A sermon by Rev. Dan Calvo
Pittsburgh New Church
August 3rd, 2025
AR 650: A vineyard symbolizes the church which has the Word and where the Lord is thereby known, thus in this case the Christian Church, [which] can be seen from (…) Jesus' likening the kingdom of heaven to a landowner who hired "laborers for his vineyard" (Matthew 20:1-8).
AC 9210: Anyone who does not know what Christian charity is may think that it consists not only in giving to the needy and poor but also in doing good to his fellow citizen, country, or Church for any reason whatever, that is, with no matter what end in view. But he should recognize that the end is what gives all of a person's deeds their true character. If the end or intention is to do good for the sake of reputation, in order to acquire important positions or else monetary gain, the good that he does is not good because it is done for the sake of self and thus also originates in self. But if the end is to do good for his fellow citizen's, country's, or Church's sake, thus for his neighbour's sake, the good he does is good since it is done for the sake of good itself, which in general is the real neighbour, and so is also done for the Lord's sake since such good does not have its origin in the person but in the Lord, and what originates in the Lord is the Lord's.
The Lord has promised us a lot of wonderful rewards for following Him. The Lord has promised us that if we follow Him we will be much happier and much more fulfilled in our natural life, and He also has told us that we will go to Heaven if we follow His commandments honestly and keep His love in our heart. But sometimes we can get too caught up on the idea of the reward, and we start to think that based on how many good things we do, we’ll get better rewards from the Lord. For example, if we help enough old ladies to cross the street or if we memorize enough doctrines, maybe we’ll get a really nice car, or maybe we’ll live in a castle when we get to heaven. This can create the false idea in us that we can somehow accumulate points on a scorecard to get an even bigger and better reward from the Lord!
This was something that the disciples of the Lord were struggling with. One day, the disciples of the Lord were talking to Him and they told Him, “Lord, we have left so many things behind! We have left our jobs, our family, and our homes, in order to follow you. What are we going to get in return? What will be our reward?” And then, the Lord told them a parable. As you may know, a parable is a story that is meant to teach us something, and the Lord taught His disciples and most of the people around Him by using parables. The parable that the Lord told His disciples, which we are going to read today, is the parable of The Workers in the Vineyard, and this parable talks about what kind of reward we can expect for following the Lord. The story goes like this:
(Matthew 20:1-16)
The Lord told His disciples this story because He was trying to teach them what kind of reward they would get for following Him. The disciples were expecting a great reward for leaving everything behind and sacrificing so much for following the Lord, but the Lord was teaching us in this story that every single person who decides to follow the Lord and work in His vineyard gets the same reward of being welcome in the Lord's Kingdom, even those who in our view may not have worked as hard or sacrificed so much to get there.
Every single person in this world is invited to work at the Lord’s vineyard, which is a symbol for His church. Some people are blessed to arrive at the Lord's vineyard a little earlier in their life. Maybe they were raised in a religious belief in the Lord, or maybe they encountered religion very early in their life, and they have remained in it faithfully since then. Other people arrive at the vineyard a little later in their life, and they had a different journey of how they got there, but they are still invited to work at the Lord's vineyard. And there are some people who have gone through a lot of very different paths in their life, and haven’t been able to find a place they can call their spiritual home, like workers who have not been hired, but in the end they make it to the Lord's vineyard and they accept that invitation to work there. All these different people are invited by the Lord to come work at the vineyard and all of those who accept the invitation are welcomed by the Lord and they all receive the same reward.
Now what does it look like to work at the Lord's vineyard? What is the kind of work that the Lord is asking us to do in His church? Well, first and foremost, the Lord is asking us to follow His Ten Commandments. He tells us to respect our parents, to not hurt other people, to respect our marriage, to not steal, to not lie in order to get ahead in life, and overall He tells us to respect His church and the dignity and wellbeing of our neighbors. When we avoid doing evil things to others, and actively do good things for the people around us, we are working at the Lord’s vineyard as members of His church, and whether we arrived here a little earlier or whether we arrived there a little later our reward is going to be the same: a happier, healthier life by following the Lord, and an invitation to the Kingdom of heaven.
But sometimes that might seem a little bit unfair, because if we arrived earlier into the church shouldn't we have a bigger reward? Shouldn't we get special treatment from the Lord if we made it to the vineyard and worked there for longer than people who got there later? When we start to think that way we can get into some false unhealthy ideas because what the Lord is trying to teach us in this story is that the important thing is not the reward, but the work itself.
The rewards are wonderful: there’s nothing greater than the promise of heavenly peace and joy for those who follow the Lord, but the rewards of goodness and truth belong to the Lord and the Lord alone, and it is His choice to extend that same reward to everyone who accepts the invitation to work at His vineyard, just like the owner of the vineyard paid all his workers equally as it was his right because it was his money. Everybody gets the same blessing, nobody gets special treatment for being here longer or for doing more good works than others, in the same way that nobody gets special treatment for arriving to the vineyard later than others, because the Lord doesn't want us to work only for the sake of the reward of going to Heaven. The Lord wants us to work at His vineyard to be useful, and to be useful not only to the Lord's purpose which is a heaven for humanity, but to be useful for the purpose of making other people happier and making our world right now a better place to live in.