Proper 20 (25) – Year A

Welcome to the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. In this week’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about vineyard workers. It’s important, however, not to read it in isolation. By the time Jesus tells the parable, he has already spent an entire chapter overturning his disciples’ assumptions about life in the Kingdom. Forgiveness, not punishment, is the organizing principle. The vulnerable matter. Marriage is rooted in freedom rather than control. Wealth is not a sign of spiritual importance. At every turn, the disciples are left bewildered.

Then Peter asks the question that lurks beneath all our religious striving: “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” In other words: What’s the reward? Jesus answers with a story about what James Alison calls “first-lasters” and “last-firsters.”

A landowner goes out at different times of the day to hire workers. When it comes time to pay, everyone receives the same amount, which angers those who had come first. And yet, they had been paid exactly what was promised. Their anger begins only when they compare themselves to those who arrived later. Suddenly, what was enough is no longer enough. The problem is not unfairness. The problem is the “bad eye” of comparison. The bad eye imagines God’s generosity is a limited resource to be divided and defended. The good eye discovers that God’s delight in another never comes at our expense.

This is why Jesus’ strange saying about the first being last and the last being first is not a simple reversal of winners and losers. Rather, all of us are both “first-lasters” and “last-firsters.” Some parts of our lives arrive early; other parts arrive late. Some gifts come easily; others take decades to emerge. Every person’s story is unique and incommensurable.

God is not running a meritocracy. God is bringing daughters and sons into being, each according to their own story, without diminishing our own.