A Reflection on Matthew 20:1–16 – Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Some years ago, after this Gospel had been proclaimed at Mass, a man approached me and said rather light-heartedly, “I’m a union representative. You wouldn’t get away with that today.” I replied that you would not have got away with it in Jesus’ time either. That, of course, is precisely the point of the parable.
There is something deliberately disturbing about the landowner’s behaviour. Those who have worked through the heat of the entire day receive exactly the same wage as those who arrived at five o’clock and worked for perhaps only an hour. We instinctively recognise the complaint of the first workers. Their understanding of fairness is much like ours: greater effort should receive greater reward. Yet Jesus is not offering us a lesson in industrial relations. He begins by telling us that “the Kingdom of Heaven is like” this landowner, and therefore the focus of the parable must ultimately be upon what the landowner reveals to us about God.
What he reveals is both comforting and challenging. Salvation is not something we earn from God. It is something God gives.
What Then Will We Have?
The context in Matthew’s Gospel helps us understand why Jesus tells this particular parable. Immediately beforehand we have encountered the rich young man, a person who has faithfully observed the commandments but cannot take the further step Jesus asks of him. Jesus then speaks of the difficulty of a rich person entering the Kingdom, using the memorable image of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Peter responds with a very human question: “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
There is nothing particularly surprising about Peter’s question. The disciples really have left things behind to follow Jesus. They have made sacrifices, and Peter wants to know what those sacrifices mean. But there is a danger hidden within the question. Our relationship with God can very easily become transactional: I have done this for God, therefore God owes something to me.
Matthew places the parable of the workers in the vineyard directly into that context. Immediately before it, Jesus says that “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first”. The parable concludes with the same reversal: “the last will be first, and the first will be last”. These two sayings act almost as bookends around the story and tell us how Matthew wants us to hear it.
The Kingdom overturns our normal calculations of entitlement.
We Have No Claim on God
I find this same temptation appearing elsewhere in the Gospels. The elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son believes that his years of obedience give him a particular claim upon his father. He cannot rejoice when his brother is welcomed home because he has begun measuring the father’s love according to what each son deserves.
Something similar happens with the Pharisee praying in the Temple. He can list the things he has done correctly and contrast himself favourably with the tax collector. His religious achievements have become the basis upon which he believes himself justified. The rich fool, in another context, makes the mistake of imagining that the abundance he has accumulated gives him security over his own future.
The workers who began early in the morning fall into a related way of thinking. They have worked hard and fulfilled their agreement, but gradually their labour becomes, in their minds, a claim upon the landowner. They are satisfied with the agreed wage until they discover what somebody else has received.
That is where the parable becomes quite searching. The landowner has not treated them unjustly. He has given them precisely what he promised. Their dissatisfaction begins because his generosity extends beyond what they think the others deserve.
Jesus puts the question directly: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
I think there is a profound contrast between humanity and divinity contained within that question. God’s generosity is so much greater than our instinctive calculations that it can actually disturb us. We are quite comfortable speaking about the generosity of God when we are receiving it ourselves. It becomes more difficult when God appears to be extraordinarily generous towards somebody whom we think has contributed less, arrived later, or deserves less.
The First and the Last
For Matthew’s first hearers, the distinction between the first and the last would have had particular significance. Those who had long belonged to the covenant tradition could understandably think of themselves as the first, while Gentiles, tax collectors and others now responding to Jesus appeared to arrive much later. Yet the parable refuses to allow anyone to turn the history of their faithfulness into ownership of God’s salvation.
There is something here for those of us who have spent much of our lives within the Church as well. It is possible to practise our faith faithfully, to pray, participate in the Eucharist, serve our communities and try sincerely to live according to the Gospel, while almost imperceptibly developing a sense that all of this gives us some special claim upon God.
But salvation remains gift.
That does not mean our response is irrelevant. Elsewhere Matthew makes very clear that discipleship requires a genuine response and that our choices matter. As we will see in another of Matthew’s parables, it is possible to accept the invitation to the wedding feast and yet fail to respond appropriately to what has been offered. Grace is freely given, but grace also asks to be received and lived.
The distinction is important. We do not perform good works in order to persuade God to save us. We respond because God has already reached towards us. Christian life begins in grace and continues in grace.
From Envy to Gratitude
When I returned to this Gospel a second time, I found myself thinking particularly about gratitude. St Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing”, and an enormous amount has been written about what it means to pray always. Yet he also tells us to give thanks in all circumstances, and I sometimes wonder whether we give that instruction the same attention.
Gratitude may be one of the best antidotes to the resentment of the workers in the vineyard. Their difficulty begins when they stop attending to what they themselves have received and begin comparing it with what others have been given. Once comparison takes over, even something that had previously been accepted as good can begin to feel inadequate.
I recognise that tendency in myself. It is very easy to notice the gifts, opportunities or blessings another person has received and quietly ask why something similar has not been given to me. The question of the landowner then becomes my question: am I allowing another person’s good fortune to diminish my gratitude for the generosity God has already shown me?
Perhaps the movement from envy to gratitude also enables us to become more generous ourselves. If God’s generosity is not restricted by our calculations of worthiness, then those of us who seek to live as disciples must ask whether our own lives reflect something of that same openness.
Who do I include? Who do I unconsciously put aside? Are there people towards whom I have become less generous because I have decided they do not deserve my generosity?
Receiving the Gift
Lectio Divina invites us beyond understanding what Matthew meant when he wrote this Gospel. We certainly need to understand the text and its context, but Lectio ultimately asks another question: What is Jesus saying to me through this Word today?
For me, this Gospel brings me back to gratitude. I have received far more from God than I could ever claim to have earned. My faith, the people who have accompanied me, the opportunities I have been given to serve, the forgiveness I have needed and received, and ultimately the promise of life with God are not wages handed over because I have completed the required number of hours. They are gifts.
Recognising that changes the way I look at the other workers in the vineyard. I no longer need to calculate whether somebody else has worked as long as I have, contributed as much as I have, or deserves what God gives them. Instead, I can learn to rejoice that the landowner is still going out, still inviting people into the vineyard, and still giving with a generosity greater than anything we would have devised for ourselves.
The Gospel therefore leaves me with two closely related questions. Am I genuinely grateful for what God has given me, and can I rejoice when God is generous to someone else?
Perhaps learning to answer both with gratitude is one of the ways in which the first and the last begin to disappear, and we discover that all of us stand before God in exactly the same place: not as people demanding what we have earned, but as sons and daughters learning how to receive a gift.
by David Walker