This coming Sunday is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The work day is over and now it is time to distribute the wages for all the workers. It is interesting that it is the “manager” or “steward” (epitropos), not the owner, who calls the workers and gives them their pay/reward (misthos). They are the ones who dispense what the owner considers right and just. They are also the ones who take the flak from those who disagree. I think we can all relate to being the one thrust into the middle of something not necessarily of our own making.

The whole problem at the end of the parable is the landowner’s doing. Not because he paid them all the same, but because he paid the last first. This all could have been avoided by paying the first at the beginning so they are not around to see what the last ones are paid. But then this is a parable and Jesus’ intent is likely to let the disciples see what happens when Mt 19:30 is acted out: “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  What happens is the first hired witness the last one’s getting paid, which resulted in the first hires to think that they would get more (v. 10).

The word for “think” (nomizo) does not refer so much to a rational process (as logizomai), but “to assume,” “to presume,” “to suppose,” based on what one expects to happen or what is “customary” or the “rule” (which are meanings for the root nomos). Usually such assumptions are wrong as in its other uses in Mt: 5:17; 10:34.

Image credit: Laborers in the Vineyard, icon | Public Domain | found on Flickr Fr. Ted