Generosity Abounds

 This is the reflection that was sent to the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church. These are some initial thoughts on Sunday's gospel. What do you think or feel when you read this passage?

Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ²After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. ³When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; ⁴and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. ⁵When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. ⁶And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ ⁷They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ ⁸When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ ⁹When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. ¹⁰Noandd w when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. ¹¹And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹²saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ ¹³But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The message of the parable is generosity; God’s generosity toward those others think don’t deserve it. ¹⁵ ”Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” Aren’t we sometimes envious or jealous of what others have, their position in life, how easily things seem to come to them?

 

Then there’s us. We work and work and work and still do not have the kind of life THAT person has—THAT person who seems to have everything handed to them on a silver platter.

 

Can we let God be God in our lives? The landowner asks those who had worked longest in the vineyard, “¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

 

God asks us the same question. We were made God’s in the waters of baptism. We belong to God. Let God be God for us and in us and we will find that to be enough. We will not need to look enviously at how God has blessed other people.

 

I’m not saying this is easy, but if we allow our vision of others to be through the lens of God’s grace and love, we’ll be less concerned with their toys and more aware of all the wonderful things God has done in our lives each and every day, how all of life is sheer gift. And we will be able to look at others more charitably, rejoicing with them over God’s generosity. 

 

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