“Envy & Generosity” Orange Congregational Church UCC, September 20, 2026, (Matthew 20:1-16) Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
I have taught ten Confirmation classes thus far in my ministry and have used various curriculums with various ages over the years. Though there are some activities from the United Church of Christ Confirmation curriculum, Affirming Faith, that have been especially impactful in bringing lessons home for youth and adult mentors alike. One of those memorable “aha moments” has happened in most Confirmation classes involving modernizing today’s Parable of the Vineyard Workers from the Gospel according to Matthew. We end up acting it out together. This activity occurs during our lesson on forgiveness and grace. Because God’s grace abounds and we have so much for which to be grateful. God’s grace is sufficient and forgiveness is always available. God’s grace cannot prevent suffering, but God accompanies those who suffer.
The adaptation goes something like this . . . God’s special world is like this—the owner of a video store (hang on a second, what’s a video store?) You know, like Blockbuster? Have you heard of Blockbuster? Oh, Good Lord—it’s a shoe store. Our story is taking place at a shoe store, okay? Which one? Doesn’t matter.
As I was saying, God’s special world is like this—the owner of a shoe store has a number of full-time workers that she pays pretty well. Though one year because the Christmas rush was making the store especially busy, she decided to hire a few extra workers in early December to help cover the season. Have you ever gone shopping around Christmas? It can be a nightmare! The owner promised to pay the workers what was right. Then a week later and again two weeks later she did the same thing—hiring extra workers to help with the Christmas rush. The owner promised to pay all her workers what was right. Finally, on the morning of Christmas Eve (anticipating a crazy day ahead for all those last-minute shoppers among us) she did the same thing. The store owner brought in a few workers to just make sure that everything went smoothly.
Now on the evening of Christmas Eve, after the last customers walked out the door of the shoe store and the staff locked the door behind them, the shoe store owner invited everyone to gather around so she could pay them as promised. First, she paid those she had hired that day. She paid them as if they had been working at the shoe store for the entire month of December! Then she paid those who had come two weeks ago and three weeks ago—each of them also got a full months’ wages.
Now when the full-time workers realized what she was doing with all this generosity, they expected that they would receive more than the usual amount of their paychecks. (Perhaps a bonus because these were the full-time workers who had been with her in this shoe store from the beginning). Yet each of those workers received the exact same amount of money that the other workers had been given. They looked at their paychecks and began to challenge their boss, “The last people you hired only worked in the store today—on Christmas Eve, and you have made them equal to those of us who worked hard for the entire month of December. This is not fair.”
But the owner said to those loyal workers, “I am not doing anything wrong to you. Didn’t we agree on your pay? And isn’t that exactly the amount that you were given—the amount we had agreed upon together? Take what belongs to you and go. I chose to give to the ones that I hired today the same as I gave to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first and the first will be last.”[1]
Sometimes you can hear a pin drop as Confirmands let this story sink in. It becomes, wait a second, who told this story? Jesus. Jesus told this? He sure did—the Parable of the Vineyard Workers is the original version, found in Matthew’s Gospel. This is SO not cool, this is unfair, this is ridiculous. I would be so mad if I was one of those first workers and on and on. Many of my Confirmation classes have erupted while wrestling with this story. It has led to some fantastic conversations. And who can blame these young people for these understandable reactions to this story that can be hard to grasp?
Here’s the thing, if we consider ourselves to be one of the “responsible” ones (and I feel like this congregation is full of responsible, on-time, earnest workers) this is not an easy parable to contemplate. Those of us who are “hardworking” and “good” often ask, what kind of a person would offer the same reward to those who have earned it and to those who have not earned it? This is just not fair.
The truth is that we often have unspoken assumptions that good things inevitably happen if you work hard for them. If we get good grades, it’s because we seriously studied. We deserve that A. If we have financial success, it’s because we applied ourselves to earn that success. We deserve that money. If we are respected, it is because we acted nicely and did good deeds for others (or maybe because people are afraid of us somehow because we like to intimidate others). No matter, we earned that respect. What is good comes to us in our lives when we work hard to earn it. Though this parable turns some of these assumptions upside down. “The last will be first, and the first will be last.”[2]
You keep hearing me say (as we have been engaging with Jesus’ parables in Matthew’s Gospel for weeks by now) that Jesus’ parables are brilliant and still timely and worth wrestling with their meanings. Because on some level, it just does not seem right when people are rewarded in a way that they do not appear to deserve. We could picture someone getting an A on an assignment when it’s a group project, except they did not contribute in any significant way. We could picture a part-time worker working 20 hours per week getting paid the same amount as a full-time worker working 40 hours per week. We could picture co-authors of a book that landed on The New York Times Best Sellers List only to find out that one person did all the research, writing, and editing while the other person seemingly just put their name on the front cover. We get it. Maybe we have been there ourselves. And we may find that we naturally identify with the workers who were there from the beginning and worked hard all month long, the workers who do not receive anything extra for their labor. Of course this story will feel unfair.
Maybe the Parable of the Vineyard Workers is an incomplete title. What if we entitled this parable The Generous Landowner (or in the modern adaptation The Generous Shoe Store Owner). Because as much as this story is about the workers, it’s also about the owner who happens to be extraordinarily generous with everyone. Even for those who don’t end up working very long. One possible explanation that Religious Studies Professor Kathryn D. Blanchard shared is that “The workers must recognize the opportunity to work in the vineyard (whether it represents Israel, individual virtue, the church, or the cause of justice in the world) as a gift in itself. There is no room for human pride, since one’s only choice is either to answer the call to work in God’s kingdom, or to stand idle and waste one’s life altogether. God does not will that anyone’s life should be wasted, so God extends the invitation indiscriminately and repeatedly, in order to gather as many as possible into the vineyard.”[3]
What if we started to own that our lives are gifts from God? We do not get everything because of our individual efforts and talents alone. God’s grace sometimes comes in unexpected ways. Sometimes we experience healing when we least expect it. Sometimes a loved one forgives us when they had every reason not to. Remember that we considered forgiveness last week in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. Sometimes we need to forgive, and other times we need to be forgiven. Sometimes we find a way through the wilderness, a path seemingly laid before our feet, and we must have the courage to follow where God would lead. God’s grace comes to us as a gift—as unexpected as those workers who received the wages they needed in order to live, no matter how long they labored. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”[4] Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Adapted from “Hear a Modern Parable,” in Affirming Faith: A Congregation’s Guide to Confirmation, pg. 182.
[2] Matthew 20:16, NRSVUE.
[3] Kathryn D. Blanchard, Theological Perspective of Matthew 20:1-16 Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Volume 4, Eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, pg. 94.
[4] Matthew 20:15, NRSVUE.
Lauren Ostrout ~ on being made well 