17th Sunday after Pentecost

Preaching Commentary

An Unfair Deal

Despite our vast differences, there seems to exist an innate sense of “fairness” in all humans when it comes to things such as “waiting your turn” or “cutting in line.” One would be hard-pressed to find a more culturally and generationally transcendent moral value than “hey, no cutting!”

This is why Jesus’ “Parable on the Equal Wages for Unequal Work,” the title given to today’s text from Matthew 20:1-16 by R. T. France [1], strains against our natural sensibilities of fairness. In this story, the owner of a vineyard hires four groups of workers that correspond to the times of day in which they were hired: (1) early in the morning before the work-day…