This sermon was preached on Sunday 20th September 2026 at St Michael’s Church, Great Oakley.

Bible Reading: Matthew 20.1-16

We are currently following a series of parables in which Jesus describes what the Kingdom of heaven is like. By the Kingdom of heaven, I mean what the world would look like if it were the way God wanted it to be, the way it is in heaven. We also call it a kingdom because it is the place where God rules as king, and everything in his kingdom is under his rule and authority. Jesus tells these parables to the crowds to help them understand more about who God is and what life with God looks like for us and for this world.

Last week, we explored God’s kingdom through the theme of forgiveness and the parable of the Unforgiving Servant. In that parable, we learned more about God’s character of grace and mercy, which leads to his perfect forgiveness. Today, we hear the parable of the workers in the vineyard, which helps us understand more about God’s character and what life is like in his kingdom.

The parable goes like this. There is a man who owns a vineyard. Since English wine isn’t very common, let’s imagine this man is based in Italy or the South of France. So, the vineyard owner wakes up early one morning and goes out to hire people to work in his vineyard for the day. He sets up job contracts and offers a silver coin a day to work in his vineyard. The man gets a few people to agree to work for him at the fair wage of a silver coin for the day. Seems a fair deal.

After recruiting a few people first thing, the man goes out to the marketplace at 9 o’clock to see if he can hire more workers for the vineyard, as there is still room on the payroll. Again, he brings out his job contracts, offering a silver coin a day for work in his vineyard. He is successful in his recruitment and sends more workers to the vineyard. 

The man then goes out on several more recruitment drives throughout the day, again at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, and just before 5 o’clock. At each recruitment drive, he offers the same job contract, a silver coin to come and work in his vineyard that day. At each turn, he successfully recruits more workers for his vineyard. 

At the end of the working day, it was time for the workers to come and collect their day’s pay when they clocked out from work in the vineyard. The owner sorted out the payments for the 5 o’clock hires first, then the 3 o’clock hires, then the midday hires, then the 9 o’clock hires, and finally the very first employees hired at the beginning of the day.

One by one, the workers came to collect their silver coin for the day’s work, as agreed in their contracts. However, the employees who worked all day became disgruntled with the boss. They complained about their pay and demanded to be paid more. The owners asked them why they felt they should have been paid more. They said they felt cheated and that it was unfair that people who worked only one hour were getting paid the same as those of us who worked all day. It’s as though their pay is a silver coin per hour, while ours is like one-tenth of a silver coin per hour, because we still end up with the same silver coin at the end.

The owner ropes in legal and HR and pushes back on the demands for more money. Hold on a sec. When you signed your job contracts earlier, when you came to work for me, you all agreed on a wage of one silver coin for the day. That’s what I offered; that’s what you agreed to receive. It’s all here in black and white. Isn’t that your signature? So why do you feel cheated when you got everything we agreed you would get in your job contract? You are getting what I agreed to pay you; that’s the end of it. Let’s move on. If I choose to offer the same job contract to the person who started at 7am and the person who started at 5pm, that is up to me. Can’t I be generous with my money? If you were unhappy with the pay, you didn’t have to accept it, but you did. So you have nothing to complain about.

And that’s the end of the parable. After finishing the parable, Jesus concluded, “So those who are last will be first, and those who are first will be last.”

At the start, I said that Jesus told this parable to help people understand more about what God’s kingdom is like, and therefore what God the king is like. So, what does this parable tell us about God’s kingdom? To put it plainly, Jesus says it doesn’t matter at what point you come to God; you are still blessed with the same gift of eternal life with God, and that is good news. 

You might have been a Christian since you were a baby, or maybe you came to faith as a teen. Maybe it was as a student at university, or later on when you were attending the parent and toddler group at your local church. Perhaps it happened later still when a colleague at work invited you to Alpha, or maybe retirement got you asking the big questions about what life is all about. Then there are some who turn to Jesus on their deathbeds. 

