Matthew 20:1-15
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
March 16, 2025
The behavior of the landowner in this parable offends many people’s sense of fairness. When he paid those who’d worked all day under a blazing sun the same as those who’d worked but one hour in the relative cool of dusk, it strikes many as an injustice.
Yet, though it is right that those who give greater exertion and expenditure of time get greater pay, is it always wrong if those who give less get equal pay?
Now, if a person thinks it is, then that person will always be jealous when others have good fortune without putting out for it– as many did at Morehouse College’s 2019 commencement.
Billionaire Robert F. Smith was addressing the Morehouse seniors when he unexpectedly announced he’d pay off the entire student debt of any graduate who had a student debt.
Lots of folks were ecstatic over Smith’s generous gesture, but some were infuriated. Finance columnist for The Washington Post, Michelle Singletary, reported that some parents who had sacrificed and saved for their children to attend college and to graduate debt-free expressed resentment over Smith gratuitous gift. Their complaint was basically this: “What about us? What do we get for doing the right thing, and scrimping and saving to provide for our kids’ education?” Singleton answered their question by affirming their doing it the right and hard way. She wrote, “Your saving and sacrificing doesn’t make you a…loser. It makes you responsible and fortunate. There’s reward in living within your means, if only to set a good example for your children.” In other words, the biggest payoff for putting oneself all out in a righteous pursuit is something other than money!
Deciding whether the landowner in this parable acted fairly is important. For ever since Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus, told a parable with God represented as a vineyard owner, people took any parable about such an owner as a parable about God. So a judgment of the owner will be a judgment of the God who owns the whole earth.
Let’s review this parable: Early one day, a landowner hired laborers to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them “the usual daily wage”, or in the original Greek document a drachma, the unit of money that back then constituted fair pay for a day of manual labor. The Owner saw his pay as clearly “right”.
But then the owner did something peculiar. Over and over again throughout the day, he went out and searched for more hands to hire. Why would he do that?
Had he originally underestimated the number of workers needed for the harvest, but then kept making the same dumb mistake each time he added to his workforce? If so, he was incompetent and stupid in managing his vineyard! But, given how everyone saw a parable’s vineyard owner as representative of God, that would be a blasphemous attribution of foolishness to the all-knowing and wise God, an idea Jesus would never insinuate.
So why might God, the wise vineyard owner, keep enlisting more workers than necessary?
From the start, God gave the human race work to do, not as a curse, but as a blessing. In the paradise of Eden, before the Fall, God assigned Adam the job of tilling and keeping its Garden, that by the labor of his own hand he might fulfill his God-likeness and realize his high destiny as one who like God makes things better.
Might it not then be that the landowner in the parable kept reaching out to engage more laborers, not out of a self-centered concern for a possible loss of crop, but out of a compassionate concern for those who’re missing out on the gift of meaningful labor. His eye then would not be on his bottom line but on their well-being – and his employing them a gift, not just for making ends meet, but for making them fully human. He hired them as an act of loving kindness.
By the way, the parable indicates that the last hired hadn’t been idle because they’d been lazy or goofing off. They wanted to work! For, in hopes of getting hired, they’d spent the entire day in the marketplace, the first century version of the parking lot at Home Depot. So, when the owner asked why they weren’t working, they lamented, “No one has hired us.” But why hadn’t anyone? Maybe they were skipped over because they were small and appeared weak? Who knows? But the owner, out of His compassion, reached out to those would-be workers whom others had passed over and put them to work, that they too might know the joy of laboring to make a real difference for good.
If all this is true, then those who felt jealous over these late-arrivers should’ve felt pity for them instead because they’d lost out on the soul-satisfaction that an honest day’s work brings.
At any rate, whatever the grumblers should’ve felt, what they did feel was disappointment and resentment. They “grumbled against the landowner” for they hated how he made the late-arrivers “equal to us” in pay. But were they right to feel like that? The text suggests not.
First, the landowner stuck to the deal they’d all agreed to. He paid them the fair, settled-upon amount. That’s why he said, “I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?” Second, his extraordinary generosity to others didn’t come at their expense. He wasn’t about to run out of money, and thus his giving others more than they deserved didn’t deprive anyone of what they deserved. Third, the grumblers had no right to the owner’s money beyond what he’d promised them. That’s why he protested, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” Fourth, their complaint derived from their failure to count non-monetary benefits in their compensation calculation. Their long, hard hours of meaningful work brought its own reward, for it brought them the fulfillment and pride that comes to those who go all out to make a big contribution in a worthy cause.
Today’s parable celebrates God’s grace. Grace is never opposed to fairness, but it is way better than fairness. The good news here is that God is extravagantly good to everyone, regardless of how long and hard they serve Him or how much they contribute to the accomplishment of His purposes. We’d all do well just to accept His grace – and to give thanks for it by sharing it.
A man named Robert DeMoor describes a family tradition that reveals the kingdom of heaven: When the apples from the family orchard had ripened, Mom would sit Dad and the six kids down with pans and pairing knives until the mountain of fruit was reduced to neat rows of filled canning jars. Mom never bothered to keep track of how much anyone did, though the younger ones proved more a nuisance than a help and often sparked apple core throwing fights or squabbles about who was in whose way. But when the job was done, the reward for everyone was the same: the largest chocolate-dipped ice cream cone money could buy. Lack of productivity excluded no one, not even on the day the youngest had eaten all the apples he’d peeled – both of them.
A stickler might insist that family members who did the bulk of the work should’ve gotten a double ice cream cone. But no family member saw the point in doing that. They all felt they were getting better than fair, and they all wanted everyone to enjoy the grace of their great love. Church should be like that!
Write a comment: