Picked Last

If you ever had the experience as a child of being picked last while the playground sports teams were being divided up, you might resonate with this story that Jesus tells in Matthew 20.

Growing up, I never really understood this parable. It is the story of the generous landowner, or the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, but being the person who followed the rules and worked hard, I never thought this story was fair. How was it fair to give the same amount of money to those workers who were hired last as those who were hired first? Was Jesus really saying that it did not matter how hard a person worked, that their reward would be the same?

After spending some time on this parable, I realized that I immediately identified with those workers who had been working all day, and who were incensed that the landowner would give the same amount of wages to everyone, despite what time they were hired.

I then decided I would put myself in the position of those workers who were hired last, and I then began to ask, why were these workers hired last? I began to examine the landowner’s interaction with the workers in verses 6-7: "About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' 7 " 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard [italics added]" (NRSV).

It was the end of the day, but no one had hired them; why? Everyone else had been hired, but they had not.

If we were hiring people to do manual labor for us, we would want the strongest, possibly the youngest, or the most able people we could find. (I have moved quite a few times in the last few years, seeking assistance from many teenagers and college students, and I can attest to the need for strong and able helpers!)

Therefore, is it possible that these “eleventh hour” workers were not the strongest, youngest, or most able? Had they been rejected by other landowners? Moreover, would these workers have had families to feed, mortgages, and bills to pay? How would these workers have felt to be hired at the end of the day, when no one else would hire them? What would their response have been to the landowner’s generosity when he paid them the same amount as the others?

When we look at it from the “picked last” group’s perspective, we see another side to this parable. This parable illustrates how far-reaching God's love is. This parable tells us that the Kingdom of God is for everyone, that despite your background, your intelligence, or your socioeconomic status, you are welcome in God's Kingdom.

For those of us who have ever felt not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not talented enough, God still chooses us! God chooses us even when everyone else has passed us by or rejected us. We may be picked last, but as Jesus says in the verse preceding this parable in 19:30, "But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first" (NIV).