Real Generosity
“Real Generosity” A Sermon
September 20, 2026
Laguna Niguel Presbyterian Church
INTRO
Hello Church! Welcome again to worship. We’re in a series of messages called “This is Us, For Real”. We’re looking at select portions of Matthew’s Gospel, especially toward the end where Jesus is teaching us about what it means to be the church. He’s talking with his twelve disciples but really, we find, that he’s addressing challenges very common in any church. This is Us. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not talking about jammed copy machines and speaker systems with too much reverb and phishing emails, no none of that. I WISH Jesus had given instructions about that, but... no! Instead, he’s talking about something more important – the relational life of the church – the qualities that make up the social context of the church: things like real conversations, real forgiveness, and today… real generosity. Let’s read now from Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 20, verses 1-15. In invite you to hear God’s word for you today!
READ MATTHEW 20:1-15
A Slow Drift from Warm to Cold (O)
I love that line in the song “Come Thou Fount). We sang it earlier, “Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it”. Robert Robinson, the songwriter, was speaking to the spiritual drift we all experience as we make progress on our walk with God. Many begin a relationship with Jesus with energy and zeal. We love Jesus. We try to love people. We are excited for prayer, Scripture, and worship. But after some time, things cool. Our hearts are tempted to wander even as we are wondering what God is up to.
Here is one example from my own life: I remember in my mid-twenties having to do a number of “adulting” things for the first time: get a career job, find an apartment, find a mate. These seemed large, so I prayed earnestly for God’s help. Do you remember the Staples commercials with the “easy” button where, all anyone had to do was press the easy button and office items would magically appear? Well, my prayer life was like that. I would experience warm feelings for God and Scripture, then God would answer my requests directly and consistently. I prayed for a carer job, and the day after college graduation I received an interview which led to a job. I prayed for an apartment and, a couple of days after moving to Atlanta I found this gem of an apartment in an ideal location. I prayed for a spouse, and Jeannine came walking in the room… Okay, it didn’t quite work that way. However, I did connect with Jeannine shortly after moving to Atlanta and we were married within a couple of year’s time. I was praying, God was answering. I felt warm toward God. Easy!
Then Jeannine and I decided to move to Long Beach, California – you know, California, the promised land. Interestingly, the move from Atlanta to Long Beach was anything but easy: looking for apartments we wrecked our rental car. We had our bike’s stolen while looking for a church. While going to church, we got into another car accident. We went from dual-income-no-kids to single income while in grad school. I picked up a job cleaning swimming pools in Bellflower to spending my days cleaning flies out of pools and regulating chlorine and reading systematic theology books by night was not as magical as it seemed at first in my head. I asked God a lot those days, “Why God? Why isn’t this easier? Why are you not coming through like you did in my first big move? What am I doing wrong? Because it feels like I’m working harder! And I was. I was praying harder, studying harder. And top of all this, the warm spiritual feelings I once had toward God were drying up. Prayer felt emptier. Scripture duller. I began to wonder – ask big questions – even while my heart was tempted to wander. Spiritual drift is real.
Spiritual drift can occur in our individual walks with God, and it can occur in a church. Churches walk with God in community. And all churches, just like people, go through stages of growth.
Alan Roxborugh and Fred Romanuk in their book The Missional Leader describe three stages of church life: a pioneering stage, a performing stage, and a reacting stage.
Stages of Church Growth (Slide 1)
In the pioneering stage there is lots of creativity and energy as a church tries to figure out how to be a church. This stage’s color is green for energetic, new growth. The temperature in these churches is really warm. A warm church is a church where there is lots of grace, gratitude, and generosity.
I love how author and consultant Peter Stienke describes warm churches in his book “Healthy Congregations”
SLIDE 2: Steinke Quote
He says warm churches “are graced and gracious, generous with each other and outsiders. They are communities of thanks and praise. They are wholesome and refreshing”. Yes, indeed!
