Are You Envious?
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...