Slideshow image

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

 

These scriptures are troubling when you look at them from a human perspective, but if you choose to look at them as an expression of the generosity and goodness of God, your vista can widen and change.

 

Think of the workers in the parable like players in an ongoing symphony in which the conductor has given some players pages of complicated music to practice which they have been laboring over for a long time. At the same time, a new player enters the group and has a much easier part to play. Why is it that some players have worked so much harder and suffered more in the meantime, yet at the end of the performance, everyone gets the same applause? It’s possible, maybe, that the conductor, who sees the whole score, and knows the full tapestry of the finished piece, can see how those long-suffering workers have fit into something so much larger and more beautiful than they could have ever imagined. Those old timers, in effect, might have played a more fundamental part in the overall song. We won’t know how it all fits together from our limited perspective now, but we can know that He is gracious and that everything will somehow make sense someday when we hear the song in heaven from beginning to end.

 

Allison Montgomery

Yes5olias1@yahoo.com

 

Prayer Concern - For those struggling at work to have relief and hope.

 

Alternative verses: Jonah 3:10- 4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30