As time passes, a church moves into a productive stage. It continues to grow by developing the skills and structures that have brought the community the most life. This stage is blue as a color of productive success. The temperature is still warm, just a little less so. There is still plenty of grace, gratitude, and generosity, but maintaining the program has become almost as important as the people.
As time passes, culture changes, the neighborhood changes, new generations emerge, new types of diversity spring up. Everyone starts to work even harder to do what was working; the only thing is… it’s not working anymore. The color for this stage, the reactive stage, is red. The church stops growing, not in just in numbers but in creativity and energy. The temperature is cold. Insiders and especially outsiders hear about grace, gratitude, and generosity. They see these words or words like them printed on banners, bumper stickers, and projected on walls, but they don’t experience these deeply in the relational life of the church.
Here, every church has a choice: Do we work even harder, or do we rediscover together what it means to be the church?
Spiritual Entitlement (U)
Seems like an easy choice. It isn’t. Because to rediscover what it means to be the church, we must let go of spiritual entitlement.
At some point in the spiritual journey, especially if we have become productive and spiritually successful, we become entitled.
SLIDE 3: Symptoms of Spiritual Entitlement
When we become spiritually entitled, there are some common symptoms. We go from gratitude to expectation. We go from “thank you, God” to “C’mon God”. In other words, we go from “I’m grateful” to “I deserve”. We can also go from productive to burnt out. Instead of “I’ve been given this great opportunity to serve” we go “I do everything here! Why aren’t other people picking up the slack”. We can also go from celebration to envy. We see other people in the church do what we used to do so well and instead of saying “Yes, Lord” we say, “Really, Lord?”
It’s ironic. But in the spiritual life, we can become so productive for God that we lose touch with grace, gratitude, and generosity.
The Generous Vineyard Owner (A)
Jesus knew about slow spiritual drift. He understood how faith in hearts or the relational life of an entire community can go from warm to cool. He understood that spiritual productivity can lead to spiritual entitlement. And he spoke to this by telling stories about the kingdom.
We’ve been reading some of Jesus stories. Last week we read Jesus’ story about an unforgiving servant (18:21-35). We’ve seen that Jesus’ stories and teaching in Matthew 18 are all about the relational life of the church.
We’re skipping Matthew 19, but it’s worth noting that Jesus in Matthew 19 debates religious leaders about a polarizing topic (19:1-12). He corrects disciples who are pushing children away (19:13-15). He challenges a rich young man (19:16-26). At that point, Peter goes “Look, we’ve left everything to follow you. What then will we have?” (Mt. 19:27) If you read chapter 19, you’ll notice these different encounters have a common thread: spiritual entitlement.
Jesus tells Peter there will indeed be a great reward for following him, but then he tells this story.
SLIDE 4: The Vineyard Workers
There’s a landowner who owns a vineyard. He goes out early in the morning, finds some day laborers and agrees with them to work for the normal daily wage: a denarius. He goes out again at 9am and finds other laborers. He tells them “Go work in my vineyard and I’ll pray whatever is right. He does the same thing at noon and 3pm. Finally, at 5pm he finds still more laborers. He’s like “Have you been standing around all day?” and they go, “Well, no one hired us”. So, he goes, “You can go work in my vineyard”. At 6pm, he tells his foreman to pay all the laborers beginning with the last. Those hired at 5pm got a day’s wage. So, those hired the earliest, at the end of the line, expect more but they’re given a day’s wage. And they go, “That’s not fair. You can’t do that. We’ve been here all day. We’ve worked the hardest. We’ve bore the heat of the hot sun. You can’t make those hired last equal to us.”
You feel for this early morning crew, don’t you? It’s a valid case. We worked harder. We deserve more. We were productive while they stood around. We were hired first. We’re the tried and true, the faithful, the dependable. We’ve done our time. We’ve spilled our sweat and blood for you. Everyone else was invited but we earned it.
They have a valid case if this were the world of commerce. This would be a terrible HR move. The employee retention would be awful.
But there’s always a kicker in these stories and that comes from the vineyard owner, “Friend, there’s no injustice here. You agreed to work in the vineyard for the daily wage. I decided to be generous with everyone. Are you envious because I’m generous?” Then Jesus ends this with “See that. It’s the great reversal. The first will be last and the last first.”
