Is Your Eye Evil?
Sermon by The Rev. Hannah Wilder preached on September 20, 2026 at St. Paul’s, Matthew 20:1-16, Year A, Proper 20.
I don’t know about you, but for me, this parable offends something deep inside me, my sense of justice and fairness. It’s a hard one for me. How about you? A landowner hires workers to work his vineyard. He does this all day, and even at five o’clock—when the workday is almost over—he goes out one more time. He says to the workers: “Why are you standing here idle all day?” And they answer, “Because no one has hired us.” Maybe they were older. Maybe they were slower. Maybe they had a disability. Did you know that less than 23% of disabled people are employed in this country? And none of them are employed full-time. 77% of disabled people are not employed! Back to the parable: These were the workers nobody wanted. Whatever the reason, at 5 o’clock, the landowner says, “Come on. There’s room for you too.”
Then payday comes. And the early workers, the muscular ones who were picked first, well they are FURIOUS! The landowner says, “Friend, I haven’t cheated you. You received exactly what we agreed upon.” And then comes the question I cannot stop thinking about: The landowner asks: “Are you envious because I am generous?” The Greek is even sharper. It says: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” What a question. The first workers received the agreed upon wage. The problem is that somebody else has as much as they do. Apparently, having enough isn’t enough if somebody we consider less deserving has enough too.
That gets uncomfortably close to home. Because so much of the world we have constructed depends on comparison. I’m doing well because somebody else is doing worse. (Remember that show COPS from the 90s? I have a friend who, when he’s feeling depressed about his life, he puts on that show just so he can realize that he’s not doing as bad as some people!) But we do have this internal, maybe un-examined mindset that says: I’m successful because somebody else failed. I’m important because somebody else is unimportant. I deserve what I have because I worked for it—and therefore somebody who has less must somehow deserve less. Jesus tells a story in which the landowner simply refuses to play that game.
There is a true story about two runners in 2012: Abel Mutai of Kenya and Iván Fernández of Spain. Mutai was leading a race. Near the finish line, he misunderstood the signs and stopped running, believing he had already crossed the finish. Fernández was right behind him. He could have passed Mutai. Instead, realizing what had happened, Fernández began yelling at Mutai to keep running. Mutai didn’t understand Spanish, so finally Fernández came up behind him and guided him across the finish line ahead of himself. Afterward someone asked Fernández why he had done it. Fernandez explained that Mutai had been winning the race. He had simply misunderstood the signs. The interviewer pressed him: But you could have won! And Fernández answered: What kind of victory would that have been?
That story stays with me because it exposes the same assumption Jesus exposes in this parable. Why is it so important that I have more than you? Why is your loss necessary for my victory? Why does your blessing diminish mine? Why does someone else receiving grace suddenly make grace seem unfair?
James Baldwin, African-American theologian, spent much of his life asking the US a version of this question. Why was it necessary to construct a society in which one group of human beings had to be above another? Whites above blacks? Because there is nothing inherent in humanity that makes one ethnic group superior to another. Nothing inherent that makes one class of people more worthy of dignity than another. So why do we keep building hierarchies? Why do we need somebody underneath us? Jesus asks the same question: Why is it important to you that they get less?
And that question reaches deeply into our ideas about money and merit. We like to say, “I earned everything I have.” But did we? Maybe I worked hard. But where did I get the capacity to work? Did I choose the brain I was born with? The body? The family? The country? The teachers who helped me? The opportunities I encountered? The people who opened doors? If we trace our lives all the way back, eventually we discover that underneath everything we call achievement is an enormous foundation of gift. Grace came first. Which makes generosity not simply charity. It becomes recognition. Everything is grace.
And there is another detail in this parable I love. The landowner doesn’t simply hand money to the people standing around at five o’clock. He says: Come into the vineyard. Come participate. Come build something. Come belong. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and liberation thinker, distinguished between charity that merely maintains inequality and generosity that changes the conditions that created inequality in the first place. It is good to feed hungry people. Jesus certainly fed hungry people. And this week many of us gathered to support the Community Food Pantry, which feeds thousands upon thousands of our neighbors. That work matters enormously. And it was a great event! If you didn’t make it this year I encourage you to attend Empty Bowls next year.
But the kingdom of God also asks another question: Why are people hungry in the first place? Why are people standing in the marketplace saying, “Nobody hired us”? Why do some people work full-time and still cannot afford housing? Why do some children inherit wealth while others inherit debt? Why do we tolerate systems that continually create people who must extend their hands in desperation? Christian generosity cannot stop at handing something to someone standing outside the vineyard. Eventually, the Gospel says: Come in. Come participate. Come have dignity. Come share in the abundance. Come help transform the world.
And maybe that is why the landowner keeps going back. Morning. Nine o’clock. Noon. Three o’clock. Five o’clock. He just keeps looking for more people. There is always room for somebody else. That is what Jesus spent his life doing! Always wandering out toward the people everybody else overlooked. Tax collectors. Sinners. Women. Children. Foreigners. The sick. The poor. The unwanted. “Come on. You too.”
And the people already inside keep saying: Wait a minute. You made them equal to us. Exactly. That is the scandal. And that is the kingdom of heaven. Not a world where everybody finally gets what they deserve. Thank God. But a world where everybody gets what they need. A world in which there is no first and last because nobody needs somebody beneath them anymore. A world where somebody else’s abundance does not threaten mine. A world where grace cannot be hoarded.
So Jesus leaves us with one uncomfortable spiritual practice this morning. When somebody else receives something good and something inside us tightens—when somebody else is welcomed, forgiven, included, fed, housed, promoted, celebrated, or blessed—notice it. Notice the eye. Notice the envy. And ask: Why is it important to me that they have less?
Because the landowner is still walking out into the marketplace. Still finding people nobody chose. Still saying, Come into the vineyard. There is room for you. There is work for you. There is enough for you. And there is enough for me too. That is not unfairness. Jesus calls it the kingdom of heaven.