Pentecost 17 – 2026
Matthew 20: 1-16
Marian Free
In the name of God who loves without distinction, who welcomes the least as well as the greatest, and who eats with sinners and tax collectors. Amen.
Many years ago, when I was in Rosewood, I took on the role of Chaplain at local High School. Not being sure how to engage with the students, I told them that if they said: “Hello Marian,” they would get a Mintie. There was no other condition. They say “hello” and I give them a Mintie. Some of the teachers didn’t understand this. They were surprised when the children who were on their way to detention received a Mintie because they said: “Hello, Marian”. The teachers thought that those who were already being punished should be punished a little bit more. My attitude was this: they fulfill the condition, they get a Mintie.
I would take a guess that at least one of you reacted to today’s parable with a sense of umbrage. It’s not fair! Why should those who worked for only an hour receive the same as those who worked all day.
It’s not fair! It’s not fair that God should traipse all over the country looking for the sheep that has strayed while leaving the obedient sheep at the mercy of wild animals. It’s not fair that God should welcome the son who has publicly shamed him when he has never thrown a party for the faithful son who has worked shoulder-by-shoulder with him. It’s not fair that the thief who was crucified with Jesus should get a free pass to heaven when he admits that he is guilty. It is not fair that the sheep, the son and the thief are embraced by God’s love when they have done nothing to deserve it and have not even said: “sorry.” It is simply not fair.
All of us it seems are born with an inbuilt sense of justice. From almost as soon as we can speak we notice when others receive more than we do, or when someone’s punishment doesn’t reflect the magnitude of their offense (as judged by us). Our sense of fairness and our belief in a just God, leads us to believe that God thinks as we do, that there is an invisible scale of justice on which we are weighed and according to which God will reward the good and punish the bad. When God doesn’t behave as we expect, when offenders don’t receive their just deserts (as determined by us), we – like the workers in today’s parable, or the older brother in the parable of the prodigal – are indignant. It is not fair.
The problem with this point of view is our confidence in our own deservedness and our consequent failure to understand that God, in God’s generosity has already overlooked all our shortcomings.
Today’s parable might be one of the most significant in the Gospels because it points to a simple truth about God. God is“unfair”, at least in the way that most of us understand fairness.
The scene is a market place. In occupied Palestine much of the farming land had been taken from the local people and given to Roman soldiers. The only way for the now landless men to earn an income was to hope that one of the landowners might be able to give them work for a day. They would gather in the square in the early morning hoping to be among those chosen. If not chosen, they would continue to wait on the off chance that a landowner had underestimated the number of men needed and would return to employ more. It was a precarious existence, but one that indicated not laziness but a determination to work. We interpret “idle” in a pejorative sense, but it simply means that they had nothing to do while they waited.
In the parable, eventually, all the men are hired, but not all work for the same length of time. Some work only an hour while those hired first work all day in the hot sun. Not surprisingly when those who have worked the longest see the late comers paid the daily wage, they begin to imagine that they might be paid more than originally agreed. The owner’s response is most unsatisfactory. It might even be said that it adds insult to injury: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Are you envious because I am generous? This is at the heart of our problem. It is one thing for God to be generous to us, quite another for God to treat someone whose offenses we deem to be worse than our own, in the same way[1].
The problem for God is this – there is only one “reward” and that is eternal life and there is only one criterion for receiving eternal life and that is faith. Let me say that again because it is important – there is only one reward and only one way to achieve it. The sole criterion for eternal life is not perfection, but faith and that works to our advantage because not one of us is perfect. God’s generosity benefits us because we cannot hope to be perfect. There are no shades of perfection, either one is perfect or one is not. Our imperfection renders us the same as every other imperfect person. The good news is that God does not demand perfection but only faith and this too renders us the same as every other person of faith. There is one reward and one criterion for gaining that reward.
If God chooses to be generous to us, how can we expect God to be less than generous with others?
[1] This innate sense of fairness is almost certainly one of the reasons why the church came up with the idea of Purgatory – a place in which those who did not come up to standard could reflect on their sins for a sufficient amount of time before they were deemed suitable for heaven. It saw “justice” dispensed in a human way.
Swallowsrest 