Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 20:1-16
In Christ Jesus, who made Himself last, suffering the punishment for all our sins, so we would be justified before God, receiving the great riches of His grace, dear fellow redeemed:
In a prosperous country like ours which does not require that everyone has the same amount of money or possessions, it is natural for us to compare what we have with what others have. We might drive through town and admire some large and beautiful homes, or we might think of the high-paying jobs some of our neighbors have, and we might wonder: “Why don’t I have more than I do?” Or, “Why have they received so much?”
These questions have crossed each of our minds. We might feel like we have worked hard, been honest and reliable; we’ve put in our time. Then we look at others who have not worked as hard, who have been willing to compromise morally and ethically, who in our estimation have not deserved the promotions or raises they have gotten. And we wonder why this has happened to us. Should we have looked out for ourselves more and sacrificed less? Or did we just pick the wrong job and put in our time at the wrong place?
It is thoughts like these that lurk in the background of today’s Holy Gospel. A landowner hires laborers for his vineyard throughout the day. The ones hired early in the morning agreed to work for a denarius. They were not being manipulated or cheated. It was a fair wage for the work they were asked to do. The workers hired at various points after that were not told what they would receive. They were promised by the owner, “whatever is right I will give you.” And they went to work, happy to be employed.
The problem came at the end of the day when it was time for the workers to receive their wages. The ones hired last who only worked one hour were sent through the line first, and they received a denarius. They couldn’t believe it! What a gift! When the ones hired first came through the line, they received the same pay—one denarius. They couldn’t believe it! How unfair! They immediately grumbled against the landowner: “Those workers don’t deserve what you gave them! We deserve to have more!”
The sins behind these statements are jealousy and a judgmental attitude. Jealousy or envy are when you see what someone else has, and you want it for yourself. It could be someone else’s property. It could be someone else’s possessions. It could be someone else’s popularity. It could be someone else’s spouse or family. There is nothing wrong with admiration; we can be impressed by what others have. But jealousy is the step forward into sin. It is what the Ninth and Tenth Commandments are about: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.” And, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, workers, animals, or anything that is his.”
This sinful desire happens when we are discontent with what we have. That discontentment makes just about everything else around us look better. So if you are discontent about your job, just about every other job looks better. If you are discontent with your spouse or your family, just about every other spouse and family looks better. Giving way to these jealous thoughts opens the door to more sin. Sinful thoughts turn into sinful actions.
Closely related to jealousy is a judgmental attitude. When we sinfully desire what others have, we also think of reasons why they don’t deserve to have it. We say, “They haven’t worked as hard as I have.” Or, “He is so stupid and doesn’t have any real talent. What does the boss see in him?” Or, “She only got this job because of who she knows.” Or, “They don’t appreciate what they have like I would.” The more we can lower or cut down the people that we see as our opponents or enemies, the more we raise ourselves up.
The men who worked all day made this sort of judgment: “These last worked only one hour—hardly at all!—, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. They don’t deserve what they received; we deserve way more!” The landowner replied with these points: 1) He gave the workers exactly what they agreed to work for, and 2) he has the right to pay the other workers the wages he chose to give. Then he called out the sin of the grumblers with the question: “Or do you begrudge my generosity?”—literally, “Is your eye evil (or envious) because I am good?”
The same question is set before us: Do we begrudge the Lord’s generosity to our neighbors? Do we think we haven’t gotten our “fair shake”? But how do we come to these conclusions? Who’s to say what we really do deserve? Who’s to say that we should receive something more or something different than what God has given us? In his First Letter to Timothy, St. Paul wrote, “But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (6:6-8).
Contentment is elusive. It always seems just out of reach. Others seem to have it, but not us. Except that contentment can’t be found in earthly things, in earthly success, or in earthly happiness. This is one of the devil’s tricks. The all-day workers in the vineyard wouldn’t have been any better off if they received twice as much money as the one-hour workers. The point of the parable is that contentment is not found in what we do—the energy we expend, the hours we put in, the amount we earn. Contentment is found in what God has done for us.
