25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 19/20, 2026

IT’S NOT FAIR - is usually our first reaction to this story, as we side with those who have worked all day, thinking, rightly or wrongly, that would have been us if we placed ourselves in the story.  We are hard workers.  We are eager.  We would have been out looking for work at the beginning of the day!

But to fully understand this story, we have to realize this is NOT a story  about fairness, it is a story about God’s generosity.  Those who came last and were paid first, who never negotiated about their pay, who were just happy someone FINALLY hired them.  At the end of the day more than likely they stood dazed, with tears of joy welling up in their eyes because they were treated generously, far more generously, they know, than what they deserved.

Meanwhile, news of what the first men in line are receiving is being passed back to those at the end of the line, those who did agree to the usual daily wage.  These are the men who have worked hard all day.  And they begin to calculate how much they will receive at the same hourly rate the late-comers received.  Yes, imagine their disgust when they received exactly what they had bargained for in the early morning.  They protest angrily to the owner.  “It’s my money, isn’t it?”  he answers them.  “If I want to be generous to someone else, what’s that to you?

And WE are left with that sense of injustice, it’s just not fair!  

The story begins to make sense only when we ask:  Who was happy, AND who was disappointed?  And why?

Those who are happy were the men hired last and paid first.  They had not bargained for their wage because they had nothing to bargain with or about.  They were little better than beggars who felt lucky just to get a job.  BUT they went away happy, while the others, the bargainers, the negotiators, left unhappy.  Why?   Not because they had struck a bad bargain at the beginning of the day.  No, at dawn they knew it was a good bargain, a day’s wages for a day’s work.  

Nor were they unhappy because the bargain wasn’t kept.  On the contrary, it was kept to the letter:  they were paid exactly what they agreed to be paid. At the end of the day, however, they thought of something that had never occurred to them when they were hired:  they thought they deserved more!

Those who went away happy did not appeal to what they deserved.  They knew, working for only an hour, they deserved very little.  The only thing they could appeal to was the farmer’s generosity, AND THAT is the key to a right relationship with God, Jesus is telling us:  rely on God’s generosity. Appeal to God’s generosity, and you will be flooded with joy.  Appeal to what you deserve, and God will give it to you.

God is always just.  God never short-changes us.  When we discover, however, how little we actually deserve, we will probably be disappointed. 

We call this story the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.

A better title would be the parable of the beggars and the bargainers - and that’s why it is important for us to get the message. This story flies in the face of everything we have been taught about how things should work. Society says we should NOT be beggars.  We should work for what we get and not depend on handouts. . . and in everyday life, this thinking is fine.

But with God, different standards apply.  God loves to give handouts!

To receive them, we need to stand before God empty-handed, relying not on God’s justice, but on God’s MERCY.  Even more, we need to forget about keeping track of what we think we DESERVE and stop worrying that others, who we consider “less than deserving” share the same over-flowing mercy from the Lord as we do. 

Robert Capon, in his book, The Parables of Judgement, has this to say:  “Bookkeeping is the only punishable offense in the kingdom of heaven.  For in heaven, the books are ignored forever although most of us still carry a child’s image of a Santa Claus God:  God keeping track of who is naughty and who is nice. . . that just doesn’t work in heaven!

If the world could have been saved through bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus.  The law would have been just fine.  But God gave that a good thousand years or so to see if anyone could pass the test just under the law.  But when nobody did, when it became perfectly clear there was no one who was totally righteous, that both Jew and Gentiles alike were still all under the power of sin, God gave up on salvation by the books.

God cancelled everyone’s records through the death of Jesus Christ, and rewarded all equally and generously, with a new creation in the resurrection of the dead.”

So, it has to be asked, are you a bargainer with God or a beggar??  If you want to experience God’s justice, then be a bargainer. But if you would rather experience God’s generosity, then be a beggar.  Then you will know the joy of Mary upon hearing she was chosen by God to be the mother of God’s son, when she proclaimed, “God has filled the hungry with good things and the rich God has sent empty away.”  So ask the Lord who bestows gifts not according to our deserving, but according to God’s boundless and abundant mercy, to give us that hunger which longs to be fed, and that emptiness which yearns to be filled.

As we continue to stand at this table of plenty,  may we do so with grateful hearts.