ECOPREACHER
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade (To view this resource in Spanish, click here.)
Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard mirrors the harsh realities of exploitative economic and agricultural systems, urging us to imagine a world that nurtures both land and people.
Here are ideas for reading and preaching Matthew 20:1-16, the parable of the workers in the vineyard. This is part of the EcoPreacher 1-2-3 series to equip preachers and congregations for engaging the Bible through an ecological lens. This text is assigned in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A.
Eco-Exegesis
Eco-exegesis is a method of interpreting the biblical text through a green lens using the principles of ecological theology.
Matthew 20:11-12
[The workers] grumbled against the landowner, 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.’
It’s tempting to spiritualize the parable commonly known as “the workers in the vineyard” in Matt. 20:1-16. Some use the adage about the last being first and the first being last to tell those who are ‘last’ to wait for their reward in the afterlife rather than push for justice now. People in positions of privilege may also use this adage to dismiss calls for equity, arguing that marginalized groups should ‘wait their turn’ for justice.
But if we bring the workers and the land to the foreground, we see a different perspective. The parable has an important social and economic critique. It’s a critique that Jesus wants us to wrestle with.
Matthew 20:1-16 is not the only passage with a sharp eye on the ruthless economy of Jesus’s day. The stories about the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:23-35) and the tenant farmers (Matt. 21:33-45) also feature a wealthy man with the power to make or break the lives of his servants and workers. The parable of the workers in the vineyard focuses on day laborers. These were people in “an extremely vulnerable class that were regarded, in some ways, as lower than slaves” (T. Wilson Dickinson, The Green Good News, Cascade, 2019, 100).
Day laborers, who made up about 5–15% of the population in Jesus’s day, often existed in a liminal space outside family structures and stable communities. William Herzog makes this point in Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994). Landowners hired day laborers for the most difficult work to avoid damaging their own property—their slaves.
What we must notice is that today’s migrant workers also occupy a liminal space and suffer from exploitation. Like the day laborers in Jesus’s time, they are treated as expendable and excluded from the wealth they produce for landowners. They have no property, no rights, and no support system. They remain at the mercy of those who hire them.
But the landowner grants this mercy, doesn’t he? He calls himself “generous” (v. 15) because he gives the workers hired at the end of the day the same pay as those who worked more hours. Because of this, traditional interpretations often equate the landowner with God. But is this really the case?
If so, then the ramifications are troubling. If God is the vineyard owner, then God does nothing to address the system that drives these day laborers deeper into poverty. God also pits the laborers against one another, just as the landowner does in the story. And God is, frankly, unfair to those who are most in need. In other words, this behavior is not characteristic of the God Jesus proclaimed.
So, how is the “kingdom of heaven” like this vineyard owner? Jesus holds this parable up like mirror, reflecting an exploitative economic system. What we see should make us question our role in that system.
Wilson Dickinson suggests that Jesus’s parable urges listeners to “call into question the order and empire that creates a situation where people are forced off their land.” As communities lose resources, people become desperate. “People are forced to work for the elite, who imagine themselves to be the owners of God’s creation to do with as they please” (Dickinson, 102). Perhaps this parable reveals the jagged truth about an economic system that seems to run so smoothly for those who enjoy sweet grapes on their plates.
In this light, the parable’s final line may not function as an aphoristic moral of the story. Rather, we might hear it as Jesus making a rueful observation. “It reveals the hollow generosity that lines people up so as to maintain the asymmetrical power of the rich giving scraps from their abundance to the poor, and which fosters antagonisms between those who should find solidarity” (Dickinson, 102).
Preachers can invite listeners to encounter this parable from the perspective of the underpaid, often undocumented day laborers of our own time. These workers are the unseen providers of the food we eat every day. Churches that partake of Holy Communion might inquire about the labor conditions of those who pick the grapes for the sacramental wine.
Preachers might also imagine this parable from the perspective of Creation itself. How would things change for the vineyard if the workers co-owned the land? How might land and people flourish if everyone shared equally in its abundance?
The Eco-Idea is one succinct statement that tells us who God is and/or what God does in relation to Creation and how we should respond as people of faith.
Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard exposes the harsh realities of our exploitative economic and agricultural systems, calling us to imagine a society that nurtures both land and people.
Eco-Questions are what we can ask to help a congregation draw out the implications of the Eco-Exegesis and Eco-Idea.
- Do you know who picked the produce that you have eaten today? Where did it come from, and what were the workers paid for their labor? Have you thought about undocumented workers and what they endure?
- In what ways does your denomination support farmworkers? How can you support these efforts?
Eco-Actions are ways that a congregation might respond to the Eco-Idea and Eco-Questions. One of these possibilities may fit your ministry context.
- Visit the United Farm Workers website to learn about how they organize to protect agricultural workers.
- Host a forum to learn about the efforts to fight for the rights and legalization of farm workers. Invite representatives from workers’ unions to speak to your church. Organize congregants to join the campaign asking for Congress to act.
- In your prayers, lift up agricultural workers who endure deadly heat because of the worsening climate crisis. Take up a special offering to support farm workers, and donate it here.
EcoPreacher 1-2-3 is a partnership between the Rev. Dr. Leah Schade and the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, publishers of Eco Bible, a Jewish ecological commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures. We provide Creation-centered sermon preparation that is short, accessible, and based on a solid biblical foundation. To see other EcoPreacher ideas and to sign up to receive future EcoPreacher 1-2-3 installments, click here.
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade is a seminary professor, ordained minister, and grant director of Compelling Preaching in a Climate-Changed World, a partnership of Lexington Theological Seminary, Creation Justice Ministries, and The BTS Center. Her opinions are her own.
Leah is the author of Preaching and Social Issues: Tools and Tactics for Empowering Your Prophetic Voice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015). She is the co-editor of Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Her book, Introduction to Preaching: Scripture, Theology, and Sermon Preparation, was co-authored with Jerry L. Sumney and Emily Askew (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).
*Credit for featured image: Unsplash.
