Gospel Reflection on Matthew 20:1-16a
September 20, 2026
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place; and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the householder, 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.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”
-----
None of us worker bees appreciate the story of how those who were invited into the vineyard at the end of the day got the same wage as the first.
Probably because we grew up with a sense of entitlement. Most of us in the Western world have this sense of entitlement, even if we were born into a worldview of scarcity. We tend to get our worldviews very young, and they underlie almost everything we do and think today.
A worldview of scarcity tells us to protect what we have because there's never enough to go around. Most people are afraid they don't have enough. If we're dependent on a limited source of money or intellect, it's easy to look at life in terms of scarcity, convincing ourselves that there isn't enough. There isn't enough goodness. There isn't even enough of God.
It's a competitive win-lose worldview. It moves us toward anxiety, towards consumerism and possessiveness, because we don't want to lose what little we have, even if what we have is really more than enough.
On the other hand, if we grew up comfortable, we think we deserve. We think we have a special right. We would be offended if we didn't get our bonus or our raise. We think to ourselves, 'you gave this much, you deserve this much.' Every such expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.
The gospel tells us 'stop expecting': entitlement is lethal for the soul. There's only one way to get out of this meritocracy and entitlement. Once in our lives we have to experience undeserved, unexpected love where we didn't merit it, where we weren't worthy of it. In fact, we might well have been unworthy of it and we got it anyway.
Only the experience of love breaks down our instinct to count. Stephen Covey, who wrote the book, the popular book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, observed that one of the most universal patterns of highly effective people is they have a worldview of abundance. It depends upon recognizing that we are in touch with an infinite source. If we've never made contact with that infinite source, we're going to grow up stingy, even selfish. We will guard and hoard the portion we have. We're always afraid that someone else is taking what we have earned, as if we had earned it entirely by ourselves.
The experience of being loved makes us aware of the sea of relationships in which we exist. Everything is a gift. The reason any of us woke up this morning had very little to do with us and everything to do with God. All 24 hours is a gift.
The vineyard is a picture of this sea of relationships. Whatever reason we may project upon the owner for bringing people in, what he actually says, he's bringing them in because he can't stand to see them isolated and just sitting around. The real fruit of the day is not grapes getting harvested: it's human beings working together, doing something to dignify. You can imagine the songs, the work, all the things that happen when you're participating in an activity like this. The real fruit being generated was the work together. In these circumstances, it's fermented and transformed into some fragrance of human interactivity and abundance that doesn't otherwise exist. We should be delighted when everyone gets the invitation to go into the vineyard, for the greatest joy is to participate in building up the reality of infinite love that we call the Kingdom of God.
-----------
Comments