The Why

Reflection for September 20, 2026 – Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the landowner who pays all of the workers of his vineyard a just daily wage, reminding them that “the last will be first and the first will be last.” Find today’s Gospel here.

Sometimes, the Gospel takes everything you think you know about Jesus, throws it in a box, shakes it violently, dumps it on the floor, looks you in the eye and says: “Clean it up.”

And there you are, picking up the pieces, wondering how, after 2,000 years, someone can still keep you guessing.

Today is one of those Gospels. We know Jesus as a champion of the poor. We envision him as a social justice warrior. And now he’s advocating for time theft in the workplace? Make it make sense.

Well, at its heart, today’s Gospel is a story about who gets what. A story about comparison, which we are told is the thief of joy — but without comparison, nothing would ever get done. In this world, wages are set, court cases are settled, international borders are drawn, all by comparing one entity to another and evaluating that comparison to make a judgment.

What this Gospel doesn’t tell us is the “why.” The workers who labored longest in the vineyard feel cheated because those who showed up later earn the same wage. This would be egregious — unless we consider that the only criteria used in the comparison is the length of the work day’s duration. Quality and efficiency of work is never even mentioned. For all we know, those all-day workers could have been standing around fanning themselves, and should feel lucky to get what they did.

“Why” is a question we ask a lot in this life. Why did my dad die? Why did I get cancer? Why did my husband lose his job? As we pick up the pieces of today’s Gospel, we should ask ourselves this: when we know what we know about Who decides who gets what, do we have to know the “why?”

©LPi