Parable of the Generous Landowner

In Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus tells the story of a vineyard owner who hires workers to harvest the grapes from his vines. He hires some at the first hour of the working day, but they are not enough. He returns four more times to hire more workers, some of which only work one hour.

At the end of the day when the day’s wages are paid, all of the workers, including those who work only one hour are paid a full day’s pay. Everyone’s happy with the unexpected bonus except for those who were hired at the first hour. Jesus couches this whole story between two statements about the last being first, and the first being last.

There are many things about this parable that rub us the wrong way. It doesn’t seem fair. I’ve even had Christians tell me that this parable offends them.

What was Jesus point? Is God really bad at math? This begins a new series I am calling Kingdomnomics. It’s about what Philip Yancey calls “the atrocious mathematics of the gospel.”

The gospels are filled with stories where the expected order of things is tossed aside, the unlikely is embraced, the unexpected happens and things just don’t seem to add up. From our way of accounting, God seems really bad at math. Why would you ever pay the guy who works 1 hour the same as the guy who works all day? When does it make sense to leave 99 sheep to save only 1? How do you justify spending your retirement nest egg to wash someone’s feet? Since when does two cents amount to more than hundreds of dollars?

Over the next four weeks we are going to look at four stories, one from each gospel, which reveal the new math of God’s grace. Jesus challenges us to see things in a new way. His teaching stretches our minds and our hearts. He wants us to weigh things on the scales of heavenly worth instead of earthly value.

I want to challenge you not only to read this story from Matthew 20 before Sunday morning, but also read Matthew 19, so you get a sense for what led up to Jesus’ telling of this parable and why Jesus told it.