Matthew 20:1

“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.”

This is among the last parables that Matthew records before the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It totals sixteen verses, one of Jesus’ longest parables. It was important to Jesus, of course, and therefore important to Matthew.

The parable tells of a landowner, who, early in the morning, probably at sunup, employed workers promising to “pay them a denarius for the day.”

On that same day, at nine in the morning he hired others, promising to pay them “what is right.” Again at noon he hired others with a similar promise and then at five o’clock in the afternoon he hired the last ones who worked only one hour.

When it came time to pay they all got the same, whether they worked twelve hours or one! This caused consternation among them, no doubt mostly among those who had worked the whole day.  Addressing them the landowner said, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?  Or are you envious because I am generous?”  v 15

To me, it seems that the landowner should have paid for each hour of work.  That is reasonable. Jesus knew that but his story had nothing to do with fairness but with generosity.  It seems so wrong that those who do not merit generosity should receive it while those who have earned generosity must settle for just what they were promised, nothing more.

I suppose, to begin with, I think I should work for everything I get and I work on that basis. Therefore it is difficult to see how my master could pay another for doing little. The ways of the Kingdom of Heaven are new to me.  Are they not to you?