Lectionary Commentaries for September 20, 2026
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The so-called Parable of the Vineyard Laborers (Matthew 20:1–16) begins with Jesus saying, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard” (20:1). The Greek term that the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates as “landowner” (oikodespōtes) comprises the words for “house” (oikos) and “master” (despōtes), so that “householder” is preferable. This particular householder also owns a vineyard.

For Jesus’s original hearers, this vineyard would have invoked the land of Israel. Isaiah describes God as a vintner whose plot represents “the house of Israel”—both people and land (Isaiah 5:7). Jeremiah also compares God’s people and property to a vineyard ruled by unrighteous shepherds (Jeremiah 12:10). Since the vineyard is a “stock image for Israel” in these and other prophetic texts, Gospel readers can be assured that Matthew’s “householder” represents God.¹

Jesus’s parable describes the householder hiring a series of laborers to tend his vineyard (Matthew 20:1–7). After making a morning agreement with the first group of workers for a denarius as the day’s wage, the householder employs others at the third, sixth, ninth, and 11th hours of the day—roughly 9:00 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m., respectively. At the end of the workday, the householder pays the latecomers the denarius that he had agreed upon with the initial laborers (20:9–10).

When the first group sees that the subsequent workers receive the same amount as they do, they grumble against the householder, saying, “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” (20:12). The householder responds to a disgruntled representative, “‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you” (20:13–14).

Unfortunately, much traditional interpretation identifies the grumbling group as works-focused Jews or Pharisees, and the subsequent workers as gentiles or Christians.² First, there is little reason to equate the latecomers with gentiles. Immediately before expounding this parable, Jesus tells his Jewish disciples, “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (19:28). Thus, a contextual reading of the parable should position all of its characters as ethnic members of Israel.

Second, the hearers of the parable are the disciples, not the Pharisees. Though Jesus had been speaking to Pharisees at the outset of the previous chapter (19:3), his attention shifts to a group of children (19:13–15), a rich young man (19:16–22), and then his disciples (19:23–30).³ Therefore, the first laborers in the vineyard should represent Jesus’s original disciples, and the latecomers should be subsequent followers.

Once again, the parable’s broader context aids in its interpretation: Jesus had described the reward of “twelve thrones” for his first disciples (19:28), adding, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (19:29). The Parable of the Vineyard Laborers, then, can be read as an illustration of various people’s progressive adherence to God through Christ.

Rather than focusing on the laborers, readers might bear better theological fruit by meditating on the householder himself. Jesus’s parable offers a beautiful picture of divine love and grace for those who follow God. First, the householder makes a salary agreement—a binding relational contract—with the first workers, agreeing on payment before any of their work has even started (20:2). This picture conjures the covenantal faithfulness of God: a scenario in which human effort does not create one’s reward but rather flows from the grace of a pre-established covenant.

Next, the householder actively seeks other workers throughout the day. For instance, “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?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard’” (20:6–7). Though the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition’s references to “standing around” and “standing here idle” might imply aloofness or laziness on the part of the potential laborers, the Greek behind these phrases simply states that these people were “without work” (argōs). The generous householder (God) offers employment and purpose to all he encounters.

In presenting the householder in this way, Jesus has his Father enacting the very divine dictates expressed to Israel through Moses: “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (Deuteronomy 15:10–11).⁴ Like the “generous” householder (Matthew 20:15), God searches for those in need of godly work and provides everyone with the grace of a living wage in the vineyard of the Lord.

Notes

1. Steven M. Bryan, Jesus and Israel’s Traditions of Judgement and Restoration, SNTSMS 117 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 48.
2. For a summary of this brand of interpretation, see Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 216–218.
3. Jesus will not speak with the Pharisees again until he arrives in Jerusalem after an extended journey that ends in Jerusalem (see Matt 21:45).
4. See Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 236.

Commentary for this text is forthcoming.

During World War II, researchers at the University of Minnesota recruited 36 conscientious objectors, all healthy men, to participate in what would become known as the “Minnesota Starvation Experiment.” Knowing that the war had brought famine and deprivation to people across the world, the researchers wanted to know what specific effects starvation had on the human body and mind, as well as what strategies might be best for refeeding those who had suffered from prolonged hunger. The volunteers all lost around 25 percent of their body weight over six months, and then were placed into groups that were re-fed within differing parameters. 

The study yielded many important results and has been deeply influential in the treatment not only of famine-induced starvation, but also of eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa. But for the sake of reading Exodus 16, the key takeaway from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment is this: People who are starving think about food persistently, even obsessively. 

