Prepare

Today’s text has us thinking about money, currency, values, and the cultural and economic systems in which we swim. It opens with the leaders again trying to ensnare Jesus with a question about paying taxes to the emperor. While this may seem straightforward on the surface, there are many underlying factors that complicate the story.

First, remember that Israel at this time is a conquered people. They are controlled by Rome. Taxes help fund the very system in which they live, including the soldiers and others who control their lives. Refusing to pay taxes would support the Israelites’ cause for freedom, but it would put Jesus in hot water with the authorities. Such a response could be considered treasonous.

Second, consider the coin itself that they use in this world. Each coin is inscribed with the phrase “Son of the Divinized Augustus,” which can be interpreted as “Son of a god.” This inscription is blasphemous, and according to Jewish law, even possessing or using these coins is unlawful because they represent an idol to a false god.

Costly Love

It would be easy to make this simply about money, but the question is much more complex. The people are part of an earthly kingdom, the Roman Empire, and they could no more escape this reality than they could escape breathing. It is simply the reality of being there: They must use these coins to pay their oppressors, and there is no escaping this reality.

But Jesus is pointing us toward a different reign, the reign of God, which eclipses the culture in which we are immersed. This reign extends beyond the physical reality of where we live and points us toward another reality that trades in a very different kind of currency. Jesus reminds us that while we are part of the life and circumstances of our current situation, we are also part of another story, one that belongs to God. This is what Jesus is asking: What belongs to God, and what are we to give to God?

Opening Activity: What Would This Buy?

Before the group meets, collect several different kinds of currency from your country. For example, if you are in the United States, find a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar bill, and so on. For added fun, you may also collect banknotes from different countries if they are available to you.

Start by talking about the different kinds of coins and bills you have collected. Pass these around and ask the students to take a close look at each item.

• What is something new they notice about the money that they have never seen before?
• Are there any features they have questions about? Do they wonder why they appear on the currency?
• Whose face or what images appear on the different denominations?
• Why do you think these people are represented on your currency?

If you collect money from other countries, do a little research before the group meets so you can share who or what appears on the different kinds of currency. You can find this information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofpeopleonbanknotes. Share your findings with the class.

Now, using your own currency, ask the students what they could buy with each denomination. For example, in the United States, ask what they could buy for a penny, a nickel, and so on.

Bonus: The Bazooka Bubblegum Song

Here is a fun song you can chant with the students. It is just a little silly, but it gets us thinking about what we use money for.

Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcGWd28LxPQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q6WAM6bERQ

Reflection Questions

1. Think about the money you looked at. What do you think these coins and banknotes say about the countries that use them and what those countries value?
2. Do you think you could live where you do without any money? Why or why not?

Text to Read Aloud

Matthew 22:15–22

Costly Love

Once again, a group of leaders, the Herodians and Pharisees, is trying to trap Jesus with a no-win proposition: do we pay taxes to the emperor or not? If Jesus says that they should pay taxes, the Pharisees would object because the coins are considered idolatrous and blasphemous. Every Roman coin bears an inscription identifying Caesar as the son of the Divine Augustus. Furthermore, these taxes go to the very empire, Rome, that is oppressing the Jewish people. The people would turn on Jesus.

If Jesus says that paying taxes is against Jewish law and identity, he could be arrested for sedition by the Herodians, who work closely with Rome to rule and control the people of Israel. There is nowhere to turn! It is a trap!

But Jesus answers by pointing to a very different reality. He asks them for a coin and then asks who is pictured on it. They acknowledge the inscription identifying Caesar. Rather than staking a claim one way or the other, Jesus acknowledges that their circumstances under Rome are not the only reality to which they are accountable. Jesus says, “Give (back) to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give (back) to God what is God’s.”

The verb in the Greek is about returning what does not belong to us, whether that means returning Caesar’s coin to Caesar or returning to God what belongs to God. By replying this way, Jesus acknowledges that one cannot avoid living within the Roman Empire; or for us, in our own towns, cities, and countries. Simply living where we do means living within that culture as best we can, just like the people of Israel, even if we are not crazy about paying taxes.

Costly Love

But we also live in the reign of God. In this reign, we owe a very different kind of currency. Jesus has taught the people that we do not trade in money but in love for others, giving it freely to care for those around us, even our enemies. We trade in justice, giving up our time, energy, and voice so that others may experience the freeing power of God’s grace. We pay in forgiveness, forgiving seventy times seven, as Jesus said. That way, we do not continue to carry hurt toward others, but can release them and us from our resentment.

And yes, we also give money, but these resources are not ultimately our own. They belong to God and are tools we can use to feed, support, nurture, and free others. We give up what we have so that others may have life.

Caesar’s currency, coins and taxes, is very different from God’s currency of love, justice, and mercy. God’s love is freely given, but it is also a costly love because it is not a love we can keep to ourselves. As children of God, we are called to give as God gives: freely, radically, and generously, so that all may have life. That is what it means to give back to God what is God’s.

Reflection Questions

1. What are some cultural realities we wish we could avoid but cannot because of where, when, and how we live? For example, do we feel pressure to succeed or to appear perfect?
2. What are some things we can give to help God’s reign expand? For example, our time, our hearts, and our energy?
3. How do you think people would be different if they invested as much time and energy in God’s economy as they do in accumulating wealth?

