Nov 28 2019 Matthew 20: 1-16

Or are you envious because I am generous?
Jesus is telling the parable of the vineyard owner who hires some in the morning, some at noon and some in the evening, and at the end of the day, he pays them all the same amount, even though those hired in the morning worked many hours more. They grumbled to him, complaining that they’d worked longer and harder, and received the same pay as those who worked only one hour.

The landowner’s response was to remind the workers from the morning that he’d offered and they’d agreed to a day’s wage, and that’s what he’d paid them. Am I not allowed to do with my money what I want? Or are you envious?

Today is Thanksgiving in the US. It’s a day when many will gather around a loaded dinner table, and have a genuine sense of gratefulness for all of life’s blessings. But maybe it’s just me, but I always feel a little disingenuous when I do that. It feels a little bit like the expected script for one day of the year, but it feels like just a part to play today, not as genuine as I want it to be the other 364 days a year.

For the rest of the year, how often do we measure our bounty against the bounty of others? Or worse, against what we think we are owed?

Even today, I have sense of how much things have changed and how much harder they are than last year’s Thanksgiving. Last year, we had Thanksgiving in our apartment in Portland, but our loved one was not exhibiting any illness. They arrived, like out of town family do, and we played tourist in our town, cooked up a storm, and had a lovely, and gratitude filled Thanksgiving. Today, I’ll cook, enjoying the daylight hours in the apartment (which are limited when I go to work and come home in the dark), and I hope have a gratitude filled dinner with friends. But I do have a sense that it’s not like it could have been, without this illness. My gratitude is a little dampened.

Maybe the difference between my this-year’s-Thanksgiving and my last-year’s-Thanksgiving is more dramatic than most other years. But there’s always something that makes me slightly conditional in my gratitude. I’m really grateful, but I miss my kids. I’m grateful, but my back hurts. I’m grateful, but . . Or the gratitude is fleeting. I’m super grateful today, because it’s the script for the day. But tomorrow, I’ll go back to my mitigated gratitude.

I absolutely understand the parable, and believe the landowner should be able to be generous with his money. I think the first workers should be grateful for the pay they agreed to receive for the work they agreed to do. I think it’s dumb for them to be envious of the workers who came at the end of the day.  

This morning, I’m thinking about how insidious envy or a misplaced sense of righteous indignation can be in my own world, and how much harder it is to see up close, than it is to see in the parable. I wonder if I can give up the sense of envy of what could have been, so I can lose the sense of mitigated gratitude.

As it turns out, I have a great deal to be grateful for, with abandon, and without hesitation. I don’t want to sound like the worker who came in the morning, and is testy, that my lot is different or harder than anyone else’s. That I had to work all day in the scorching sun, and those other workers showed up at the end of the day. I do not want to be those morning grumblers. Today, I want to be thankful for what I have, without comparing it to anything.