Philippians 1.21-30, Matthew 20.1-16
You recognize what’s wrong in Jesus’ parable? It’s not fair. When Jesus says, “the last will be first, and the first will be last,” he reverses the way we think the world should work, challenges any notion of what’s just, right, and fair. If you have stood in line for an hour just to have someone cut in front of you at the last minute, you know how unfair this is; it may be good fortune for the people who showed up late, but it’s troubling for you who got there first.
As for the matter of pay? No one runs a business like this. If a day labor agency in town started paying someone who worked for only an hour at the end of the day the same wage as someone who got up before dawn and put in a full day’s work, employers would have a hard time getting anyone to show up when the workday started.
The all-day workers have a point. They see the paychecks of the people who worked an hour and file a complaint with the manager. “You have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
Now today’s parable isn’t about labor practices, though Dale Bruner, in his commentary on Matthew, makes a side point by saying that if the vineyard owner in Jesus’ parable pledged to pay his workers “whatever is right,” Christian employers should do the same. And the biblical word translated in our text as ‘right’ is about more than getting payroll numbers correct but about treating workers justly. Even so, this is not a lesson about the market economy. This is a parable about a different economy, the economy of God and of God’s way in the world. “The kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard owner who went out early in the morning.”
What Jesus does in today’s parable, as with all his parables, is meant to change our way of seeing the world and give us eyes to see in God’s way. Not that it makes it easy. “The last will be first, and the first will be last,” is invariably good news for the last. But for the rest of us? It’s unsettling. Mark Twain, known for his humor more than his theology, is on point theologically when he says, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.” We do understand what is unfolding in Jesus’ parable. And it is unsettling.
On Friday in the office, Jodie said that preparing a Sunday School lesson on today’s gospel reading is not an easy because children, from an early age, have an innate sense of fairness. Make a bowl of popcorn to share among the kids at home? Each bowl needs to be measured equally and precisely to the kernel. This same sense of fairness continues into adulthood. Four of us were having lunch in the office on Friday and there was a single pumpkin bar left in the office kitchen. You can be sure that bar was carefully cut into quarters.
We are raised with a sense of fairness: assessing what we think we deserve; aware of people’s successes compared to our failures; thinking if we do certain things in certain ways then certain things should certainly happen. And so we are likely to answer the vineyard owner’s question, “Are you envious because I am generous,” with a definite ‘Yes.’ Priest and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen says, “Each time I read this parable in which the landowner gives as much to the workers who worked only one hour as to those who “have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat,” a feeling of irritation wells up inside of me.”
Yet Jesus, instead of having us focus on what’s fair, tells a parable so that we focus on grace. He changes our way of seeing the world and gives us eyes to see in God’s way, reshapes our thoughts around God’s thoughts. Isn’t that what the prophet Isaiah, at one point in his writing, wanted us all to see? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” That line is a commentary on the parable of the vineyard owner if ever there was one. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” The message of the gospels is indeed good news, but it is often not easy news, and we would be wise to avoid mistaking it with fairness. Grace may challenge what we think is fair, but grace is always generous. And grace is what we need.
The all-day workers look at what they did, and what they received, from the perspective of business deals and contracts: certain things done in certain ways mean certain things will happen. And from the perspective of fairness, they are right; it isn’t fair. Yet life in God is not a certain reward for our effort or the time we’ve put in; it’s not a wage earned but a gift given. Life in God is not a contract, but a covenant established on God’s enduring faithfulness and loyal love. The last become first by sheer and utter grace.
The vineyard owner’s question, ‘Is it really possible that you are mad because I am good?’ is meant to turn our attention away from fairness to goodness, the goodness of God. Grace is meant to eliminate comparison because life in God is utter gift for every one of us. And at the end of the day (in every sense of that phrase)—at the end of the day in the parable, at the end of the day when all things are considered, and at the end of the day as the end of our lives—what ultimately matters is that the goodness and grace of God will be more generous that any of us could even dare hope.
Jesus, in a parable, gives us a new way to look at the world and our lives, to see that being loved and called by God is a gift of generous grace. And when we trust that our life is in God—that “all our times are in [God’s] hand,” as Psalm 31 says—we see that many days are better than mere fairness would dictate, even better than we deserve. And because of God’s grace, when people around us thrive we can share their joy with them rather than compare ourselves to them.
This is what Paul writes about in Philippians, today’s second reading, a theme he continues all through that letter: to welcome one another with the God-given gifts we have received with gratitude and not calculation. Because of God’s generous and overflowing love and grace given to us each day, we can see life as a gift, see how the good in our life comes from God. see how the good in the lives of other people is also from God, see how even the shortcomings, failures, and faults in our lives and the lives of others become an opening to the gift of God’s grace through forgiveness. As for our weakness? At one point in Philippians, Paul says he even has reason to rejoice in his need because there Christ strengthens him.
Now this attitude and approach to seeing the world with the eyes of grace is a challenge for me as much as anyone. Because on a bad day I can tell you how unfairly I have been treated, how other people have gotten more than they deserve, how none of it is fair. That is during the week. But on Sundays I believe that God gives generous and extravagant grace again and again in Word, in Sacrament, and in you with this community of believers in order to change my way of seeing and give me eyes to see in God’s way through Jesus. And so the answer to the vineyard owner’s question is that it really shouldn’t be possible for us to be mad because God is good.
When we trust the grace of God—at the end of the day in Jesus’ parable, at the end of the day when all things are considered, at the end of the day in our lives—when we trust the grace of God give in Jesus, it doesn’t matter when the invitation to life in God arrives, whether at seven in the morning, at noon, or five minutes before the end of your day. A life of service, prayer, and works of mercy, love, and kindness are all a grateful response to God’s covenant and call.
When Jesus puts the last first and the first last, he shows that the kingdom of heaven at hand in him is built on grace given freely, equally, and generously. In the economy of God, in the economy of grace, we can be so supremely satisfied with the life we have in Christ that comparing ourselves to others wouldn’t even occur to us. Because God doesn’t measure us by what we have done, but by who we are, and far more important than that, on who God is: not merely fair but extravagant in love.
And since that’s where Jesus’ ends—on the generous grace of God—so will we.
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