Matthew 20: 1-16 Equal Reward is More Than Ok

In the twentieth chapter of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a parable of a land owner and workers.  As the story goes, the land owner goes out in the morning and tells some people looking for work that he would be willing to pay them at the end of the day if they were willing to come work in his fields.  Later in the day, the land owner does the same thing with a second group, and right before the work day ends he does it again.  When it comes time to pay the workers he pays each worker the same amount. 

This is where it gets interesting.  The workers who had worked the entire day become upset because they thought their pay would be greater than those who came in at the final hour.  The land owner then replies that they knew the reward when they agreed to work in the morning.

As we can see, this is a pretty transparent analogy to the reward of eternal and everlasting life.  It's easy for many of us who already believe in Christ as our savior to unwittingly become like the first workers in the field when we are presented with the possibility that someone who lived a very different lifestyle than ours found Christ late in life.  It's easy to ask what the point is to be in the first group of workers if everyone receives the same reward. 

I would challenge us all to view this story from a different perspective.  Let us look at the story from the point of view of one of the workers in the last group. If we read the story more carefully we see something  extremely critical.  Verses six and seven give us a glimpse into the last workers: "...He asked them 'Why haven't you been working today?' 7 "They replied, 'Because no one hired us.'"  Notice the answer there; these workers didn't spend their day sleeping until noon and then partying.  They had been searching all day for something to dedicate the day to, for something to give them the reward they were seeking, but nothing could do that except this land owner.

If there has ever been a time in our country's history where we should be able to view what that existence must be like, it should be now.  Imagine you have lost your job.  You don't know how much longer the money you have will last you or how long you'll be able to put food on the table.  You spend your days and nights searching for openings and applying to the ones you find.  Still, nothing seems to be going your way.  Your days are full of anxiety and uncertainty of what will come next.  This is the life without Christ.

It is the nature of this world that we will have hard times and we will suffer setbacks.  Throughout my short time here I've had my share.  But I also have an inner-peace that is always with me, because I know this life is temporary.  I have moments when I grumble about how nice it would be to not have to do the work that God calls us all to do and just do whatever I wanted, but I always end up coming back to the fact that I'm thankful to know I have work to do.  I'm no longer filled with anxiety of how I will get my reward.   I'm no longer searching.

You see, there's something amazing about kingdom work - they're always hiring.  Maybe instead of worrying about measuring our reward, we should be sharing the help wanted ads with the people we see searching.