September 20, 2026 | Word Out!
Download the Bulletin from September 20, 2026
READINGS
First Reading: Jonah 3:10—4:11
10 When God saw what [the people of Nineveh] did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
6 The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
Second Reading: Philippians 1:21-30
21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet I cannot say which I will choose. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that, by my presence again with you, your boast might abound in Christ Jesus because of me.
27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel 28 and in no way frightened by those opposing you. For them, this is evidence of their destruction but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ but of suffering for him as well, 30 since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16
[Jesus said to the disciples:] 1 “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 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?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 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.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
SERMON— Guest Pastor Pam Russell
Grace and peace to you from God, our Father and Mother, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s parable offended my father. He was a teacher, a member of a union, occasionally the president of the local chapter of the union, and this story just greatly disturbed his understanding of Jesus’s justice. “That’s just wrong,” he would say. And he critiqued the parable for me from a union organizer’s point of view. The flattening of the wages is only half the insult. What is the vineyard owner doing, going out into the marketplace hour after hour and bringing in more laborers? Wasn’t the first crew enough? Couldn’t he have hired the first laborers to work for a week or two instead of filling the field with so many people? And sure, it was harvest time, but how many people did the vineyard owner keep employed on an ongoing basis? Were there enough people working for him all the year round, servants, family members? Was he giving the people who worked for him continually a living wage?
From the perspective of a person who cares deeply enough to get involved in the nitty-gritty, often personally painful and vulnerable give-and-take of labor organizing, for heaven’s sake, this parable is a stumbling block. “It’s just wrong, and Jesus says this?! Come again?
But you know, with the parables of Jesus, we don’t have to think too long or too hard to remember, they’re not necessarily about what they seem to be about. Probably, Jesus does want us to think about the fragile existence of day laborers, and to weigh the justice of the wages of those who work extremely hard for extremely little reward. But that’s just the first superficial look at this parable.
It’s hard to miss the frame that Matthew, the Gospel writer, puts around this story. Jesus apparently liked to say, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” He must have said it often. So when Matthew crafts his great Gospel of Jesus, his story of the whole of Jesus’ ministry, he uses this parable to help us understand what Jesus means when he talks about the upside-down, surprising nature of the world over which God rules; God’s dominion.
“The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”
Here’s another reason I think this parable may have struck my father in a tender spot. He was a firstborn child. Me too. Those of us who were born first have the privilege of being the center of our parents’ lives, and sometimes even of our grandparents. And a person can get used to that. The sun rises and sets on the first child, and then along comes another character we never even imagined. Perhaps another, and another; competitors, before we even knew there was such a thing as competition.
The one thing about being first is that the first child is the smartest, at least for a little while. Speaks up first, runs fastest. So, with any luck, although the first child doesn’t remain the only child forever, he or she can remain the brightest star in the family firmament for a good long time. It has an edge, a distinct advantage in family, and maybe even in life.
But here is Jesus saying, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Exactly what a firstborn child has been harboring a deep-seated fear of from the moment the younger sibling’s face appeared in the receiving blanket. Just sets your teeth on edge!
The parable about the vineyard workers appears only in Matthew’s Gospel. None of the other Gospel writers seem to know it, or if they did, it puzzled them so much they overlooked it.
But Matthew actually puts it at a pivotal place in the Gospel. It comes after the story about the rich young man who wants to follow Jesus, but turns away when Jesus urges him to let go of his possessions and give what he has to the poor, in order to depend utterly on God. It is a story about addiction to material goods, or to anything, for that matter, that takes the place that only God can have in our lives.
And immediately following the parable of the workers in the vineyard, is a story about Jesus’ disciples themselves, the sons of Zebedee. Well, the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes and asks Jesus if her sons can be in the first and second place; First and Second Deputy in the Dominion of Heaven. They’ve given up their possessions, it seems, if they had any to give up, but they would like to be assured of power and prestige in return. And how strategic, to ask their mother to step in and request it for them!
So, the Parable of the Vineyard Workers stands right at the center of a story about material wealth and about power. And both stories do not focus on strangers, but on people who love God and want very much to do what is right, to do what is best, to follow Jesus, and Jesus says, “Come, and learn the way of the cross. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last, in my dominion.” Every one of the workers in the Lord’s vineyard has work to do, gathering the fruit that will be used for the wine in Christ’s feast: the whole point of having a vineyard.
Every one of the workers will not only not go hungry, but will receive the usual daily wage. And what is that? In Greek, it’s a denarius, about the amount of money it takes for a worker and family to have bread for the day; not wealth, but enough daily bread. The two concerns of the owner of the vineyard are these: that everyone gets to work, and everyone receives their daily bread.
Martin Luther, when he wrote about daily bread in the Small Catechism, said, “In fact, God gives daily bread without our praying for it, even to all evil people. But we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is, and to receive it with thanksgiving.”
That’s what the vineyard owner in this parable does. He causes the workers to recognize what their daily bread is, and challenges them to receive it with thanksgiving. Daily bread is the work in the vineyard. The vineyard, now, maybe that’s your vocation in the world, and maybe it’s your work in the dominion of God in Christ, where we are called to bring the gospel.
It isn’t an either-or choice. In a parable, all the meanings that you can bring to it have validity. So, how many of you in this congregation work for a living? Yeah, quite a few. All right. How many of you are retired and thought you’d put your feet up? Yeah, me too.
I imagine there are also people here who are not working and would like to be working, and I won’t ask you to raise your hands, but I do hope that if that is the situation with you, that the people in this congregation in this community see you, and are walking with you.
While you are looking for work at the usual daily wage, I know you know this: there’s work for you in Christ’s Vineyard, most especially, in the sector of the vineyard that is Queen Anne Lutheran Church. You have ministries here, to care for the community, to care for others, to make quilts. I’m not sure what the rest of those ministries are, but I can easily imagine that you are involved in the food bank, or in Immanuel Community Services, or maybe tutoring online a kid who’s speaking English as a second language, or helping with Sunday school…
As a church, we might as well give up our ministry altogether, if it weren’t for you, who, without working for a living, willingly work on a non-paid basis; and thank God for the Church Council for their willingness to say “yes.”
God, cause us to recognize what our daily bread is, and to receive it with thanksgiving. It isn’t just food, shelter, and a healthcare premium. Being called into the vineyard, welcomed by the vineyard owner, summoned to be all that we are able to be, to be all in. That in itself is daily bread; the necessary nourishment of our souls, as well as our bodies. God, cause us to recognize what our daily bread is, and to receive it with thanksgiving. Amen.