“Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” Matthew 20:15
“Most of the workers receive much more than they expected when they were hired, and some have their daily needs paid for by a small fraction of a day’s work. The passage portrays generosity, not stinginess. At the spiritual level, no one should ever ask God to be fair, for that is an implicit request for damnation. One should always desire grace!”
Craig Blomberg in Interpreting the Parables, Second Edition (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012) 285.
“It’s not fair.” I can hear myself saying this, because it appears that the young man who ran a red light and hit my daughter’s car will get off because despite the testimony of witnesses. It cannot be proven that the light was red. He says it was green. “It’s not fair.”
So to minister to my soul and look for help I turned to this text where the workers shout a similar cry. Those that worked all day and those that only worked the last hour made the same wage. The landowner was generous because the parable is not about fair wages but about grace.
Blomberg rightly reminds me this morning not to cry out to God for “fairness” but rather for grace: for more grace for my son and daughter when things in life seem to work against them, and for more grace for Jenni and me to forgive rather than remain angry at this young man.
Father in heaven, thank you for not being fair to us, because we’d be damned as a result. Thanks instead that you generously extend your matchless grace to us. Sort the challenges in our lives by your grace, mercy, and love. Help us trust you by your Holy Spirit I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.