Like the men in the study, the Hebrews commencing their journey through the wilderness are not getting enough to eat, so they are thinking about food a lot. Though the Exodus account is sparing in its details, the narrative indicates that hardship abounds on this walk—and that God continually intervenes to provide what the Hebrews lack. For example, we read in Exodus 15:22–27 that the Israelites are three days into their departure from Egypt before they encounter any water, and then the water is undrinkably bitter (Exodus 15:23). God provides a way to sweeten the water and, further, sends the people to camp besides springs of water (Exodus 15:25–27). Now, a few weeks later, hunger has set in. 

The “grumbling” (Jewish Publication Society, New International Version; “complaining” in the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition; “murmuring” in the King James Version and New English Translation) of the Israelites is really a dramatic lament: “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death” (Exodus 16:3 Jewish Publication Society). Death seems inevitable to these hungry people, so it would have been better, they reason, to have been struck down when they had full bellies, rather than to die now, slowly, as they are enduring emptiness. 

The murmuring of the people against Moses and God is a recurring theme throughout the wilderness journey, and the cumulative effect of those repetitions is to paint the Israelites as a whiny, ungrateful crowd. As the story goes on through Exodus, Leviticus, and into the book of Numbers, the narrator seems eager to shape our perception of the travelers negatively. God even proclaims judgment on the people for their complaining in Numbers 14:20–23. 

But here in Exodus, in these early days of the journey, before the manna, before the quail, and in their throes of hunger, I am inclined to be very sympathetic to them. If they are going hungry, then—as the University of Minnesota’s scientific research has shown—they are physically unable to think of most anything else. Moreover, the same research demonstrated distinctive personality changes in the hungry men, who became irritable, angry, and resentful over the smallest perceived slights. It makes perfect sense that the Hebrews would become angry at Moses and God, and that their complaints would contain vivid descriptions of food.

When the people collect the quail and manna that God sends to them, some of them store some of the food for the next day, despite the fact that God has forbidden it and that they have collected just one day’s provisions—no extra. Although the lectionary reading stops short of these details, it is important to note that saving and hoarding food is another behavior observed in the study of people who have experienced starvation.

The parallels between Exodus 16 and the results of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment underscore the fact that the hungry Israelites are exhibiting typical human behavior brought on by the physiological effects of starvation. Theologically speaking, the science makes God’s provision and God’s expectations all the more striking. 

First, God’s provision: God continues to be responsive to human suffering by addressing physical human needs. Just as God heard the cries of Israel in bondage (Exodus 2:24; 3:7) and brought them out of it, God hears the people’s cries of hunger and provides food for them. In both the exodus and the feeding in the wilderness of Sin, God acts “so that you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 16:6). Knowledge of God is not just an intellectual experience; it is a physical one. 

When human sin intervenes in God’s provision—creating systems that keep people and nations in poverty, destroying earth’s resources, and valuing the accumulation of wealth over the honor of service—then we have chosen to distance ourselves from the saving God, relying instead on our own provision and mocking the real human suffering of others.

Second, God’s expectations: The text declares that God’s particular manner of re-feeding the Israelites is a test to see “whether they will follow my instruction or not” (Exodus 16:4). The amount that they gather on the sixth day will be doubled so they may keep the LORD’s sabbath without working on the seventh day (Exodus 16:5, 22–30). Of course, the Israelites fail the first time; they go out on the seventh day to gather, and they find nothing (Exodus 16:28). Throughout the narrative—again continuing into Exodus 16 past the lectionary’s boundaries—the Israelites learn that they have everything they need, and never more than they need. They learn that the provisions from God are enough, and that striving for more is a fool’s errand. 

This expectation for the people’s restraint is a stunning call for “next-level” trust. Keeping the sabbath is both risky and countercultural. In the ancient context, refraining from agricultural work on the seventh day could mean not having enough food to get through the winter, or neglecting the daily care the crops and animals required. In today’s context, refraining from work on one day per week can mean giving up income—putting rest and worship ahead of our culture’s expectations of “success.” 

But the Exodus narrative cries out to us for nothing less than a reshaping of the world into a place where no one starves, where no one has too much, where everyone has opportunities to rest, and where all minds are freed from want or wo srry to focus on the glory of God. 

Remembering someone, remembering important events in life, and just the act of remembering has a way of bringing the past into the present.¹ I close my eyes and remember an event, and before I know it, I am transported in my mind’s eye to that event as if it were in the present.

I can feel the event and sense memories associated with it coursing through my body. I can hear the sounds that were present—now-deceased family members’ voices. I smell the fragrances permeating the space from flowers turned to dust decades ago. In my mind’s eye, I see the colors and shapes of objects and living plants that have changed or disappeared over time. And I can sense the feel of textures running through my fingers and feel the earth beneath my feet, and almost taste the event as if it were in my present experience rather than something that happened long ago.

