GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 20TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 19 AUGUST 2026

Matthew 20:1-16a.  Our gospel reading today is one of Jesus’ striking parables of the Kingdom of God.  It concerns a vineyard, one of the great images of the people of Israel collectively.  Its owner/master is the Lord.  The grape harvest has come ripe much at the same time, as grape harvests usually did, and had to be taken in over a short period of intensive work to avoid the rains which usually fell right after,  the Lord of the vineyard calls workers to bring in  the grapes (divine vocation is the issue here) and agrees with them that they would receive a day’s pay at the end.  But the Lord continues to call in workers at various times in the day, agreeing with them for the same pay.  At the end of the day, all the workers are called together to be paid, and they are paid exactly the same amount.  Those who came first or earlier complained that this was unjust; they would be right in ordinary civil life, but this is the Kingdom of God, which is radically different from it.  The Lord asks the workers why they grudge his divine generosity.  He asks them whether the Lord of the vineyard can do as he sees fit as to his generosity and compassion and tells them that  in his vineyard (his Kingdom) ‘the last will be first and the first will be last’ -- a principle that Jesus has frequently taught (for example, see ch. 19:30).  The ways of the Kingdom can be as much as a total reverse of human society; the Lord’s Kingdom ways are not our ways.  In the Kingdom, the abundance of God’s grace is available to all equally.  Our vocation is to live that grace and show something of God’s abundant and generous grace to all we meet.  That is the way of the Kingdom.