The point is not that God is like an unfair boss. This story isn’t simply about fair wages, it’s about status. That line, “You have made them equal to us.” That’s the problem for those hired first. In a capitalist economy, they have a point. But the spiritual economy of the Kingdom of God isn’t capitalist. It’s not ultimately about earnings. It’s about grace. It’s gratitude. It’s about generosity.
And the last thing the spiritually entitled want to hear is that they need God’s grace and generosity, just like everybody else. Even the lazy… yep. Even the evil … yep. Even those people?! Uh-huh.
This story, the spiritual drift we experience when we’re spiritual entitled; the coldness we feel toward those new to the faith, our relational life, to our traditions… this is about us.
It’s not ONLY about us. It’s about the religious leaders who scorned Jesus’ welcome of sinners. It’s about Jewish insiders and Gentile outsiders in the New Testament community (just read the book of Acts). It’s about the church in the fourth century wondering if they should allow those who denied Jesus during an era of persecution back into the church. It’s true. The very line “We believe in the forgiveness of sins” in the Apostle’s Creed was added after the church decided to allow defectors – those who had denied Christ during persecution – back into the church after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire. Can you imagine the resistance? “We’re the faithful and true. We’re the one who didn’t deny Christ. We earned this. We deserve it”.
BUT it’s also about the church, today, when new generations challenge the status quo or raise questions about the cherished beliefs and traditions, or when newcomers express worship differently or cook differently or parent their children differently than the norm. It’s about when church insiders care more about their own friends than they do the practice of hospitality and welcome.
A warm church that is gracious, grateful and generous with insiders and outsiders creates space for differences, questions, challenging ideas, and relationships. But churches, just like individuals drift. They become cold. They become entitled.
This is About Me… And Us (W)
If you don’t recognize yourself in the story of vineyard workers. If you can’t see how spiritual entitlement a real danger to your spiritual life… just give it time. That slow spiritual drift is part of the journey. That spiritual productivity that gets you far only to hit a wall… that’s part of the spiritual journey.
For me, this has shown up at various times and in various places.
As a solo pastor in the Midwest, I was pastoring a small neighborhood church, and I kept hearing about the big megachurch 30 minutes away in a fast-growing suburb. They didn’t to Easter Egg Hunts, they did Easter Egg drops with helicopters. They didn’t have a worship service; they had four worship services. I had a Master of Divinity. I had mastered divinity, God. Where did this mega church pastor go to school? And, helicopters, really? How gimmicky. What a waste of money! I was a good steward. My church was doing the hard work of loving our neighborhood not dropping plastic all over them. I might have had a point but I was also envious. And I was entitled. I had hit a wall in my spiritual productivity.
Maybe you can relate.
Do you find yourself envious of other's gifts, talents, abilities, possessions, or social status?
Do you find yourself unable to be generous with your own comfort, status, or role in the church because you’re earned it or no one can do it better than you?
Do you find that the harder you work and become spiritual productivity, be it in your personal spiritual life in prayer and Scripture or your relational and philanthropic spiritual life through volunteering at church – the less warm you feel toward God?
Welcome to the story of the Vineyard workers. This is about us. This is us.
A Generous Gospel (Y)
What do we do when we hit that wall of envy, entitlement, and burnt-out spiritual productivity?
One thing we must do is return to the most basic spiritual truths of our generous gospel:
Slide 5: A Generous Gospel
A basic tenants of a generous gospel go like this:
a)God loves me and creation profoundly. One of the great tragedies of those who get stuck in spiritual productivity is they forget to rest in the love of God. Jesus once said, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” When we rest in the love of God, we let go of our need to do for God and learn to simply be with God. It sounds simple, but for spiritually productive, it’s a wall.
