Matthew 20:1-16
[Jesus said] “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.
6 And 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?’
7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’
9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius.
11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 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.’
13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
My maternal grandmother loved the reality TV series Survivor. Mamaw continued tuning in to see who was getting voted off the island each week for years after the show’s prime. If nothing else, that series has shown us what happens when people must live in difficult conditions together—promises are made in one breath and broken in the next, tempers are short and flare often, and everything is a source for complaining.
Needless to say, us humans aren’t our best selves 
when we’re hungry or thirsty. This state is so familiar that Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary in 2018: hangry. It’s a word coined to describe the hunger-induced anger and irritability we’ve all experienced—either as perpetrator or victim—and I think it also describes the groups of people we encounter in both of today’s texts.
In Exodus, we find ourselves with the Israelites in the wilderness. Leading up to this point, they were, by the skin of their teeth, on the other side of the Red Sea celebrating Yahweh’s victory over Pharaoh and their new-found freedom. Just prior to this passage, they spent a bit of time at an oasis in Elim, perhaps to regain their strength and prepare for the journey to come. But now that they’ve set out, they find themselves in an episode of Survivor: Desert Wilderness. The inhospitable environment of what we know as the Sinai Peninsula is the place the bible imagines as a land of chaos and death. And the Israelites are hangry and bent on rebellion.
God hears their complaints and decides to respond with the food they need…and a test of their ability to follow instructions. My guess is that Moses…who’s the guy on the ground with this motley crew…isn’t so sure that’s the best response for a moment like this. He seems to understand that what these tired, starving, barely surviving people in the wilderness need is something more along the lines of a pep talk, or a promise.
So Moses chooses his words carefully and says to the Israelites: “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord.” And God shows up. God responds to the people’s need for assurance and for a promise, accompanied by a visible sign of presence and provision.
But God also enacts a plan to shape these former slaves into holy people. Before their liberation, the Israelites only knew life in Egypt, an empire where they constructed storehouses for food, where they were immersed in a hoarding, competitive atmosphere, and where human lives were abused and broken in order to fuel the greed of the elite.
In this passage, we see God’s desire to form the Israelites into a different kind of people, a different kind of community. They are to be a people of daily bread. As one preacher writes, “In the ritual practice of daily gathering of food that falls from the sky and appears on the ground, they will learn, with their very bodies, to come to trust God; they will learn to share their basic human resources equitably, and the keeping of the Sabbath will remind them that they are more than slaves of the empire; they are human beings who, like God at creation, require rest and rejuvenation. Even in crisis, with chaos all around, Sabbath practice is essential to the Israelites’ lives and their emerging identities.”
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get hangry because I’ve gotten caught up in the busy-ness of life and haven’t fed myself spiritually or paused to notice God for hours or days on end. My guess is that for many of us demanding schedules, internalized expectations about what life should look like, and the pressure to keep all the plates spinning with smiling faces are some of the leading causes of our spiritual hangriness. Like the Israelites in the desert, sometimes all we need is daily bread and Sabbath rest—enough grace for the moment or day we’re in and a bit of time to re-center our hearts and minds and spirits in the love of God.
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Fast-forward to the New Testament, and the day-laborers we encounter in Matthew are also hangry, in need of daily bread and Sabbath rest. For these workers, each day begins with the same struggle: no work, no food. They start each morning worrying if there will be enough. And the generosity of the vineyard owner intervenes in that world of worry and desperation. We can imagine the relief of the first workers, who know they have the security of a full day’s work. The later workers have enough patience to keep waiting. When they’re hired, there’s no mention of money — the owner tells them that he’ll pay them “whatever is right.” Anything will be better than nothing.
Work occupies their minds and fills the day, but with the end of it, stress and panic return. As the last workers are paid a whole day’s wage, the first workers begin to imagine what greater sums they might be paid after working a full day. When they receive the exact same pay, they get mad and forget they’re getting what they agreed to. They forget the sense of relief and security they had at the start of the day when they were hired.
Hearing the workers grumble, the vineyard owner says to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you…So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” With those words, the vineyard owner blows apart the workers’ mentality—and ours—of what is good and right and fair.
With those words, we who are often the first, come face-to-face with our assumptions that we somehow deserve more or better. This story contradicts our tightly-held notions that if we follow the rules and work hard, we should get ahead. We should get the good grade, the promotion, or the raise. We should receive recognition for our years of loyal service. We should be first. And those who are less privileged or less fortunate or less good should not expect to receive the same rewards. They should be last.
And because this is a parable about the kingdom of heaven, it turns out that the vineyard owner isn’t the only one creating a new world order. God does not play by our rules, either. And that often makes us rule-following Presbyterians really squirmy. But what if we could sit in the discomfort long enough to hear the challenge Jesus offers and be transformed?
As one preacher asks, “What if instead of asking why those first-hired workers weren’t paid more, we asked why anyone had to stand out in the marketplace early in the morning, desperately hoping for the chance to secure only one day of work? What if we asked more pointed questions about why the landowner has all of the power, and the workers have all the vulnerability? What if the economy wasn’t structured in order to maximize profits for an already wealthy landowner, and was instead structured to ensure that everyone had what they needed to be sustained?”
I think those questions point to new ways to live in light of this great first, last/last, first reversal. And I think they point us to the kingdom of heaven, because sometimes, we’re the hangry first-hired laborers, who need our collective privilege and our ego and our perspective to be checked, and we need to be changed by Jesus so that as a community of faith we might more clearly point to God’s intended order—flourishing for all; daily bread and sabbath rest for all.
In a world that is hangry—hungry for food, hungry for community and connection, hungry for love and justice; and angry at our seeming inability to heal age-old divisions, angry at the pace we have to keep to make ends meet, angry at the expectations of a never-enough society—sometimes we need the reminders of daily bread and Sabbath rest, and sometimes we need the challenge and transformation of Jesus’ parable. Often, we need both the promise and the nudge.
Because the good news of these stories are ours to carry into a hangry world as we seek to live and to love and to use our resources like the kingdom of heaven is already here. The last will be first and the first will be last; may all know the gifts of daily bread and Sabbath rest. This day and each day. Amen.