What we have done is so small, so insignificant, in the grand scheme of God’s kingdom. We think of ourselves as the ones who have worked so hard, “who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But we should think of ourselves as those who often stood idle in the marketplace, who did not do the work we were called to do until the opportunity had almost passed us by.
By viewing our work in this way, we can only conclude that the wages we have received from God are not so much earned wages as they are gift. The laborers who worked one hour knew they did not deserve a full day’s wage. The knew this was a gift of the landowner’s generosity and grace. Far from his being indebted to them (like the other workers were trying to argue), they knew they were indebted to him.
This is how it is with our salvation. To earn our own salvation, we would have to be perfect children of God, perfect workers in His vineyard, perfect neighbors to those around us. This is what His Law requires. Since we have not met this standard, we have failed, and God owes us nothing. Romans 3:23 states the matter plainly: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
The very next verse tells us that since we cannot save ourselves from these sins, God does the saving. It says that just as “all have sinned,” so all “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” We have often been jealous and judgmental toward others. This verse tells us that we are “justified” by God. To be justified means that God declares us righteous, “not guilty,” because Jesus kept the Law of God for us and suffered the punishment for all of our sin.
The justification of God requires nothing of you and gives everything to you. Romans 4:5 says, “And to the one who does not work—who does not trust in his own works for salvation—but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Whom does God justify, pronounce righteous? The inspired Word of God tells us that He “justifies the ungodly.” He justifies the ungodly, so that they become godly. He justifies the unrighteous, so that they are declared righteous.
What you could not do for yourself, Jesus has done for you. You could not keep God’s holy Law, so Jesus kept His Law for you. You could not pay for your sins, so Jesus paid the debt for you. You could not earn your way to heaven, so Jesus earned heaven for you. It is He who bore “the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” He took the burden of God’s wrath for your sins and endured the scorching heat of hell, so that you would be saved.
You Are Justified by God’s Grace as a Gift. Not only has He declared you right with Him because of what Jesus has done, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, He has given you the faith to believe this. Ephesians 2:8-9 says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
When you keep your eyes on Jesus, you see that you have everything you need. You might not have great riches or renown in this life. You might feel like many wonderful things have passed you by. But you have Jesus. You have the priceless Treasure that makes every worldly thing look so small and insignificant. You have the joy of knowing that He chose you to work in His vineyard. He chose you to receive His gracious gifts. He chose you who should be last to be first.
So we set aside our grumbling, we repent of our discontentment, and we receive His gifts with thankful hearts, faithful diligence, and a joyful hope in what He promises. The great hymnwriter put it so well:
The world may hold
Her wealth and gold;
But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true Treasure.
To Him hold fast
Until at last
A crown be thine and honor in full measure. (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #161, v. 6)
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from 11th century Byzantine manuscript of laborers working in the vineyard [lower portion] and receiving their denarius [upper portion])
Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 50:15-21
In Christ Jesus, who came down from His heavenly throne to save us by grace, and grace alone (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #226, v. 4), dear fellow redeemed:
Do you remember the dreams that the teenage Joseph had? The sheaves of his brothers bowing down to his sheaf in the field? And then the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him? His brothers hated him for this (Gen. 37:8). Those dreams were on their minds when they saw Joseph coming toward them in the field. “Here comes this dreamer,” they said. “Come now, let us kill him” (37:19-20). But instead they decided to sell him… as a slave.
By the time of today’s reading, more than thirty years had passed. For seventeen of those, Joseph’s brothers had lived peacefully in Egypt under Joseph’s protection and care. But now their father Jacob was dead. What might Joseph do to them now, and who would stop him if he decided to take revenge? They had sold him for twenty shekels of silver. How much do you think they would have given to undo what they had done?
A clean conscience is a priceless thing to have. You know that because of what a tremendous burden a guilty conscience is. Think back to when you were a child. At some point, you probably took something you weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was a cookie or some treat your parents told you not to take. You took it and ate it, but it didn’t bring you the satisfaction you expected. In fact, it didn’t take long before you wondered why you ever took it in the first place and wished you could go back and change your actions.
