May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and going to the first’” (Matthew 20:8).
Beginning with the last.
The interesting thing about the setup is that by paying the last first, the vineyard owner created anticipation among the workers who labored from the beginning of the day. They are going to see how much the latecomers have gotten, and they’re going to assume that they will receive even more.
When those hired around five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. When the first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received the usual daily wage — which on its own was considered a fair amount.
When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (Matthew 20:12).
I think many of us might understand how the laborers felt. We might have even felt something similar in their situation, as the disciples may have.
Consider, however, the predicament of the day laborer and the way the parable is set up. They had no control over who hired them. The parable highlights this: when asked why they were standing idle all day, they said no one had hired them.
Whether you are hired or not as a day laborer, are your bills any less? Are your responsibilities fewer? Because you didn’t have the opportunity to work, does that mean you didn’t have the same need or necessity as those who happened to have been hired at the beginning of the day?
When I was in college, I distinctly remember a day when work took me down some side roads between East Asheville, North Carolina, and Swannanoa, and I saw tar paper shacks with no siding and some plastic where the windows would have been. I wondered how many people would drive down the main road and never know those houses were there.
I’m a visitor here at Holy Trinity, but I understand that through Church in the Yard, some of you may have come to know people who have been passed by. You may even have experienced this yourself at some time in your life.
“But he replied to one of them, ‘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 the 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?’” (Matthew 20:13–15).
Today our reading comes after the story in Matthew’s gospel, which you have heard, I’m sure, on other occasions, of the rich young ruler and the disciples’ response to Jesus’s teaching.
A man came to Jesus and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). He claimed to have kept all the commandments from his youth, and Jesus takes him at his word and responds, “Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and then come and follow me” (Matthew 19:21).
And this is an outworking of Jesus’s earlier teaching in Matthew’s gospel, when he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
Some people have referred to this as a counsel of perfection, and yet this is not about perfection in the sense of doing everything right. Rather, it is about completeness or totality.1 There can be nothing that we have and nothing that we are that is beyond the claims of God or the command of God, and therefore the claims of our neighbor, or even our enemies, as fellow beloved people created in the image and likeness of God.
The young man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Or we might say, he was possessed of many things, to get a better insight into what was owning whom.
Biblically, the danger of wealth is the allure and the illusion of security: that something beyond God could provide ultimate security and safety, that we could ultimately depend on something other than God.
So Jesus outlines the reversal, the unexpected, and says that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the disciples are startled by this, but their concerns are distinct from ours today.
When Peter says, “Then who can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25), he is speaking from a common assumption in the ancient world that wealth was a sign of divine favor, and that those with wealth and resources were precisely the ones most capable of visible piety.
In the ancient world, wealth was what enabled people to be a patron, to support the temples, and to fulfill religious obligations not only for themselves and their families but for the whole community. Even a word that you will be familiar with, that we use regularly — liturgy — describes public work at private expense. Whose expense? The wealthy, the people who could be patrons of public religious events.
So when Peter asks, then who can be saved, he isn’t asking our question, whether our possessions will keep us out of the kingdom. He’s asking: if not them, then who?
I’m not sure, though, that we’re actually all that different, even though we might respond differently to that story. There are people who go so far in talking about the blessings of God when it comes to wealth that they inadvertently stumble into some of the very errors that Jesus tried to correct during his earthly ministry. They see wealth or good health as evidence of God’s favor, and even worse, the reverse: poverty and sickness as evidence of sin or lack of faithfulness.
Jesus’s response doesn’t unpack their misunderstanding or the cultural miscue right away. Instead, he says, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
And Peter points out, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matthew 19:27). He’s speaking out of the same anxiety that we hear this morning in the workers in the vineyard. If we have given more, sacrificed more, or endured more, surely we must be owed more.
Jesus responds that everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for his name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Matthew 19:30).
In our reading today, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard is articulating what it means for the last to be first and the first to be last, and upon what basis it happens.
The grumblers of the parable are right that it’s not fair or proportional. But is it just?
“Friend,” the owner says, “I am doing you no wrong.”
Robert Farrar Capon notes that the word “friend” used here is decidedly unfriendly, and it’s one that’s used in several places in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s used for Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, and it’s used for the man without the wedding garment. It’s a polite greeting that, by its very formality, indicates distance. The owner of the vineyard is highlighting the presumption on the questioner’s part.
And then there’s the word “envious.” In this phrase, it literally means: is your eye evil because I am generous?
Is your eye evil because I am generous? We might think of the evil eye wishing the worst on someone. In other words, does generosity from others inspire anger or other negative emotions in us?