The human mind can transport us to places where we once were for brief moments, and we can experience that day, those indelible moments, all over again. It is a gift that accompanies being human.

In Psalm 145, the writer breathes an air that is dense like fog and bright as a welder’s torch. The poetry is thick with the unwritten experiences of the writer. It is the utterance of one who has experienced difficult life situations that reflect more keenly on the activity of God in the writer’s life. It is the one who has had close brushes with the threat of death who can witness to something greater than one’s own life or experiences of life. Those who are well acquainted with the trials of living know something that those who have not experienced them cannot quite comprehend or understand.

The depth of God’s activity in one’s life transcends the crisis of cancer, the trauma of physical and emotional violence, and the difficulties of living with physical maladies. The psalmist reminds readers of what they may already know: God is ruler. God is worthy of praise because God has made all that is and will ever be. God has formed the molecules that make up the cells and systems of a human body. God has created the trillions of bacteria that live in human intestines and the microbes that travel over our skin and lick our eyes as we sleep.

The psalm functions in part like a dance of poetry in motion. The theological ruminations of the writer swirl, leap, tap, and bend like trees in the wind. The movements at times are like a blurry image that sweeps past too quickly for one to make out the details. It is like an Indianapolis 500 race car that flies past one’s viewing location at over 200 miles per hour. You know the car is there, but the details are difficult to discern. What is the measure of God’s greatness? No one can discern it. Yet something can be said about it since there are traces of it in history, creation, and human experience.

The power of the writer’s poetry is that it doesn’t define everything like a math equation or narrative prose. It leaves holes for the imagination to fill and provides mounds on which readers can stand to see further than they could by standing on flat ground. The phrase “one generation commends your works to another” carries with it a great crowd of comments.

It evokes in my mind my grandparents’ generation of Upper Midwestern farmers who were primarily second-generation Norwegian immigrants whose theology was steeped in the Lutheranism of the home country from which their parents emigrated. That generation’s reflections on the activity of God were passed on to my parents, who then combined them with their own perceptions about the activities of God. I, in turn, took their amalgamation of theological musings and passed them on to my children.

The string of stories weaves back and forth like a large tapestry shaped on the loom of experience. There is not one story that doesn’t touch another. Each one feels the threads and carries the traces of hands that wove them together. Indelible marks are made as God’s activity is discerned, and they are carried forward in stories so subsequent generations might weave them with their own.

The writer of Psalm 145 conveys a theology steeped in historic reflection and communal experience. It provides hearers and readers with a profile page of sorts about the nature of God who is worthy of praise. God’s greatness is beyond measure. God’s activity has been in favor of the people of God. God abounds in mercy and love. God’s works are forever worthy of meditation. This psalm’s poetry is like midnight water lapping at the edges of the lakeshores of something we know but can’t quite make out. Yet we can discern something.

Artists are taught in their formal training to be attentive to everything and to the smallest of details. They are invited to think about the hundreds of insects, thousands of blades of grass, and millions of microbes in a single square foot of ground. To draw that one square foot takes patience and attention. It requires a willingness to reflect on what is there and what isn’t there.

As one begins to see the patterns of growth, the movement of insects, and the ways by which the grass moves as wind flows across it, they can begin to discern how to draw that which is before them. Like an Andrew Wyeth painting, the honing of a capacity to see carries with it more than just reproduction of what is there. It involves inner drawings that are crafted at the same time as that which is sketched on a page.

The practice of drawing can be an exercise of praise to God as one reflects on one’s life stories, ponders the splendor of God’s created world, and considers the possibilities of God’s activity in the present. Every time I read the phrases of this psalm, I am transported to places of reflection about the creative activity of the artist God, who still creates today. This brings forth praise.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for September 24, 2017.

“Whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20): For Paul, this was not theoretical. He wrote his letter to the Philippians while detained in Roman custody. “No one comes out—or precious few, at least,” the renowned orator Libanius would complain about the prison in Antioch a few centuries later.¹ Across the Roman Empire, prisons were notorious as places of hunger, disease, violence, and exposure. Death was a realistic prospect.

We should resist the temptation to spiritualize Paul’s incarceration. Philippians is a prison letter, written under conditions of terrifying constraint. English translations often mask the raw and brutal concreteness of Paul’s circumstances. When he speaks of his “chains” (desmoi, Philippians 1:7, 13–14, 21), this is not an ornate metaphor for imprisonment. One clue that allows archaeologists to identify the remains of ancient prisons are marks in the walls where shackles binding incarcerated persons were anchored. Such marks can still be seen, alongside graffiti etched by prisoners, in the underground chamber where condemned captives in Carales (modern Cagliari, Italy) awaited their public executions in the adjacent amphitheater.

