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| Life is not fair, but God always invites you into the vineyard |
Proper 20, Year A
©2026 The Rev. Seth Olson
This sermon was delivered on the 17th Sunday after Pentecost at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of the sermon may be found here.
Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.
“That’s not fair.” I am fairly certain that is one of the first moral arguments human beings learn how to make. Children say it constantly. Adults mostly learn how to make it sound more sophisticated.
That’s not fair becomes… Why did she get that? Why did he get chosen? Why did they get another chance? Why did I have to work this hard when they seem to have gotten the same thing so easily?
And usually, when we say something is unfair, it is because somebody else seems to have gotten the better end of the deal. We do not very often receive the natural consequences of our own choices and say, “Well, that seems perfectly fair” (that was our Director of Music, Kenny Ganon’s insight at Tuesday Bible Study this week). We usually discover our concern for fairness when we believe somebody else has received too much—or we have received too little.
And of course, this is not a new problem, because in our first reading this morning the Israelites are grumbling in the wilderness. God has liberated them from slavery. God has brought them through the sea. Pharaoh’s army is behind them. They are free. And almost immediately they begin complaining.
“If only we had died in Egypt! At least there we had pots of meat and bread to eat.” Which is an extraordinary thing to say. They have been liberated from bondage, and scarcity has already begun convincing them that perhaps slavery was the better deal.
And God responds in the wilderness by giving them bread. Not because they earned it. Not because they asked politely. Not because they finally demonstrated sufficient faith. God gives them manna because God is God, and God’s people are hungry.
That same anxious arithmetic is happening in Matthew. Our Gospel today does not really begin in chapter 20. It begins a few verses earlier.
A wealthy man comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. He has kept the commandments. He has apparently lived an exemplary life. And then he asks Jesus, “What do I still lack?”
There is something almost heartbreaking about that question. Because this is a man who has much, and he assumes fulfillment must depend upon acquiring whatever one thing he still does not possess. But Jesus turns the whole question upside down. The problem is not what he lacks. The problem is what he cannot release. His abundance has become an obstacle.
And when the man walks away grieving, Peter immediately speaks up. Peter, being Peter, essentially says, “Well, Jesus, we did it. We have left everything and followed you.” And then comes the question: “What then will we have?”
There it is again. Israel in the wilderness: What are we going to eat? Peter on the road: What are we going to get? And then Jesus tells a story.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.” He hires some at dawn and agrees to pay them a denarius, the customary wage for a day’s labor. Then he goes back out around nine. Then noon. Then three. Then five o’clock.
And by that point, I think we are supposed to begin wondering about the landowner.
What kind of vineyard owner keeps doing this? Surely if he needed this many workers, he could have hired them all in the morning. Depending on the time of year, by five o’clock there may not even be enough daylight left to make another worker worth hiring. And yet he keeps going back. Again. And again. And again. Looking for people who have not yet been brought into the vineyard.
And when he finds them, he asks why they have been standing there all day. Their answer is simple: “Because no one has hired us.” Not because they were lazy. Not because they slept until four. Not because they did not care enough. “No one has hired us.” And the landowner says: “You also go into the vineyard.”
There is something almost foolish about his generosity. It reminds me of the father in another story Jesus tells—the one about a father who keeps watching the road for the son who wandered away. Neither one seems particularly interested in behaving with respectable efficiency. The father runs down the road. The vineyard owner keeps returning to the marketplace. The Kingdom of Heaven, apparently, is full of people who look a little foolish because they simply will not stop looking for someone else to bring home.
Then evening comes, and the landowner does something very deliberate. He tells the manager to pay the workers beginning with the ones who came last. That matters. Because if the people who arrived at dawn had been paid first, they could have taken their denarius and gone home perfectly satisfied. They received exactly what they had been promised. But Jesus makes them stay long enough to watch grace happen to somebody else.
The five-o’clock workers come forward. One denarius. The three-o’clock workers. One denarius. Noon. One denarius. Nine o’clock. One denarius. And by the time the workers who came at dawn step forward, Matthew tells us exactly what has happened inside of them: “They thought they would receive more.”