Remember, the critics among the workers say of the vineyard owner, “You have made us all equal,” despite the different hours labored. In the end, it’s not about what the laborers who only worked an hour or a few hours received, but rather it’s about the fact that it is the equivalent of what those who worked all day received. It’s not the amount; it’s the comparison. You have made us all equal.
Saint Augustine, commenting on this passage, agrees: “All were made equal, and the last became first, and the first last, by equality of treatment, not by inverting their order. For what is the meaning of ‘the last were first, and the first last’? That both the first and the last received the same.”2
Augustine sees in the daily wage a symbol of the gift of eternal life, shared equally with all.
There is a difference between justice and fairness. One definition that is used puts it this way: justice describes the standard; fairness describes our reaction to the standard.3 Which means fairness is naturally subjective. What we see in this parable is justice and generosity.
There’s a term for this that has taken quite a bit of heat lately: equity. Some have explained the difference between equality and equity with the image of everybody standing at a fence in the ballpark to see the game, except that the people are of different heights, and the shorter ones can’t see over. Equality is being able to stand at the fence. Equity is a box to stand on, so that the ones who could not otherwise see can also see the game.
The parable of the laborers in the vineyard demonstrates what it means for God to be equitable. The people who worked for an hour could not have expected to receive a full day’s wage. They received it not because of what they did, but because of the generosity of the owner of the vineyard — that’s the character of God’s generosity toward all of humanity, all of us bearing the divine likeness.
You’ll recall Jesus’s response to a question that someone asked about whether someone should pay their taxes to Caesar. Jesus took a coin and asked, “Whose picture is on the coin?” Of course, the answer was Caesar’s, and he responds, “Then give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and give unto God that which is God’s” (Matthew 22:20–21). There’s a dual nature in this response, because it means to go ahead and give money to Caesar, but biblically speaking, the human being is known to bear the image of God. So Jesus is in effect saying: give the money back to Caesar, but give yourself to God, because you bear God’s image.
God wants all of our devotion, because God has offered the full measure of love for every one of us.
Biblically, money is a barometer of commitment. We see it in the story of the rich young ruler. We see it in Jesus’s response to the question about taxation. The use of money is important because of what it reveals about the disposition of the heart. Now, our parable today uses a tale about money to reveal God’s heart toward us.
Hearing the phrase “the first will be last and the last will be first” (Matthew 20:16) naturally prepares us for an inversion to happen.
But it only feels like an inversion. It only feels like a complete reversal.
It feels like an inversion because the people who are first, who don’t see others getting what they think those people deserve, feel as though they’ve somehow been slighted, while the people who were last, who maybe were fearful about what was ahead for them, feel more joyful because they’ve gotten more than they could have imagined.
But what’s actually happened is that all have been made equal. And that’s why this is a parable that has to do with salvation and eternal life, but also with the kingdom of heaven as it breaks in here and now, because it is accessible to everyone, all the same, without reference to anything except God’s love.
Remember that question the landowner asks: is your eye evil because I am generous? We should reflect on that.
Have we ever allowed envy or hatred to give us evil eyes towards someone? Have they left us unable to see someone else’s blessing without contrasting it with our own? Envy turns generosity into a competition, and sometimes into wishing the other person ill. It makes us ask whether someone else has received more than we judge they need, instead of giving thanks for what we have been given.
But this parable only uses money to talk about generosity and grace. The real offense is not the money that the latecomers were given, but, as I said, the way they were treated like those who came first.
This is a parable of the kingdom, and therefore about God’s people now and in the future. We are called to celebrate the way God invites others into the kingdom, to be ambassadors of the kingdom and invite others in as well, not to be gatekeepers — proponents of God’s grace, rather than skeptics or critics.
God does not diminish the gift given to those who come first by giving the same gift to those who come last.
Perhaps the invitation of this parable isn’t only to be grateful that God gives us more than we deserve, but to ask God to deepen our faith, so that when we see others’ blessings, when we see others invited into the community, our eyes can be filled with goodwill, and our hearts with satisfaction, rejoicing in God’s generosity and grace.
So we should thank God that God’s not fair. God treats us all as beloved children, and we’re all invited in, whether we receive the invitation at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day, or at the eleventh hour.
Amen.
Oxford Bible Commentary, 869
St. Augustine, Sermon XXXVIII, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6, 374
Barry Goldman and Russell Cropanzano. “‘Justice’ and ‘Fairness’ Are Not the Same Thing.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 36, no. 2 (2015): 313–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26610985.