That is true of so many of our sins. When faced with a temptation, we tell ourselves it is no big deal. “I can have this, or do this. No one will find out. I can get away with it.” But then it eats away at us. We can’t get it out of our mind. We feel it sticking to us like mud or hanging around our neck like heavy chains. We expect that everyone is going to find out. And we almost hope they do because then we can stop trying to hide it. Then we can take the consequences and move on.
But there is also danger in being found out. If somebody you have to answer to finds out what you have done, you can’t control how they respond. You don’t know how bad your punishment will be. You don’t know how much you could lose, but you always imagine the worst. That’s what Joseph’s brothers did. They saw how much power Joseph had. They imagined how he might sell them as slaves like they sold him. Or throw them in prison and make their wives and children slaves.
So they decided to appeal to the words of their father. If Joseph did not respect them, he certainly respected their father. They conveyed the command from Jacob that Joseph forgive his brothers. Then they asked him to consider their common faith in God and forgive them. Finally, they bowed down before him (just like Joseph’s dreams indicated) and said, “Behold, we are your servants. We are at your mercy.”
And they were. We don’t know if Joseph ever imagined this day. I suspect he did when he was treated roughly and sold in Egypt, and when he wiled away the hours in prison. No doubt the devil tempted him to hate his brothers who dealt so severely with him and tore him away from his home and family. You also know what it is to be wronged. Maybe someone attacked you for no good reason. Maybe someone betrayed your trust. Maybe someone lied to you and hurt you deeply.
It hurt so badly that you may have wanted them to feel that pain, so they would understand what they had done. Then they couldn’t try to pass it off as no big deal, or that they didn’t mean anything by it, or you should just forget about it. No, you wanted them to know how much it hurt you. And you can dwell on that and hold on to that bitterness and anger, so that it consumes you and grows much bigger than the original offense.
Now in Joseph’s case, it was a terrible offense. Who can imagine selling off a family member to an unknown fate? This gnawed at his brothers. They could not forget. They probably imagined Joseph being treated as less than human in Egypt and maybe even being killed and left in some unmarked grave. They did that to him. Like Cain who killed his brother Abel, they let their anger overcome them. And now they had to live with what they had done. But it was too much for them to bear. The burden of guilt overwhelmed them.
You know what this burden feels like because each of us has done things we regret, that we wish we could go back and change and fix. Knowing what a guilty conscience feels like is one reason why you should be ready to forgive those who have sinned against you. You know what a gift forgiveness is. You receive it each week in church after confessing your sins to God. You hear these words which have the power of God behind them, “By the authority of God and of my holy office I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
What a relief it is to know that every sin is forgiven by God! He holds none of them against you, even if you have fallen into the same sin again and again. He forgives you because Jesus paid the penalty for all sin on the cross. Even if someone you have sinned against tells you that he or she will never forgive you, God still forgives you. He has every right to hold your sins against you since you broke His holy Law, but He refuses to do this. The blood of His Son was sufficient to cleanse you of all your sins (1Jo. 1:7).
His blood was also sufficient to cleanse others of the sins they have committed against you. Sure, Joseph had the power to harm his brothers. But then he would have sinned just as they had. “Do not fear,” he said, “for am I in the place of God?” In the same way, you may have the power to harm someone, but are you in the place of God? The inspired letter to the Colossians says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:12-13).
We are not called to take revenge. We are called to be toward others as Jesus is toward us. We are called to be gracious. If we are saved by grace, by God’s undeserved love, then that is what we want to pass on to our neighbors. This is not a lesson we learn from the world. We live in a culture of political retribution, of diss tracks that win the highest music awards, of bad behavior that gets publicly outed but never publicly forgiven.
The way of Christ is counterintuitive. It is countercultural. It does not seek to “get what’s mine.” It seeks to give. That is what Jesus did. He came to give His perfect life in the place of every sinful one. He came to undo every wrong by His life of righteousness. He came to wipe away every transgression, every wrong, every hateful and hurtful action.
