Resentment and Rejoicing

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

16th Sunday after Trinity, Year A

Matthew 20.1–16, Jonah 3.10–end of 4

20 September 2026

Remember Gavin’s sermon last Sunday, the macaques and the grapes and cucumbers?

Well here we are again…with the macaques, you might remember, they were rewarded for their labour with a bit of cucumber.

But if, for the same labour, one macaque received cucumber and the other received the far more coveted grapes, then it was down tools and a rather noisy labour strike.

 In today’s Gospel, it’s not the reward that’s changed, but the amount of work that’s gone into it — work all day in the gruelling sun and then find that those who laboured for an hour in the cool of evening will get paid the same as you.

You might feel, as my people used to say, like a chump. [Perhaps the macaques might say, ‘like a chimp’  … but never mind]

 But whether the anger is over the size of the wage, or the hours of work, in the context of the Gospel stories there is one theme:

Our reluctance to rejoice when mercy and generosity is shown to our neighbour. Our failure to delight in the blessings that others have received.

 And we’re not even talking about unfair extravagance — 

Lord you could run with this parable the wrong way, preach a sermon justifying the wages of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos…

We’re not talking about unfair extravagance. We’re talking about someone getting the same as you.

Though as we each, secretly and individually know, there’s no one more deserving than your self.  Of course.

 I am enormously blessed by my children. To be sure there was a time when they were very young that it was tempting to buy a digital scale just to show our twins that they were each receiving no less ice cream than their sibling….

But for the most part, they genuinely delight in one another’s successes and triumphs.

They are proud of each other’s achievement, and they grin when the other receives some dumb luck stroke of fortune.

 Sadly, this is not a universal phenomenon. Look at the comments this weekend by Reform’s Danny Kruger, that refugees who come across the channel in small boats are “wealthy men” — because they have given over their family’s life savings to pay the wolves who will smuggle them across the fatal waters of the Channel.

 It’s a slick political move, using lies and misinformation to stoke the resentment and fear of voters who themselves are struggling to make ends meet.

Pitting the poor against the destitute, while accepting under the table millions from the very industries who have created such vast inequalities.

 If I go much further on that topic, I really will need to re-read Gavin’s sermon on forgiveness. So let’s take a breath and examine that resentment —

  the kind that goes after the RNLI for rescuing those at sea,

  the kind that grumbles against the landowner, the kind that cares more about the other guy losing than about what we have — and ask ourselves where we are in the story.

 I wonder, as we might say in the lower Ramsey room.  I wonder when you’ve been the worker who grumbled about everyone else who didn’t work as hard?

 I wonder when you’ve been Jonah, tired, hungry, homesick and resentful, maybe hoping God will put the hurt on somebody, please? And I wonder when you’ve been that worker hired at the very last moment?

 I don’t always hear the hours of boredom, fear and hunger which the last-minute workers endured:

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?' They said to him, `Because no one has hired us.'

 It was looking like a day without food for those un-hired workers  and for the families depending on them.

I don’t know if you’ve ever gone by a street-corner  where day-labourers are waiting for work. In south Seattle it’s still a common sight.  Busy and bustling in the morning with men and women hoping for work, that gravel parking lot corner is a pretty sad and hungry place by early afternoon.

 In Jesus’ parable, the last-minute workers are thrilled to have received a full day’s wages; they have finally gotten what they have hoped for all day during the long hours standing, waiting hungry in the marketplace.

Jesus had been teaching the good and difficult news that God’s Kingdom was open to tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, foreigners, even women and other undesirables.

The generosity of God’s kingdom was a generosity justly given to everyone,  with neither penalty nor favour to the well-dressed and well-connected.

To protest about God’s love for the outcast was to be like the whining workers; to protest about the generous mercy of God’s love was to fall into the trap of Jonah’s bitter, humiliated pride.

 For Matthew’s community some fifty years later, Jesus’ parable became a story of how God’s abundant grace could be given to foreigners and Johnny-come-lately Gentile, even as it had long been promised for Jewish members of the church whose families had followed God for generations, through slavery, exodus, and exile.

For us today, where are your resentments?

At some point you took on backbreaking work — physical, emotional, intellectual — having to endure while others have not?

It may have been in the workplace, in an academic setting, in taking care of an ageing relative or a family crisis…

When have you been given a sliver of cucumber when others received grapes?

And at what point does that resentment, justified as it might feel, prevent you from loving your neighbour and rejoicing in their blessings?

 At weekday eucharists, I always include in the intercessions some time for thanksgiving — for our daily bread and the gifts we’ve received this day, but also thanksgiving to God for the blessings that others have received.

Rejoicing with those celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, other occasions of joy.

 Because the practice of rejoicing for the blessings of others is a great spiritual discipline and an antidote to the violent exploitation and tribalism of this day. Being part of a church community is a great place to practice this.

One of the many things I love about St Bene’t’s  is that some of us have been here for decades, some of us for a few years, some of us for only a few months  or even just today.

Some of us, as I once had, have spent years away from church, standing around idle in the marketplace, if you will — consciously or unconsciously waiting for that call to the vineyard.

 And yet all of us receive the most generous gift, at this altar, whenever we are called.

We’re first-hour workers and we’re last-minute arrivals, all of us, by God’s grace, receiving forgiveness and love in abundance.

And all of us called to imitate Christ — freely sharing God’s merciful love.