Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The gospel was Matthew 20:1-16 .  “It’s not fair!” How many of you, who are parents, aunts and uncles, anyone who has had anything to do with children, have heard these words. Our goal is to explain to the child why something can't be done. That may help, or it may not. God doesn’t play fair, at least by our standards. As we look at today’s difficult, startling parable, we may respond like the early workers, like children. Maybe we are those called later in the day, who embraced faith later in life.  There are two main parts of this parable: the hiring of the workers and then the paying of the workers. From the beginning, just the way the parable plays out lets us know that something is up.  For one thing, it would be unusual for a landowner himself to go hire workers. Why didn’t he send someone else? Throughout the day, he goes four times to hire workers. Palestinian workers in Palestine go to s...

  This is the message I preached today at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The gospel text is Matthew 20:1-16. We are continuing  our Drive-In Worship and simultaneously worshiping indoors. Join us if you're in the area. Parables are meant to be shocking. They go along as if all is normal and then—there’s a twist that knocks your socks off. That’s how I felt when I read these words of Bible scholar Patrick J. Willson. Let’s hang out with the laborers who were the first ones to begin working and see what transpires.   “Are you envious because I am generous?” asks the owner of the vineyard (v. 15). You bet we are! If we are not envious, we are not hearing the parable. The parable rubs us the wrong way. Its visions of fairness and equality chafe. We cringe at what it seems to say about God. We shrink before what it seems to say about us! The parable catches us quickly into the narrative, because we carry around notions of what is fair and what is not and this story offends...