Not fair [Proper 20A - Matthew 20:1-16]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 20:1-16 Not Fair This parable is not fair. And this landowner, he does not appear to be great at business. And I do hope the people in Jesus’ crowd understood that this story was a folksy parable – because if they took this as entrepreneurial advice, financial ruin was all but guaranteed. In this strange parable, the owner of the vineyard is employing a highly questionable business model. If the landowner followed this strange pattern daily, it would not be long before the morning shift suffered some serious atrophy; laborers would keep a lower profile at sunrise – even though the landowner, as the parable reminds us, does pay a fair daily wage. Most of the laborers would apply in the late afternoon – knowing that their hourly rate skyrockets as the evening approaches. As the word got out, and it would, the fields would become drastically understaffed and under-worked...