Sermon - Septuagesima - 1 Cor 9:24-10:5 - 2018

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.” Could you imagine being a day-laborer? Never knowing if you will have a job each day and if you’ll make any money to provide for your family. If you’ve ever been unemployed you’ve probably experienced a similar feeling. So could you imagine suddenly being hired by someone who doesn’t need your labor? 

That’s what has taken place in today’s Gospel reading: a master of a house who already has servants to do His labor, goes out and hires more laborers.  None of this is done for His benefit, but it’s all for the benefit of those whom He hires. Likewise, we who have nothing have been called by our Lord and Master, Jesus. He has called us into His vineyard and He has promised us a great reward at the end.

We are like the unemployed day-laborers, we don’t have any marketable skills and we hold little to no value to most of society. Yet our Lord’s Word rings out with joyful news that He has called us into His household in order to receive a reward that we aren’t able to deserve. Christ through His Word has called us to salvation by grace through faith, yet not to an attitude of prideful and slothful presumption.

The same Word of comfort is the same Word that called the Israelites to freedom from their bondage to the Egyptians and promised them a land flowing of milk and honey. That same Word divided the Red Sea to let them pass through on dry ground. That same Word fed them with Manna from heaven. That same Word is what caused the rock in the wilderness to spring forth water for the Israelites. 

Just as St. Paul explains: “Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”

It is by grace through faith in the same Christ Jesus that the Israelites were saved. Though the Christ followed after them, and we today follow after the Christ, all of God’s salvific works are accomplished through the same Christ. It is the Word of Christ that watered the people from the rock, and it is the Word of Christ that raises us stones to new life through the waters of baptism. The Lord through His Word promises and delivers salvation to His people, all of this by grace through no deserving actions done by the people.

The Lord has saved you by grace through faith in His Word. He now promises you life everlasting where you will spend eternity with Him in the heavenly Zion, in the City of God. He has set a reward before you that is far better than a day’s wages, or even a lifetime of wages. 

But that’s not the end of the story! The story doesn’t end with the promise of a great reward, it doesn’t end with the promise of your day’s wages. It continues with labor and running to receive the prize. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” When the laborers are hired to work in the vineyard, they then go into the vineyard to work it! 

The Israelites were given the great promise of a land flowing with milk and honey, yet the people grumbled against the Lord and disobeyed Him. “with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” In fact God was so not pleased with the Israelites that only two of them who first received the promise, Joshua and Caleb, were permitted to enter into that land and receive the prize. 

Likewise, the life of the Christian doesn’t end with hearing the promise and then receiving the great reward. In the intermediate time it is a life filled with hard labor. Paul uses an easy to understand example: an athlete. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath.”

If you were to be chosen to compete in the olympics and represent our country, you wouldn’t stop training and practicing before the day when you have to compete, but you would continue to discipline yourself just as before. In fact, you would probably train with far greater excitement because of the prize that awaits you if you win. 

But the reward that you receive after competing and winning in an athletic competition is perishable. This is something for us to reflect upon with a repentant heart in our lives today. How much work and effort do we go to win a perishable reward in comparison to how much work and effort we put into our faith life which receives an imperishable reward?

So consider your calendar, how many hours a week are spent on athletics? On watching or practicing sports? On improving our monetary income? On watching TV or our phone? Now, consider how much time is spent on our faith.

Or another exercise, consider your bank account. As Jesus says “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Where do you like to invest your money? In new fancy cars or vacations? How large is your retirement account? Or perhaps very applicable for us in rural Iowa, how big are our barns and our equipment? Then consider how you support your local congregation. 

Remember the parable of the farmer whose ground yielded abundant harvests, so much so He didn’t have enough storage for it. His solution was to build bigger barns and amass more wealth so that He could eat, drink, and be merry. “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.””

Our society worships at the altar of athletica and wealth. We spend our days trying to obtain perishable wealth and absolutely neglect our faith life. Christ and our faith takes the lowest priority, where school activities, athletics, work, vacations, sleeping, TV, and pretty much anything else is higher priority. Why do we do this? We need to take a long hard look at our lives and consider our priorities, because our faith is more than a priority, it is a way of living. 

We must take the example of St. Paul seriously when He says “I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.” We need to stop beating at the air and running aimlessly towards a prize of money or fame that will soon be lost when we die. “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” Instead, let us run the race of faith! 

What I mean by this in concrete terms is to exercise your faith, and since the Holy Spirit is the One who grants us growth, this means our faith exercising is going to be grounded in the Word of God along with repentance and forgiveness. 

Being a Christian isn’t just a theoretical concept, but it’s real life in the real world doing real things. How we spend our time, our money, and our talents really do matter. God has made you to be who you are with the gifts that you have, not to use them for yourselves and your own selfish gain, but to use them for your neighbor.

Let us therefore spend more time during this season of preparation for Lent to prepare for the journey to the cross. Begin by examining yourselves and contemplating God’s great love for you. Examine yourselves based upon the ten commandments. Make this a goal the next few weeks to read the 10 commandments each day, and memorize them. Use them in your daily living to guide your race of faith while you run. 

Because the beauty of this race that we run is that we don’t run out of compulsion, as if we have to live the perfect life in order to be saved. Instead we run the race of faith because Christ has freed us from death! No longer are we running away from dying, instead we are running into the arms of our Savior! We are running to the Rock of our faith, Jesus the Christ who is a sure and certain foundation. 

From this Rock flows forth streams of living water. Just as Moses pierced the rock with his staff, so Christ was pierced by the soldier’s spear and from His side flowed a river of blood and water. From this flood that flowed from Christ’s side our sinful and prideful presumptuousness has been drowned, and now we are fed and nourished by the Bread of Heaven, Jesus the Christ, who gives us to eat His own body and blood.

Having thus been washed in the river of Christ, and fed with His body, we are renewed and emboldened to run the race towards the cross with excitement and joy. We have a reason to smile! Sure, we have to discipline our bodies and there is a lot of suffering in this life, but the crown of life that awaits us at the end is joy and peace! In the midst of sorrows and struggling, you can smile even through tears because Christ has taken your perishable body riddled with sin and shame and He gives you an imperishable body. Christ has called you to this reward, so go ahead and act like it: serve your neighbor, love God, read the Bible, repent and believe, receive the Holy Supper, and smile.