He came to free the world and every human heart from the desire to wound as we have been wounded, the desire to treat others the way they have treated us, the desire to get the payment we demand for the wrongs that were done to us. The revenge game has no winners, only losers. Joseph could have taken revenge on his brothers. But he did the bigger thing instead. He forgave.
He also acknowledged that the goodness of God was greater and stronger than their wicked intentions. He said, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” God turning evil into good does not justify evil, as though we should sin however we want, since God will work good out of it. Joseph’s brothers weren’t about to pat themselves on the back for being the ones to get their brother in Egypt to carry out this good work.
But it is comforting to know that God does this redemptive work, that He can and does turn our times of greatest pain and suffering into blessings. Maybe we will never clearly recognize those blessings, but we can trust that God will bring them about somehow. We know that even though we have meant evil against God in our sins, He turned everything for our good. He sent His Son to redeem us, so that we do not have to fear His wrath and punishment but rest in His unchanging grace.
Our hymn of the month teaches this, that we are saved by God’s free and boundless grace. He will not punish us eternally for our sins, no matter how terrible those sins were or how heavily they have weighed on our conscience. As stanza eight of the hymn says:
By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation’s furnace tried—
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father’s heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure? (ELH #226)
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Crucifixion, Seen from the Cross,” by James Tissot, c. 1890)
Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5
In Christ Jesus, who calls us to take up our cross and follow after Him, running the race of faith, until by His grace He brings us across the finish line, dear fellow redeemed:
In today’s reading, the apostle Paul brings in some history of God’s chosen people Israel. They had multiplied greatly over their more than four hundred years in Egypt. Over the course of that time, they had gone from being honored guests in the land to being enslaved. Now God had brought them out of slavery, and the people followed Moses out of Egypt and into the wilderness.
As they traveled, “the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light” (Exo. 13:21). This made it abundantly clear to them that the LORD was with them. Then they came up to the Red Sea. Everything seemed to be going well until they saw the Egyptian army coming toward them in full force. There was nowhere to run or hide.
The people immediately complained to Moses that they would have rather stayed in slavery than die in the wilderness. Moses reassured them that the LORD who brought them out of Egypt would guard and keep them. He said, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exo. 14:13-14).
What happened next? The LORD told Moses to stretch his staff over the sea to divide it, so the people could cross over on dry ground. While a wind divided the sea that night, the LORD moved His pillar of cloud and fire between His people Israel and the Egyptian army to protect His people. Then the Israelites walked through the sea with water on each side of them. Once the Israelites reached the other side, God allowed the Egyptian army to chase after them, and when they did, He caused the water to crash down and destroy them.
As the people moved forward through the wilderness, the LORD provided them manna for bread and quail from the sky for meat. In desolate places with no water, He even caused water to spill out of a rock! He provided for and blessed His people every step of the way. Paul said that the One who blessed them in these ways was Christ, the eternal Son of God.
How could the people doubt God’s love for them after all He had done? Why would they look anywhere else for guidance and help? But they did. Paul states the sobering truth, “with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” Where did they go wrong? Paul describes those things, too, just after today’s reading. He said that they became idolaters, chasing after the riches and pleasures of the world (1Co. 10:7). They indulged in sexual immorality, ignoring God’s institution of marriage, with twenty-three thousand falling in a single day (v. 8). They put Christ to the test by their complaining, grumbling, and rejection of His promises (vv. 9-10).
So why was Paul compelled to give this history lesson? “Now these things took place as examples for us,” he wrote; “they were written down for our instruction” (vv. 6,11). Paul was writing to a Christian congregation in Corinth that was struggling with the same temptations to idolatry, sexual immorality, and unfaithfulness. And we know that the same temptations face us now in our time. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9).
But are we willing to learn from the past? Are we willing to learn from what God has recorded in the Scriptures? Or do we take comfort in thinking that we’re really no worse than the people who went before us, and we are probably a little bit better? The reason that Paul used the language he did—“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”—was to tell us that when we see the Israelites, we should see ourselves.