b) All Human begins are made in the image of God. When we start to make progress on the spiritual life, one of the first things we notice is how terrible everyone else is getting along. But if everyone is made in God’s image, everyone has this capacity to reflect the love and wisdom of God, however imperfectly. We can get so caught in auditing other’s flaws – our spouses, children, parents, coworkers, siblings, roommates - that we fail to notice their God-given gifts. Moving from critical of to gratitude for feels like moving through a wall.
c)God’s generosity is beyond our wildest imagination. To use an older testament reference, when we’re wondering through a spiritual wilderness feeling grumpy, it’s easy for forget we have been freedom from oppression in Egypt and there’s manna on the ground.
d)There’s nothing I can do to earn God’s grace and generosity. When spiritual progress leads to spiritual success, we go from “I’ve been given” to “I deserve”. It’s a slow drift, but one day we wake up and imagine we’ve earned God’s favor. The prophet Isaiah candidly points out the gap between God’s holiness and our righteousness, saying, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). We are made in God’s image, but we are far from mirroring God’s perfect love. We need God’s generosity to move through the wall of “I deserve”.
e) Christ’s work crowns our own. This is a neglected and forgotten truth in Christian spirituality, but the work of God’s love through Jesus Christ in his ministry and on the cross CROWNS our work. Yes, even our best spiritual deeds are polluted by our motives, sin, and imperfect love, but our works, however filthy are not inconsequential. Christ’s power, love, and work of salvation puts a crown right on top of even our spiritual entitlement. The work we do really does impact the vineyard, not because we’re so good, but because Jesus is.
Friends, we have a generous gospel because God is not simply our manager. God wants a relationship as a friend. You might not have noticed, but the vineyard manager calls the workers “Friends” when he addresses them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong” (Mt. 20:13). This sounds a lot like the father to the entitled older brother who scorned the younger in the story of the prodigal son, “Son, you are always with me, and all I have is yours” (Lk. 15:31). Even to the entitled, God responds with a gospel of a generous relationship. We’re not just God’s workers, we’re God’s friends.
There is no perfect program to move through the wall of spiritual entitlement. In fact, movement may be the wrong word. Often, hitting the wall of spiritual entitlement means letting go. In other words, we go from entitlement to relinquishment.
Slide 6: How the Spiritually Productive…
We let go feeling essential to God (and embrace our vulnerability). God doesn’t need us, God invites us. God doesn’t need our work, and God doesn’t need our church. But God does invite us through Jesus Christ and that’s a world of difference.
We let go of our versions of “success” and relinquishing assumptions. I’ve heard it said that expectations are just planned resentments. One thing that’s hard to get straight about God is that God is totally free of our expectations just like the manger was free from the expectations of the vineyard workers.
We let go of certainty and choose wonder. Moving through a spiritual wall doesn’t seem like moving at all. It’s like moving through a fog. Suddenly our answers don’t meet the moment. There is no formula. We’re walking with God as if through a fog. Letting go of certainty means choosing humility and wonder.
Finally, we surrender the keys. Keys in the church, like the keys of the kingdom, are meant to be shared, passed on and passed around. When we train up new leaders, encourage new and diverse voices to offer their perspective, when we look for people who are gifted rather than do all the work ourselves, that’s a relinquishing of our keys. And that’s a good thing.
In his amazing book about his own fallout and his rediscovery of the wisdom behind the twelve steps of AA, the once successful pastor John Ortberg tells a story: “Someone was quite disappointed in their life was turning out. They lost their job. Their reputation was damaged. The opportunities to make a difference and have a big impact were shriveling. And then a wonderful thought came, there is no barrier to my joyfully serving God today. It doesn’t matter the scale. It doesn’t matter who notices. It doesn’t matter if there’s money or recognition involved. Maybe even the less the better.”
That thought sounds like it’s coming from the other side of a spiritual wall.
There is a reward for letting go of spiritual productivity and entitlement, friends. It is the reward of joy, rest, peace, and friendship with God. It is the reward of a bigger spiritual impact on others. Why a larger spiritual impact? Because the fruit of our work doesn’t come from our being better than everyone else, but simply because we’re grateful to have been invited to work in the vineyard. Amen