September 27, 2026 Reflection

If this reading seems very odd to you – you have grasped the essential nature of the realm of God. It doesn’t make sense, and it certainly doesn’t seem fair. This passage is a parable, a style of writing like a mystery or a romance or a horror novel, and as I have said to you before, my New Testament professor would tell us that if we thought we understood a parable on the first reading, we had completely missed the point. Parables are supposed to make us respond with a “Wait, what!?” They are a window into the nature of God’s grace, into the truth that we are beloved and accepted by God no matter what, which is so counter-cultural that it just doesn’t seem to make sense. As we compare the parables to the reality we live in, they jolt us into thinking “critically about the world we have constructed, free us from our cultural shackles and self-deceptions, and enable us to discern more clearly how God works in the world.“ (David Lose, Preaching this week)

To recap, a landowner goes to the corner of the village where labourers are waiting to be picked up for a day’s work. He goes first very early, agrees with the labourers for the usual daily wage and sets them to work in his vineyard. A couple of hours later he goes and picks up more, telling them he will pay them ‘whatever is right.’ This happens three more times, the last group he hired couldn’t have worked more than an hour. And then at the end of the day, he pays them – exacly the same amount.

It occurs to me that when the landowner goes to pick up workers later in the day, he asks them why they aren’t working. And the reply that no one asked them. Which got me to wondering about how we include people in our congregation. If there are people who may be new or who keep a very low profile if we were to say to them, why aren’t you more involved, would their response be, no one invited me?

The labourers who had started very early, maybe even while it was still dark out, have thoughts about this. “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.” The landlord replies that he paid those he hired first what they had agreed to, and those he hired later he agreed to pay ‘whatever is right.’ And, ultimately, he says, he is free to pay whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

I mentioned last week that I get really hooked when something doesn’t seem fair to me – and it happens often, and sometimes over what really is the most trivial thing. When I used to commute from the church I worked at in Kerrisdale to our home in North Vancouver, I would of course often get caught in traffic along Georgia Street, approaching the Lions Gate Bridge. I did all the right things, staying out of the bus lane on my right, and getting out of the lane leading to Stanley Park, again on my right, and into the two left lanes leading to the bridge in good time. And then, as we got close to the bridge, the blood sport would begin. People would roar up the extreme right-hand lanes, the bus lane and the lane for the park, and want to cut in to MY lane just before the bridge. And they always seemed to be driving Mercedes or Porches or BMW’s. It. Drove. Me. Crazy. If my sons were with me, they would join in on the battle. ‘Don’t let him in mom. Don’t let him in!!’ they’d shout, like we were at some high-level rugby match.

I was so much like the early morning labourers in the vineyard – it wasn’t just that these drivers wanted to cut in, it was, so goes the story that I told myself, that they thought they were not only equal to me, but better than me. That they thought somehow their time and their job and their place in the world was more important. That they had to get to the rest of their lives sooner than I got to mine. So, I get the early morning labourers, I really get them.

I also have much healthier moments of self-awareness. I notice when I go on vacation, or when Bob and I buy a new home or other lovely things happen, people will say, “That’s great. I’m happy for you. You deserve it.” And I’m very aware I don’t deserve it. It’s sheer dumb luck that I was born in Canada, to hard working parents who offered a stable and loving home and encouraged my education, and I married someone who is amazing and makes more money than ministers. I didn’t do anything to ‘deserve’ the good fortune I have. If deserving is based on hard work and steadfastness, then the single mom in Africa with a heavy basket of sticks on her head and multiple malnourished children following her as she trudges down a dusty road deserves much more than I do.

Something that is important for us to know to us as we ponder this parable is that just before Jesus told it, the disciples were asking essentially, as his followers, what was in it for them. “Then Peter said, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’” I have to say I was kind of stunned that they’d ask that. It’s clear they still hadn’t grasped Jesus’ message about self-giving to say nothing about giving up their lives. Jesus reply initially seems to say that they will be well rewarded for their early commitment to him. But then he finishes with “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Matt 19:30) The complete irrationality of the kindom of God in a nutshell. The late coming Mercedes is going to get to the bridge before you. And then, he launches into the parable we heard today.

