“That’s Not Fair!” - Fr. Pete's Sermon for September 20th, 2026, the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 20:1-16, ​Exodus 16:2-15

I needed a new desk chair recently in the Clergy Office because the one I’d been using had developed this unfortunate tendency to make me gradually slide out of it. I don’t know whether the chair was wearing out or I was, but something had to be done.

So I went down to Office Depot and found a chair that worked well for me. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy, and this was the cheapest decent one I could find. The price on the card was $350. I took a picture of it, came back to the office, looked it up online, and there it was: same chair, same price, $350. I started to click on it to order it, and suddenly the page reloaded and the price changed to $199! All right! I didn’t complain. I didn’t call Office Depot and say, “Excuse me, but I believe you’re charging me $151 too little.” No, I ordered that chair!

But now imagine that the next day I told somebody else about my great bargain. And they went online to buy the very same chair, but when they clicked on it, their price dropped to $99. Wait a minute! That’s not fair! Yesterday I was delighted with $199. It was a terrific deal. Nothing about my deal had changed. But suddenly I’m unhappy because somebody else got an even better deal.

And that, my friends, is pretty much the parable Jesus tells us this morning.

A farmer goes out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agrees with them on the usual daily wage, and off they go to work. At nine o’clock he goes back to the marketplace and hires some more. He goes back again at noon, again at three, and finally at five o’clock, when the workday is almost over. Each time he finds people still waiting for work and sends them into his vineyard.

At the end of the day, the farmer tells his manager to pay everybody, beginning with the ones who arrived at five. And amazingly, those workers receive a full day’s wage. Now imagine you’re one of the people who started working at sunrise. You see the five-o’clock crew getting a full day’s pay, and you immediately start doing the math. If they got that much for one hour, just imagine what we’re going to get!

Except when your turn comes, you receive exactly what you agreed to that morning: one day’s wage.

“That’s not fair!” But the farmer says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go.” And then comes the question at the heart of the whole parable: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

Ooh--that question stings a little, doesn’t it? Because the workers who started early haven’t been cheated. They received exactly what they were promised. They were perfectly happy with their wage until they discovered what somebody else received. The problem isn’t what they have. The problem is comparison.

We know something about that, don’t we? I can be perfectly happy with my house until I see yours. Perfectly happy with my car until you pull up in a new one. Perfectly satisfied with my salary until I discover what somebody else makes in a similar job. I can even be grateful for my $199 desk chair until you tell me you got yours for $99!

But Jesus is talking about something much deeper than salaries and desk chairs. He’s talking about grace.

And that brings us back to our Old Testament reading this morning. The Israelites are out in the wilderness, and they’re hungry. They begin complaining to Moses and Aaron, even remembering Egypt rather selectively: “If only we had died in Egypt! At least there we had plenty to eat!” Well, not if you’re dead! I guess slavery wasn’t so bad if you got hungry enough.

But notice how God responds. God doesn’t say, “You ungrateful people! After everything I’ve done for you, figure out your own dinner.” No. God says, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.”

And there is enough. Every morning, there’s enough manna for everybody. Psalm 105 looks back on that story and says that God “satisfied them with the bread of heaven.” Israel is learning one of the hardest lessons of faith: God can be trusted to provide enough.

That same conviction is underneath Jesus’ parable. The farmer keeps going back to the marketplace. At five o’clock he finds people still standing there and asks why they haven’t been working. Their answer is poignant: “Because no one has hired us.” Maybe they weren’t the strongest workers.

Maybe they were older. Maybe they had a disability. Maybe nobody thought they looked promising enough. Jesus doesn’t tell us. All we know is that everyone else had passed them by.

But the farmer doesn’t. “Come into my vineyard too.” And at the end of the day he gives them enough to live on.

Now here’s where this parable gets uncomfortable. Most of us naturally identify with the workers who arrived first, right? We’ve worked hard. We’ve tried to be responsible. We’ve shown up. We’ve paid our bills. We’ve done our share. Surely we’ve earned what we have.

But what if, in the economy of God’s grace, every one of us is really the five-o’clock worker who gets the gift of a full-day’s wage?

What if the breath in our lungs this morning is God’s gift? What if the people who love us are God’s gift? What if the abilities we have, the opportunities we’ve received, the food on our tables, the forgiveness we’ve needed and received, even this new day itself are all God’s gracious, generous gift? What if none of us is standing before God with a timecard proving that we’ve earned our place?

Then suddenly the question changes. Instead of asking, “Why did they get so much?” we begin asking, “How did I receive so much?”

During these weeks at St. Timothy’s, we’re praying, “Lord, widen our hearts.” Perhaps this is one way God widens them: by loosening our grip on comparison, on envy, and helping us recognize abundance.

A widened heart can rejoice when somebody else receives a blessing. A widened heart can celebrate another person’s good fortune without wondering why not me? A widened heart can become generous because it has finally realized how much it has already received.

There was enough manna in the wilderness. There was enough work in the vineyard. There was enough generosity in the farmer’s heart. And there is enough grace from the hand of God for each and every one of us.

So maybe when we see someone else receive an unexpected blessing, an undeserved second chance, an extravagant welcome, or a really good deal, instead of saying, “That’s not fair!” we can learn to say, “Thanks be to God.”
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Because, thank God, grace isn’t fair. It’s grace. Amen.