A Fermata on Fairness: Matthew 20:1-16

On August 5, 2010, the world learned of a catastrophe deep beneath the surface of Chile’s Atacama Desert. The San José copper and gold mine had collapsed, trapping 33 men more than 2,000 feet underground. For 17 days, there was silence. The world feared the worst. Then, a miracle: a note attached to a probe sent deep into the earth read, “Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33,” which translates to, “We are well in the shelter, the 33 of us.”

What followed was a marathon of human ingenuity and endurance. For 69 days, a global team of engineers and rescuers worked tirelessly to drill an escape shaft, while the miners below organized themselves with military discipline, rationing food and keeping hope alive in the crushing darkness. The world watched, captivated.

As the rescue day approached, a fundamental question arose, one that pricked at our innate sense of order and justice: Who comes out first? Should it be the oldest? The youngest? The weakest? The strongest, to help with the rescue? The one who had been there the longest, the shift supervisor? Every possible metric of fairness was debated by news anchors and armchair experts around the globe. This question, of order, of precedence, of what is right and just, always brings me back to one of Jesus’ most unsettling and beautiful parables: the Laborers in the Vineyard.

You know the story from Matthew 20. A landowner goes out at dawn to hire laborers for a denarius a day. He goes out again at 9 a.m., at noon, at 3 p.m., and even at 5 p.m., just an hour before quitting time, hiring more workers each time. When the day ends, he instructs his foreman to pay everyone, starting with those who were hired last. And to the shock of everyone, the workers hired for only one hour receive a full denarius. The workers who toiled all day, watching this unfold, begin to bubble with anticipation. If the one hour guys got a full day’s wage, surely they, who had borne the heat and burden of the entire day, would receive much more.

But they don’t. They also receive a denarius, the exact wage they had agreed to. And they are furious. “This isn’t fair!” they grumble. “You’ve made them equal to us!”

I’ll be honest with you. As a pastor, as a spiritual director, as a human being who has logged long hours in my own metaphorical vineyards, my gut reaction is always with the grumblers. My inner lawyer stands up and shouts, “Objection!” It grates against every system based on merit we have ever known. It offends our deeply ingrained belief in reward based on effort, in fairness, in justice. We are the workers who showed up early. We have been putting in the time, bearing the heat of the day. And this story feels like a slap in the face.

This is the point where the parable forces a fermata, a sacred pause. It stops our frantic song of earning and deserving and forces us to hold the note, to look up from our work and reconsider everything.

The first thing we notice when we pause is that the landowner isn’t actually unjust. He is not unfair. He paid the first workers exactly what they agreed to. He broke no contract, violated no law. Their complaint isn't rooted in injustice, but in something far more insidious: comparison. Their contentment with their own wage vanished the moment they looked sideways and saw the outrageous generosity extended to someone else. Jesus diagnoses this perfectly when the landowner asks, “Is your eye wicked because I am good?”

This question is the absolute heart of the parable, and the original Greek language gives it a piercing clarity that we often miss in English. The phrase translated as a “wicked eye” is ophthalmos poneros. In Jewish culture of the time, this was a specific and powerful idiom. An “evil eye” or a “wicked eye” did not just mean a look of malice; it specifically referred to a spirit of stinginess, envy, and jealousy. It was the eye that looks upon another’s blessing and begrudges it. It’s the gaze of a person who cannot stand to see others prosper.

The opposite was a “good eye,” which meant generosity and an open hand.

Now consider the landowner’s description of himself. When he asks, “…because I am good?” the Greek word is agathos. Here, agathos doesn't simply mean morally upright or nice. In this context, it carries the undeniable connotation of being generous, benevolent, and magnanimous.

So, the landowner is asking something much more pointed than our English translation suggests. He is essentially saying, “Is your eye stingy and envious because my nature is to be radically generous? Has my goodness made you sick with resentment?”

The poison wasn't in the wage; it was in their eye. The problem wasn’t the landowner’s action, but their perception, a perception clouded by a spirit that calculates and compares rather than receives and rejoices. This is a deeply pastoral and convicting insight for us today.

How often is our own dissatisfaction not about what we have, but about what others have? Our eye becomes wicked, and the goodness of God begins to look like unfairness to us.

The parable invites us to shift our gaze. Instead of looking sideways at the other workers, we are invited to look up at the landowner. The story isn't really about labor economics; it’s a revelation of the character of God. The central question isn't "What is a fair wage?" but "Who is this Master who is so extravagantly generous?"

He is a Master who sees the desperate. He goes out again and again, seeking those standing idle in the marketplace. He sees not just their unemployment, but likely their shame, their hunger, their fear that they will return home to their families with nothing. His final trip at the eleventh hour isn't about getting the last bit of work done; it's an act of pure compassion. He hires them not because he needs them, but because they need him.

And this brings us back to that dark mine in Chile. After weeks of debate, the rescuers devised a plan. The first man to the surface would be one of the healthiest, in case the escape capsule malfunctioned. After him would come the weakest. And finally, the strongest and most experienced would come out last.

On October 12, 2010, the rescue began. One by one, the men were lifted from the earth in the Fénix 2 capsule. The first man up was Florencio Ávalos. Can you imagine the scene as he emerged into the night air, into the arms of his weeping family, into the cheers of a nation? He was alive. He was free.

Now, imagine if Florencio had pulled up a chair and grumbled. Imagine him complaining that the fifteenth man rescued was getting the same hugs, the same medical care, the same celebration. Imagine him being furious that the final man out, who had to wait an entire extra day in that subterranean prison, would receive the very same gift he did: life.

The thought is absurd. Why? Because the gift was so total, so absolute, that the order and timing of its reception were rendered meaningless. The reward was not a tiered system of benefits based on who waited longest. The reward was rescue. It was a return to the sun, to family, to breath itself. It was a denarius of infinite value, given equally to all.

This is the economy of grace. The denarius in Jesus’ parable is salvation. It is belonging. It is being welcomed into the Kingdom of God. It is a gift so profound that it shatters our pathetic human scales of fairness. Whether you came to faith as a child, bearing the heat of a long life of discipleship, or whether you cried out to God on your deathbed in the eleventh hour of your life, the gift is the same: total, unmerited, extravagant grace. The thief on the cross worked for no more than an hour, and his reward was Paradise itself.

The final man to be rescued from the San José mine was the shift supervisor, Luis Urzúa. He was the "first" in terms of responsibility, yet he was the "last" to see the sun. In this kingdom, the kingdom of sacrificial love, the first willingly becomes the last.

This parable is a fermata for our souls. It asks us to pause our grumbling, to stop comparing, to cease keeping score. It invites us to stop looking at our reward and start looking at our Rescuer. It reminds us that we are all workers hired at the eleventh hour, saved not by the length or quality of our labor, but by a landowner whose nature is agathos, radically good, who ventured into the dark marketplace of our lives and, out of sheer compassion, invited us into His vineyard. The relief we should feel isn't that we are paid what we are worth, but that we aren't.

Let us be content, then, not with our wage, but with our Master. Let us find our joy not in being first or last, but simply in being found, in being hired, in being home.