Before reading Philippians, it is worth pausing to ponder this and other sobering images of Roman-era prisons available on the Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration Database (historyofincarceration.com).

“Dying is gain”

Paul and his friends in Philippi know the stakes. He could eventually be released from custody—likely after a punishing beating (see 2 Corinthians 11:25; Acts 16:22–23). He could die of slow neglect in prison. Or he could be executed.

Paul would prefer the latter. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better,” he insists (1:23). “Living is Christ and dying is gain” (1:21). It is easy to read Paul’s statements as expressions of his eager confidence that his death will usher in a glorious union with his Lord. And that is certainly an important part of what Paul is saying. But Paul’s talk of death as “gain” (kerdos) sounds another note, too.

It was a familiar idea in the Greco-Roman world that death offered a welcome relief for those overwhelmed by suffering. “If I die before my time, I account that gain [kerdos],” proclaimed the heroine of one classic tragedy, bemoaning her many troubles.² It was almost a cliché, a Greek way of saying you thought you’d be better off dead.³

So, says Paul, dying would be gain—an end to the darkness, filth, hunger, and exhaustion, all transformed into the glory of being with Christ. Read in this light, Paul’s words express a dogged and desperate hope in the victorious power of Christ. They also offer a vivid reminder of the mental and emotional cost of locking humans in cages.

After all, Paul is not the only prisoner to conclude that dying would be gain. In the Roman world, preventing those in prison from ending their suffering by suicide was an important duty of those tasked with guarding them. Today, suicide rates among incarcerated men are twice that of the free population. Among incarcerated women they are 10 times higher.⁴ Now, too, prison breeds despair.

Reading Paul’s letter to the Philippians provides a valuable opportunity for the modern church to reflect on how one ancient church responded to the prison’s dehumanizing logic.

“Partnership in the gospel”

When early Christians looked at the prison, they more often saw an instrument of tyranny and brutality than of justice. “Remember those who are in prison,” urged the writer of Hebrews, “as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured” (Hebrews 13:3).

For the believers in Philippi, this meant remembering their imprisoned apostle in prayer (Philippians l:19). But it also meant remembering his concrete needs. In the Roman world, prisoners were routinely underfed and underclothed, dependent for their survival on the support of friends and family. So, when the Philippians learned that Paul was in prison, they sent a believer named Epaphroditus with a gift to help him get by (4:10–20).

Crucially, Paul describes this gift not as an isolated act of charity but as the latest expression of an ongoing relationship of reciprocal exchange—their “partnership [koinōnia] in the gospel,” as Paul calls it earlier in the letter (1:5). The term koinōnia, which recurs in various forms throughout the letter, often described a joint business venture or partnership (1:7; 4:14–15).⁵ Thus, by the logic of Paul’s metaphor, the Philippian believers’ gift is not just a handout but, rather, an investment in their joint gospel project.

Paul, too, of course, has a contribution to make to this shared venture. In fact, it is his ongoing obligation to their partnership that convinces Paul that he would not, in fact, be better off dead. Yes, dying would be gain, Paul confesses. “But to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you” (1:24). Paul knows that he has work to do—“fruitful labor,” as he puts it (1:22). The Philippian believers are counting on him. “Since I am convinced of this,” he concludes, “I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith” (1:25).

Clearly, his partnership with the Philippian believers provided the imprisoned Paul with more than food and clothing. It also gave him hope, purpose, and belonging. In other words, as Sarah Jobe has noticed, his relationship of mutual support with the church at Philippi allowed Paul to “re-narrate” his identity as a prisoner. “Rather than regarding Paul as a charity case, recidivist, or person to be rehabilitated,” Jobe observes, “they treated him as an imprisoned friend, a moral authority, and a witness to the Christ who was arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed.”⁶

What would it look like, modern readers might ask, for the church today to regard our incarcerated brothers and sisters not simply as the objects of occasional charity but as vital partners in the work of the gospel?

Notes

1. Libanius, Orations 45.8, trans. Norman, LCL.
2. Sophocles, Antigone 461–62, trans. Lloyd-Jones, LCL.
3. D. W. Palmer, “‘To Die Is Gain’ (Philippians I 21),” Novum Testamentum 17 (1975): 203–218.
4. Adrian P. Mundt et al., “Worldwide Incidence of Suicides in Prison: A Systematic Review with Meta-Regression Analyses,” The Lancet Psychiatry 11, no. 7 (2024): 536–544.
5. Julian M. Ogereau, Paul’s Koinonia with the Philippians: A Socio-Historical Investigation of a Pauline Economic Partnership (Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
6. Sarah Jobe, “Paul the Repeat Offender,” The Christian Century, April 6, 2022, https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/why-was-apostle-paul-prison-so-often.