The Vineyard-Owner Letting Us In On the Plan

This week, at Anchor, we considered how the Vineyard-owner from the parable of Matthew 20 might be hinting at something like the following:

“Isn’t it wonderful,” Jesus asks, “that just as I was wonderful to you, I’m always choosing to be wonderful… to everyone?! Look around,” He says. “Look at all the people I’ve got you rubbing shoulders with, every single day: these are the highest work of your work in my fields.”

He smiles even more broadly. “Or were you starting to think that the moral-of-this story was only your personal morality, your self-righteous hardwork, or, even worse than that, promise of eventual reward. Oh, my friend—it is so much more than that! Back when I called you—back when you and I understood together where all this was going—did you misinterpret what we were doing? Yes, I sent you into the world; yes, I sent you into my vineyard—but what did you think we were doing there together? We were in the vineyard—you and I, together; shoulder to shoulder—not to talk about its fruit, not to be knowledgable about its potential eventual crops; even to constantly point to the fruit as if the fruit was the thing. The fruit is a part of the thing, yes. But the fruit, my dear friend… is not the thing.

“The thing… is my calling you… your coming along with me… our going-together into the fields of this vineyard. The thing… is us… together. Just you and me, as we’re walking out every single moment of the moments that are making up your life: the thing… is our life together… together.

“And do you wanna know what’s especially wonderful? 

“That the more you come to terms with just how wonderful what we’re doing together is…the more you’re celebrating being part of this glorious work-with-me… well… in the midst of enjoying the work, delighting in me, doing this together… that’s the moment when others start to wonder--these people doing their lives around you--why YOUR life is so full of wonder. As you’re walking around with me… learning to see the world like me… you’ll start to look, to others, like me. 

“And, you see,” He smiles now with the greatest affection it is possible to conceive of, “that is the thing. That’s why I called you in the first place. That’s the whole of the Kingdom of Heaven. My friend, that’s what we’re doing, here, together: living our whole lives together, so that everyone may have life in me.”