The Love of God – Matthew 20:1-16

A text – Matthew 20:1-16

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ² After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. ³ When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, ⁴ and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. ⁵ When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. ⁶ And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ ⁷ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ ⁸ 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 then going to the first.’ ⁹ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. ¹⁰ Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹² 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.’ ¹³ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵ Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

A reflection:

This parable appears only in Matthew’s gospel, right between the real life events of Peter’s saying that he left everything to follow Jesus and James’ and John’s mother requesting seats for her sons on Jesus’s right and left hands in his kingdom.

This parable looks like it’s about an argument over payment among workers who did more or less work in the hot fields. It looks like it’s about the unusual circumstance of a landowner who does his own hiring in the city marketplace instead of leaving hiring and paying to his farm manager.

But I think this parable shows human beings’ inborn capacity to judge and envy one another, and it shows the anger such envy stirs up. Where does that judgment and envy come from? The landowner in the parable makes a guess about that. When he asks “Are you envious because I am generous?” (verse 15), he is directly quoting and old Greek proverb: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” An “evil eye” pays attention to whatever causes judgment and envy and results in anger and deep discontent. In Greek culture people ward off the “evil eye” by wearing jewelry with an eye on it. I learned that this warding off of the evil eye wasn’t magic against spells and curses but instead protection against one’s own eye turning evil and perceiving life as unfair and worthy of contempt.

I know quite a few people who live in misery from this evil eye condition. They are powerless to see and laud the goodness in life and point out the flaws and the incompetence and the bad outcomes they have experienced. They live always at the ready to expect and spot and hate bad or even just unlucky stuff. This leaves a lot of room for them to covet the good stuff that others experience. They have the Greeks’ “evil eye.” They can’t see that they themselves have benefitted from God’s great generosity. Their expectations of permanently sitting at God’s right or left hand are not fitting for a God whose rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. God loves all God’s children, whether they are competent or incompetent, kind or unkind. It’s a scandal. A scandal. But God is love, and love is a scandal, too; it is what protects us all in the face of heartache and even death. God so loved the world… Let it be. We cannot change God’s love to fit our own eyes. Jesus was just trying here to get us used to the immense unfairness, inequality, and ocean-depth of the love of God.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for Jesus’ parables that teach us about you and your kingdom. Help us to always let God be the judge and to rejoice in your goodness and generosity. Amen.