We are baptized in Christ, and we partake of the food and drink of His body and blood. Would we give up all these blessings and embrace our sin instead, like the Israelites did? The answer of all of us here would be, “Absolutely not! We wouldn’t give up what Jesus has done for us for anything in the world!”
But then Paul would challenge us: “Do your words and actions prove this priority? Do you run the course of this life with your eyes always on the prize? Do you exercise self-control and discipline with your body, so that things like sexual sin, drunkenness, and gluttony will not disqualify you in other people’s estimation?” Those are hard questions. But they underscore an important point: The Christian faith is not for the lazy, for the self-secure, for the prideful, or for those who are just looking for a nice community organization.
Being a Christian requires sacrifice. It means sacrificing our sinful desires and selfish plans out of love for God and our neighbor. It means not looking for approval from the world. It means enduring criticism and possibly persecution for holding to the truth. It means sacrificing our pride, both acknowledging and admitting our many sins, for which we deserve God’s wrath and punishment.
When we take these things to heart, we can’t help but think we haven’t run the race so well. Our mind and heart cleansed in the waters of Baptism have often been employed in unholy pursuits. Our mouth which has held the holy body and blood of Jesus has often been used for hurtful words, gossip, and lies. When we have managed some self-discipline and self-control, then it was easy for us to look down on other Christians who were not as disciplined. Then we were like the workers in the vineyard who took their eyes off the promise, and instead focused on the weaknesses and inadequacies of the workers around them.
And yet, the race hasn’t ended. Our time isn’t up. The Master of the vineyard hasn’t called us forward to receive our wages. We are still here. We are still running. The call to repentance is a call for today and every day. But not just repentance. We are also called to faith in God’s grace. He knows who He has working for Him. He knows us far better than an employer knows his employees, or than a parent knows his child. He knows the stains on our past, and the weaknesses that hinder us from giving our all for Him. And He still says (and tells us again and again), “I forgive you.”
This is how the psalmist describes His enduring grace toward us: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psa. 103:10-12). That means our sin and guilt do not hold us back or weigh us down as we run the race we are called to run and carry out the work we are called to do. Those burdens have been lifted off our shoulders by our merciful God.
But our sin and guilt were not just set aside, thrown in the dumpster, or stuffed in a box in God’s garage. Our sin and guilt were put on God’s only Son. They were given over to Him for Him to carry and to take all the way across the finish line. That was a hard race to run, harder than we can imagine. Though He was perfect and did no wrong, He was ignored by the selfish, rejected by the prideful, and abused by the wicked. All the jealousy, all the anger and hatred, all the anguish and pain of the world were taken out on Jesus, as though He were the problem and not us sinners.
And He willingly went forward, carrying all of our sin, suffering unjustly. He kept His eyes on the prize. But what could He possibly gain by His innocent suffering and death? The prize He had His eyes on was your salvation. He ran that terrible race and did that awful work of suffering for you. The author of Hebrews writes that “for the joy that was set before him—the joy of redeeming sinners—[he] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:2).
Because He has won the victory for us over sin and death, the same author writes, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus” (vv. 1-2a). Where do we find our motivation, our strength to go forward and run the race? We find it in Christ, the same Christ who blessed the wandering people of Israel with His protection and care, the same Christ who blessed the Corinthian congregation with His presence in Word and Sacrament, the same Christ who still visits us now with His blessings of grace.
He does not want us to be lost. He does not want us to be overcome by our sin and overthrown in the wilderness of this world. He wants us to endure through the temptations and trials of this life and to finish our race in faith. He does not leave us to run the race alone. Like the pillar of cloud and fire, He protects us on all sides and leads us forward. He comes beside us encouraging and comforting us through His Word when the race is most difficult, and He is ready to receive us into His eternal kingdom when our race in this life comes to an end.
We keep our eyes on Him. And even when our focus is not as sharp as it should be, He is always looking with mercy upon us. The gracious countenance of the LORD is always turned toward you, to bless you and keep you, to shine upon you, and to give you peace.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Jesus Traveling” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)