We have jumped ahead a chapter in Matthew; in chapter 19, Jesus had a conversation with a young man who wanted to know what he had to do to have eternal life, and when Jesus told the young man to give up everything he had and follow him, the young man went away grieving. And then Peter said, "… we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?" (Matt. 19:27) This parable is a response to Peter’s question.
Author Brené Brown tells the story of teaching this parable to children in vacation Bible school. She had one group of children start jumping jacks and promised if they did jumping jacks the whole time, they would be paid $500 in Monopoly money. So they began, and then a few minutes later Brown invited another group of children to begin, and then in the last minute she invited a third group. After she told them all to stop, she paid the children what she had promised. And when the children who had jumped the longest saw that everyone was paid the same amount, the kids immediately protested saying how unfair it was.[i]
I think that’s probably how most of us react to this parable.
We want our effort to matter. We want to be set apart and rewarded for our faithfulness. It’s as if everyone is competing for a share and we want to be sure to get ours. And, if we’re honest, we want people who don’t work as hard as us to get less.
But, again, Jesus teaches us differently.
In the parable, the landowner promises the laborers they will be paid “what is right.”
And we learn that
“what is right” is not a calculation or a formula;
“what is right” is not “what we think we deserve”;
and “what is right” is not what we think others deserve either.
“What is right” is not determined by us.
In God’s economy, God decides what is right.
The grace that is given to us through faith in Jesus Christ is free and unmerited, unearned.
God graces us because God loves us. And God loves us because God created us and formed us. There isn’t any other reason.
The parable lets us choose how to respond to God’s grace.
In the parable we hear from the ones who started early in the morning and felt like they were treated unfairly. They grumble that the landowner has made all the workers equal, without any regard for how much harder the earliest ones had worked.
The landowner challenges the grumbling workers, asking, in this translation, “Are you envious because I am generous?” (v. 15) The question is even more pointed than that though; the translation of the Greek is,
“Is your eye evil because I am good?”
Earlier in Matthew Chapter 6, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says,
22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matt. 6:22-23)
Remember how Luther defines sin as being turned in on oneself? Here we have the laborers turning their eyes not toward God but toward themselves and what they might gain. Their evil eyes cannot see God’s goodness.
We don’t hear from the laborers who showed up late but we can use our imaginations to consider how they may have responded.
When Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon tells this parable he sets it in modern times, and he casts the late workers as unkempt, wearing a lot of leather and playing loud music on the street. He suggests that when the last ones hired see what they’ve been paid, they just keep walking, quickly, sure there’s been a mistake, and just as sure they aren’t going to be the ones to correct it.[ii]
But in my imagination I don’t think the last ones hired were lazy.
Maybe they had spent the day navigating remote learning for their children and only went to the marketplace when the school day was finished. Maybe they had been caring for an elderly family member who couldn’t be left alone. Maybe they had anxiety or another disability and could not come to the marketplace when it was crowded, so they waited until later in the day.
Imagine the latecomers’ surprise and joy when they discover that they get the same grace, the same unconditional and boundless love from God as everyone who got there before them!
In this parable Jesus teaches me that God’s grace for me is not diminished because God loves you or anyone else, too.
It may take a while, but eventually even Peter understands.
In the Acts of the Apostles Peter witnesses the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles and when he reports the events to the church in Jerusalem, he tells them,
If then God gave the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God? (Acts 11:19)
Despite all the ways we try to make the kingdom of heaven look like our world and we want God to do what we want God to do, Jesus shows us the kingdom of heaven is where God’s grace springs from God’s goodness and nothing else.
Thanks be to God.
[i] Brené Brown. “Grace is not attractive.” https://www.theworkofthepeople.com/grace-is-not-attractive, accessed September 19, 2020
[ii] Robert Farrar Capon. Kingdom, Grace and Judgment. 391-397.
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