short, and we agreed on a daily wage. Why is grace so offensive if it blesses your neighbor?” In this upsetting parable, shared with the disciples as they turn towards Jerusalem, what do we learn about God’s employment practices?
Matthew 20:1-15 ‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Congregational Responses:
God flattens the social hierarchy by paying an equal wage
There’s no meritocracy in the vineyard
Jesus blesses collective bargaining with the early arriving laborers
Dave Dahl served fifteen years in the Oregon State Penitentiary. After dropping out of high school and abandoning his religion as a Seventh Day Adventist, he worshipped methamphetamine as his savior. Multiple possession and burglary charges later, he watched as the steel door closed on his troubled life. Suicidal and strung out, he eventually asked for help with his mental health. A moment of clarity and drug treatment followed. Released a few years later, he started baking bread to sell at the Portland Farmers Market. His recipe included sunflower, flax, and pumpkin seeds, quinoa, organic grains, molasses, sea salt, and no GMOs. Responding to fanatical customers, he founded Dave’s Killer Bread. On every package label, he printed his recovery story. Now, his company sells America’s #1 organic bread, available in all 50 states. To pay it forward, he became the champion of second-chance employment, deliberately hiring staff with criminal records. One of their mottos is, we “believe all people are good seeds.”1
Not so for the late-arriving laborers. They spent eleven hours loitering outside hardware stores and temp agencies, enduring the indignity of being passed over. Perhaps they were ritually impure, unable to co-mingle with the sanitized. Or chronically malnourished, too weak to toil in the heat. Or suspect, haunted by yesterday’s crime. Regardless, the only thing worse than overworking is not working at all.
Aware of their public shame, Jesus keeps loading his pickup, unwilling to disqualify anyone, until the labor pool is empty. En route, he conducts no interview, calls no references, and worries not about the felonies. Before there was a box to check on the job application, Jesus banned it. As an employer, God is pro-labor, on the search until there’s no unemployment in the vineyard, certain we’re all working class.
In the United States, nearly 100 million Americans get arrested by age 23. That’s 1/3 of our population.2 Many of those arrests lead to convictions. After doing their slow time, 10,000 people a week walk out of prison needing a job.3 While some businesses continue to discriminate, not the landowner. “You’re exactly who I’ve been looking for,” God says, “my top candidate. Let’s serve together under the trellis.”
For days now, Jesus has been in the field snipping clusters of grapes by hand and crushing fruit by foot. With such a bumper crop on the vine, he can’t gather in the harvest alone. If you’ve spent most of your career responding to classifieds, only to get another rejection letter, hear the Good News: YOU’RE HIRED! The kingdom is calling; ministry awaits; get in the truck.
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1 https://www.
3 https://www.justice.gov/