Resenting God’s Justice

Have you ever identified with characters in Jesus’ parables who are on the wrong side of the Gospel message? Like the Prodigal Son parable where almost everyone in church identifies with the older, dutiful son who feels cheated. And as someone who served on the Board of Interfaith Worker Justice and scripted a comic book on wage theft, there’s something about paying different workers the same wage for differing hours that rubs me the wrong way. But of course, I’m missing the point.

We tend to think about justice in terms of what people deserve. If I work twelve hours and you work one hour, I should receive more. If I follow the rules and you do not, I should receive some benefit for having done so. Or at least get to watch you being punished. 

But Jesus presents us with a landowner who operates according to a different logic and a different concept of justice. The landowner does not cheat the workers who came first. He pays them exactly what he promised. They only complain when they see what he gives to someone else.

The landowner’s question: “Are you envious because I am generous?” shakes things up. The issue is not whether the first workers received too little. The issue is whether they can rejoice that someone else received more than expected. They got what they needed.

God’s justice, Jesus suggests, is not simply about giving everyone exactly what they have earned. God’s justice is infused with generosity, mercy, and concern for what people need. Think about those workers hired at five o’clock. Why were they still standing there? When the landowner asks, they answer, “Because no one has hired us.” Jesus does not tell us why. Perhaps they were older, weaker, the wrong race or religion, or disabled. Whatever the reason, they had waited all day hoping someone would give them work.

And a one-hour wage would not feed their families. The landowner therefore gives them something they have not earned according to the ordinary economic rules of the marketplace. He gives them enough for the day.

God’s justice asks, “What does this person need?” This can sound beautiful until God’s generosity benefits someone we believe deserves less than we do. I see this on our Wellfleet social media. Recently, on Next Door, the poet Marge Piercy wrote about a hardworking immigrant family whose housing situation moved her to call for more affordable housing in Wellfleet. A fellow responded (four times!) with outraged posts about how he never took nothing from nobody and worked hard to buy his house. 

Setting aside the questions of G.I. Bill benefits, the old unlimited homeowner’s interest tax deduction, less income inequality in his day, White privilege, etc., he would begrudge assistance to a hardworking medical imaging technician because of a perceived unfairness to himself.

That is the challenge of the workers who arrived first. They are not angry until they compare themselves with others. They received what they had been promised. But another person's good fortune suddenly makes their own good fortune seem inadequate.

Why did that person get a second chance after making such terrible choices? Why should someone who contributed less receive the same help? Why should God forgive someone who caused enormous harm? Why should someone who discovered faith late in life receive the same welcome as someone who tried to live faithfully for decades?

The parable does not tell us that our questions are foolish. Instead, Jesus asks us to imagine justice from God's perspective.

Every one of us lives partly by grace. We have received things we did not earn: love, forgiveness, opportunities, second chances, the kindness of other people, and ultimately life itself. The mistake of the first workers is not that they value commutative justice. It is that they have forgotten grace.

The challenge of this parable, then, may not simply be to accept God's generosity toward us. That is relatively easy. The harder challenge is to accept God's generosity toward other people—especially those whom we think have not earned it. So, I have three questions for us as we continue our day:

• When someone receives forgiveness, can I rejoice?
• When someone receives help they did not earn, can I see grace rather than unfairness?
• When God welcomes someone I would have placed at the end of the line, can I accept that God's line may look very different from mine?

Let’s continue in prayer….

Jeff Korgen is a member of the C21 Center's Pray It Forward community. He offered the above reflection on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. It is shared with his permission. 

Learn more about Pray It Forward here.