It doesn’t matter at what stage you came to faith. Whether you have been a Christian for 80 years or 80 seconds, you still receive the same reward of life with God for all eternity. It sounds great, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter what has gone before in your life. If you come to Jesus, you receive eternal life with him. 

Now, if you have been a Christian a long time, maybe even your whole life, it could be easier for us to say that this isn’t fair. I know I sometimes have this thought. Why have I spent my whole life trying to live as a disciple, working hard to live like Jesus, saying no to all the things that my peers and the world around me are doing, when I could have done all of those things and turned to Jesus on my deathbed and still ended up with the same result? I could have been greedy and made loads of money and then lived a life of wild partying. But no, instead, I became a vicar. Yippee for me. But surely this parable shows me that I could have had both? Pushed faith down the line and then cashed in right at the end for the same end reward? Surely, I can’t be the only one who’s ever thought that. 

As tempting as this may be to believe, I would argue that these two paths are not completely the same. There is a difference between the workers who started at 7am and those who started at 5pm. Even though they received the same single silver coin at the end of the day, the workers who started at the beginning of the day got to spend the whole day in the vineyard with the owner. They got to enjoy more of being in his company and being part of his team. It may have been hard work, but they got to be in the beautiful vineyard knowing that they worked for the vineyard owner. Whereas the workers at 5pm had spent the whole day in the marketplace kicking their feet around, not doing anything. Yes, they got the same final silver coin payout, but they missed out on a whole day of being in the vineyard with the owner. 

The same is true for us as Christians. Those of us who have been Christians for many years, or since we were children, have had more time with God. We have known God longer and lived in his kingdom for longer. That is not a burden to suffer; that is a gift. It’s a gift we often take for granted if we have grown up as Christians. But if you speak to someone who became a Christian in later life, they are not saying, ‘Look how great it is that I got to live my “fun life” first before becoming a Christian.’ No, if you ask someone who became a Christian later in life, they will probably tell you they wish they had become a Christian sooner, and how much better their life would have been. They might even say you are so blessed and fortunate that you have been able to share more years with God than they have. 

Yes, both the new Christian and the experienced Christian received eternal life with God. But the experienced Christian had a little bit more of a head start on eternity with God. That doesn’t mean we should go the other way and boast about how much longer we have been a Christian, as if it were something to laud over others. 

One of Jesus’ aims when telling this parable was to challenge Jews who believed they were superior to Gentiles because they followed God while the Gentiles didn’t. Even after Gentiles became Christians in the early church, Jewish Christians often viewed them as inferior because they were Gentiles, AKA not Jewish. But this is not what God’s kingdom is like. 

This parable of the vineyard shows us that God does not call us to share life with him for all eternity because of anything we have done. It is because of God’s grace that he chooses to generously give eternity with him to all who come to him. This is what God is like; this is what his kingdom is like. God is a generous and gracious God who chooses to give each of us eternal life with him, whether we have been a Christian our whole lives or became a Christian today. 

If we have been a Christian for a longtime, we can sometimes feel that we unfairly get the same as new Christians. If we are new Christians, I imagine that you feel overjoyed that you received the same living presence of God as though you had been following God your whole lives. Neither one should be elevated as greater than the other. Rather, we must recognise and celebrate the gift of life with God for eternity that is given to both. 

At the beginning, we asked, what is the kingdom of God like? Well, this parable has shown us that God, our King, is gracious, generous and overwhelmingly loving beyond what we deserve. All we can do is receive it as a gift. Don’t compare your gifts with others, for comparison is the thief of joy. Instead, let us celebrate the gift of life with God forever, graciously given to all without prejudice. That is the good news of God’s kingdom. 

I pray this week that you will come to see your Christian faith not as a series of trials or tests, as if you were preparing for an exam or an appraisal. Instead, see and receive your faith as a generous gift from God, for that is what it truly is. A gift. 

Amen.