The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost; September 20, 2026
Proper 20: Exodus 16: 2-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1: 21-30; Matthew 20: 1-16
Rebuttal
Hearing today’s gospel, I think many would want to interrupt this sermon for a rebuttal. So, here is one: Jesus, let me tell you is how things really are: Yes, a landowner went out early to hire laborers to harvest his crop. You have that much right. But from there on you are divorced from reality. When that landowners arrived at the market place, he began by berating the workers assembled for not have full-time jobs. To his way of thinking they were simply lazy. He then began to negotiate with them for the lowest wage and then sent them into his vineyard.
Hearing from his foreman that there were too few workers to actually harvest the crop, the landowner really had no clear idea how many workers it took bring in the harvest, he just wanted to spend as little as possible, he went back to the market place. Seeing workers standing idle, he berated them for their sloth. Again he negotiated the lowest wage, lower than that for the first workers, and sent them into the vineyard. This cemented in his mind the idea that the unemployed were so indolent that he needed to keep coming back to the market place to see who was there. He came back at noon and 3 o’clock and hired more workers. Then he took a siesta after the 3 o’clock hiring and then went back at 5 o’clock and what do you know there were more lazy workers. He hired them them too.
As the sun was going down, he told his foreman to pay the first hired their wage, minus deductions for water consumed or use of a toilet in the fields. If they had fainted from the heat, the amount of time they were incapacitated was withheld. Each group of workers got paid less and less. [What was their recourse? Who could they tell?]
The last group of workers hired at 5 o’clock got nothing. The landowner addressed them himself: You could have shown up at the market place earlier if you really wanted to work. If you are there early tomorrow I will think about hiring you again and then I will pay you for your work today. Right now, I’m not paying you a dime. When they grumbled, the landowner said: “Am I not allowed to do as I wish with my land? I will pay you what I think is right and you will take it or go elsewhere and work.
And all the laborers who worked in the field went home wondering how they could get food or provide for their families with either little or nothing to show for a day’s work.
And the landowner went home, added up what he had saved by shrewd negotiation, and sipped wine on his terrace.
The first will be first – this is way things are and ever shall be. And the last will be last because this is the way the rich see it. And today the rich, in evermore successful churches, find ways to justify their behavior.
The rich see the world differently
This is the conclusion of an author who studies the actions and thoughts of people with great wealth: “Wealth is a disconnection drug that keeps people apart and keeps them from building authentic connections and real community. They tend toward ‘trusting their own kind.’ The ultra rich build compounds, live their personal lives out of sight of the regular folk.” “The wealthiest 20 Americans increased their net worth from 1.3 trillion to 3 trillion in the last 5 years.”
This is more than most of us can wrap our minds around. I still revert to thinking of business people I have known that concentrate on making a good product or providing a necessary service and in return make a decent profit. There are people like this left in our economy but the predatory, the super rich, the Epstein-class folks control more and more and as our “landowners” they are changing the bottom line for everyone. For people of faith their success, their self perpetuating prosperity gospel, their absolute dominance over the economy and politics through their money make the economics of Jesus looks more and more far fetched.
Before we conclude that this has nothing to do with the integrity of God’s creation, we need to recognize that many of the greatest challenges to our environment come from the concentration of wealth as in agri-business, solar panels on farm land and data centers that need both large amounts of land and water. The greed of the rich that wealth breeds often ends up assaulting the environmental in some way.
What IS Jesus saying?
First, it is necessary to note that Jesus is speaking in a parable not necessarily a real story. Second, it is a parable of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is like THIS! Third, it is easy to get bogged down in the details of hiring and payment. Standing a bit back from it the point is: BE GENEROUS AS YOUR GOD IS GENEROUS. This is not the first time Jesus has taught this. (See the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 42)
God, the owner of all that exists in our world, is generous with what is his. His world exists to support everyone with a decent living or as Jesus puts it: give us today our daily bread. God’s truth will eventually triumph – those who seek to make themselves first in the world are doomed to be last in the kingdom. Those who are seen as last in the world are valued and are first in the kingdom. I don’t think the uber-rich are threatened very much by this truth.
Can we be generous like God? This is the question. We can seek to be and even in failing to be as generous as God we will accomplish much in the trying. The New Zealand Prayer Book paraphrases 2 Corinthians 9: 6-7 this way: “If we are generous, bountiful will be the harvest … when we help others, we will not just meet their needs, we will unleash a flood of gratitude to God. Many will glory to God for our loyalty to the gospel and for our generosity. God loves a cheerful giver.
Today with so much that is predatory in our economy, not to mention the scams and the frauds, the landowner/business person who stays focused on being generous is a true saint. The stockholders who forego another 1% increase in their profits to reinvest it for the benefit of their workers are exemplary.
I wonder, how did things get this way? Susan Neiman in a book, Call It Evil, writes “when self-interest becomes the basis of reason, evil no longer needs to justify itself. It’s already mistaken for rationality.” Maximizing self-interest is what Jesus’ landowner does not do. In today’s lingo that makes him a “sucker.” When did self-interest become a legitimate substitute for the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”
The Rev. Dr. George Glazier
Vicar, Trinity Church, London