“Now, we know that Peter was not the only disciple to get wide-eyed when thinking about their future place in glory. James and John notoriously were also involved in such a conversation with Jesus. So, though this parable is only in the gospel of Matthew, the heart of its message belongs to all of them. And that’s because the need to be first so as to not be last is deeply ingrained in our earning culture and human mentality.

Abundant, ‘unearned’ grace and generosity belong to an altogether different realm. Their math only makes sense in the economy of God, and even then, we need help understanding and accepting it. As he often did, Jesus helps his disciples imagine God’s realm with a story that shows everything being upside-down and tha redefines fairness and equality.

The workers who question out loud the vineyard owner’s generosity don’t think that it’s fair that people who worked less than they did are getting the same pay as they are. The people who were hired by the vineyard owner to work were all in the same boat in the morning; they needed jobs and they needed the money in order to buy food for themselves and their family. Each group, no matter the time they are hired, are promised by the vineyard owner that they will be paid ‘what is right’.
To the dismay of the workers who worked all day, they receive what is right, what they had agreed on, a full day’s wage, but those who worked for only a fraction of the time received the same amount. As they watched the pay go out, they assumed that what was right would be that they would get more. It’s a fair assumption but it goes much deeper than the pay. The issue seems to have impacted their sense of self. In their mind, they are better than the people hired later and throughout the day. They are superior and better workers—that’s why they were hired at the start. The problem they complain is that the way this pay has come out, the vineyard owner has made the less suitable workers “equal to us”.

The vineyard owner calmly looks at them and explains the reality of the Kindom of God: we humans, with all of our measuring and looking for “fairness” can’t make heads or tails of grace’s record books.” (adapted from Chelsey Harmon, Centre for Excellence in Preaching, https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2026-09-14/matthew-201-16-4/)
Everyone is welcome to, indeed receives God’s grace, the abundance of God’s love, no matter when we show up in life, nor the state we’re in when we get there, nor our age, our income, or whether we drive a BMW or some old beater, whether this is our first day at church or we’ve been coming for decades. “Those who “get in line early” so as to get the best seat, the best choice, the best view, the best whatever, are in for a rude surprise: every seat is good, every view is breath-taking, and every bite is delicious:” the Creator spares no expense in setting the table of grace.” (Harmon, adapted)
It occurs to me on this Sunday before the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation that if we were to focus our sense of fairness on who came first and who worked hardest, we would be embarrassed at the current outcry in response to indigenous peoples claiming land back, land that has been theirs all along. If, like the labourers in the vineyard, we thought the ones who should have more are the ones who were in the vineyard the longest, if we thought that is how fairness and rightness is determined, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in our complaint about land claims. In God’s world, everyone receives ‘what seems right’, as the landowner promised. On this Wednesday it will do us well to remember God’s yearning for sacred fairness, and how we work to restore a just balance, to ensure it is God’s economy of fairness and justice that we aim for, and not that of the culture of seizing and holding that we live in.

The table of grace can seem like a scandal to us. Completely unfair and unreasonable, but from the perspective of much of the world’s population, it could feel like a re-balancing of the scales. Speaking for myself, that in God’s grace we don’t get what we think we deserve is a good thing, because there are days when what I deserve would be very little, or actually, some retribution. By the grace of God, we receive ‘whatever is right’ in God’s eyes, enough for the day, enough for life lived fully.

We need to be careful to not confuse the assurance of God’s grace with an expectation that we will never experience loss or suffering. God’s grace is the assurance of God’s goodness regardless of our life circumstances. Of a sustained and always present grace and goodness every moment of our lives, in every circumstance of our lives. If life is good, we will want to remember to thank God for the goodness. In the darkest shadows we can know that by the grace of God we will be seen through the valley and into light, either the light of literal healing or the light of eternal life in God. God’s grace is with us in all life’s moments, and through thick and thin. No matter what time of day we came or come to the vineyard.

Thanks be to God, Amen

Matthew 20:1-16