Of course they did. Wouldn’t we? But they receive one denarius. Exactly what they were promised. Nothing has been taken away from them. The landowner has broken no agreement. And still they grumble, just like the People of Israel in the wilderness.
And then comes the sentence that I think exposes the whole thing, the all-day workers lament: “You have made them equal to us.”
Not: “You cheated us.” Not: “You broke your promise.” Not even: “We cannot survive on what you gave us.” No. “You have made them equal to us.”
That is the wound. They worked longer. They endured the scorching heat. Their labor was real. Their sacrifice was real. But somewhere along the way, their faithful work had become more than work. It had become a claim to status.
We have done more. We have been here longer. We sacrificed more. Therefore we should stand above them.
And suddenly we are no longer talking only about a vineyard. Human beings have always struggled when people we have placed beneath us suddenly stand beside us.
We saw it in this country during integration, when equality before the law felt to many white people like a loss of status. The Church has experienced it in our long and painful struggle to receive LGBTQ people not merely at the edges of Christian community but fully within its sacramental and communal life.
And every generation will discover some new boundary around which we are tempted to say: “Yes, God loves them. But surely not exactly as much as God loves us. Yes, they can come in. But surely they have not earned the same place.”
And friends, that is why this sermon cannot become one about “those” people somewhere else. Because the landowner turns to the grumbling worker and asks: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
The Greek is even sharper: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” The “evil eye” was a familiar way of talking about envy or resentment. And what a question!
Has God’s goodness toward somebody else somehow become evil in my sight? Someone else gets the opportunity. Someone else gets forgiven. Someone else gets welcomed. Someone else gets the second chance. Someone else receives a gift I wanted. And suddenly the grace that filled my own hands feels smaller.
Nothing has changed about the gift—it is my vision that has changed, and comparison has changed it.
A blessing can feel wonderful right up until the moment we discover someone else received one too. And that may be one of the most exhausting ways we live: constantly looking sideways. Who got more? Who deserved less? Who has what I wanted? And, social media has made this exponentially worse.
Maybe that is why Jesus tells this absurd story in which the Kingdom refuses to cooperate with our arithmetic. Now, I do not think that means justice does not matter. I do not think Jesus is giving us a business model or saying employers should ignore fair compensation. The Kingdom is not unjust. But God’s justice is larger than our ledger. And God’s grace refuses to remain inside the machinery of comparative deserving.
Which brings us back to Peter. “We have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
I wonder if one answer Jesus gives Peter is: Peter, look around. You are already in the vineyard.
Maybe we become so focused on the denarius at the end of the day that we miss another gift in the story. The first workers got to spend the whole day in the vineyard. They got to tend something alive. They had their hands in the dirt. They shared the water. They watched fruit ripen. They participated in the work of the landowner.
Maybe following Jesus is not merely the price we pay in order to receive something better later. Maybe following Jesus is already part of the gift.
Peter, what will you have? You have Christ, this community, and a share in the work of healing, reconciliation, welcome, forgiveness, and new life. You are already in the vineyard.
And the vineyard owner still goes out. Still search, invites, and finds people who assume it must be too late for them.
People who think they do not have the right résumé. People who believe they have failed too badly, aren’t religious enough, good enough, deserving enough. And the owner keeps saying: “You also go into the vineyard.”
Maybe eventually those of us who arrived early can stop staring over our shoulders at who comes in after us. Maybe we can stop checking what everyone else received. Maybe we can even walk back toward the marketplace with the landowner.
Because there are still people standing there. And there is still work to do.
The scandal of grace is not that God gives us less than we deserve. The scandal is that God refuses to give our neighbors less.
So before we say, “That’s not fair,” perhaps we might look again at the grace already in our own hands. And then look toward the road rejoicing at more workers coming into the vineyard, because it belongs to God, so does the work and the fruit. And thanks be to God—so do we. AMEN.
Trinitarian blessing based on today’s sermon:
May God the Father, whose generosity is wider than our deserving, open your eyes to the grace already in your hands.
May God the Son, who calls us again and again into the vineyard, give you joy in the holy work of love, reconciliation, and welcome.
May God the Holy Spirit free you from envy and comparison, that you may rejoice in the grace given to your neighbor.
And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.
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