Closing Activity

Design a “banknote” representing God’s currency by writing a message (a note) to a friend, family member, or someone else who needs to hear about God’s love for them. Encourage everyone gathered to share their note with that person in the hope that they may feel and know God’s amazing love.

Closing Prayer

In the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Offertory Prayer is shared after the offerings have been collected. Read this prayer again as a reminder of what we have and to whom it belongs:

“Merciful Father, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us, our selves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love. Receive them for the sake of him who offered himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Biography

Jay Gamelin is Lead Servant for Family Life at Abiding Hope Church in Littleton, Colorado. His passion is seeing the transformative work of the gospel at work in families and students. He loves going to hot yoga, eating fresh basil on pizza, watching sea otter videos, putting barbecue sauce on his mac and cheese (very controversial in this household), and admiring his amazing wife and four kids.

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The gospel text is a continuation of Jesus after his entrance into Jerusalem on the week of his crucifixion and is a charged judgment on the temple leadership. It follows the cleansing of the temple and continues as he teaches stories of unreliable sons, cursed fig trees, and unfaithful and murderous tenants. 

Jesus brings these stories here to indict the leadership in the ways they have missed the proverbial spiritual boat. The reign of God is right in front of them, yet they dismiss Jesus’ witness, turn their backs on the ways God is working, and will go so far as to crucify the messiah.

Before we get too excited about the “bad guys” of this story, these stories can hold up a mirror to our own lives and ways in which we may have fallen short of living into God’s reign. We can point our fingers at others in this text, or we can take this as a moment to learn about our own shortcomings, confess them, and seek the Spirit’s power to lead us as God’s heart, hands and feet.

This story is about invitation and what it means that we are invited to participate in God’s vision for the world, and we get to share the invitation, in particular to those who are on the fringes of our community.

Note: The end of the text brings a curious sidenote about a particular guest who came but did not dress for the occasion. He is bound and thrown out from the feast with the declaration, “for many are called and few are chosen.” This last cryptic story has had many interpretations from a representation of Judas to spiritual readiness to disrespect for the king by not honoring the moment with proper dress. It is very easy to chase these conclusions, but some texts are best left in wonder. It is a good idea to be curious about the intention of these verses, but perhaps leave off a definitive conclusion.

Opening Story

In 2025, a young woman, the daughter of garbage collectors in Mexico, held her quinceañera. This cultural milestone celebrates young people on their 15th birthday. Unfortunately, the party was sparsely attended, leading her father to post a video for people to come eat the food he had saved up for and prepared. After her father posted the video of the meager celebration, the community rallied around this young woman. Event planners donated their time, others donated food and photography, and the town offered a venue. Thousands attended her quinceañera weeks later, giving her the experience of a lifetime.

For a video on this story, follow this link.

Reflection Questions

1. What are your immediate reactions to this story? How do you feel about this young woman at the beginning of the story compared to the end?
2. How did the town change the story? What did people do to change what this moment meant for her?
3. Imagine you invite people to join you to celebrate your birthday, but on the day of the party, hardly anyone comes. Imagining this, what feelings are percolating in you?
4. Now imagine a member of your community who is vulnerable, someone who may not have a strong social network. Now imagine they invite you to their party. What are honest feelings you have around this invitation? What would make responding to this difficult for you?
5. What responsibility do we have to care for our neighbors, especially those who are more vulnerable?

Text to Read Aloud

Matthew 22:1-14

Who is Invited?

Jesus is in the temple courts and is speaking to the temple leadership about the ways they have fallen short of seeing the reign of God before them. To highlight this, today’s gospel text sets up a parable about a banquet where everything goes wrong. A king is preparing for a wedding for his son; the food is purchased, the date set, the venue prepared, but the guest list is a complete catastrophe. Every RSVP is a “no.” He goes to all those he invited, pleading with them to attend the feast, but they ignore his pleas. Some invited guests even go so far as to kill the messengers inviting them to a feast! Clearly they REALLY did not want to go.

Finally the king opens the banquet to all. Servants are sent out and gather anyone they may find, “the good with the bad.” And so the feast was full.

The focus of this text is on invitation. Contextually, Jesus is highlighting the temple leadership’s failure to see the king, literally messiah in Hebrew, in Jesus and heed the invitation to see what God is preparing. The feast represents the inbreaking reign of God. In this text, God shows how the reign of God is not limited in scope but will go where it will go, inviting all to the table. The invitation cannot be stopped and it will roll out to the streets, valleys, and beyond, bringing all kinds to the party. Jesus’ reign was built on the societal outcasts, the “other”, those whom culture puts to the margins.

Who’s Invited?

This story is not just about the temple leadership, but about all of us and how we all can be generous in our invitation to participate in the reign of God.

When we gather at our feast at the table of grace and bless the cup, the words are often spoken, “shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.” Jesus’ invitation to the table is not just for us but for the whole world. As God’s heart, hands, and feet, we can extend this invitation to those in our radius, inviting all to participate in what God is doing in the world. As God’s chosen, may we extend our invitation far and wide so all may experience God’s abundant grace.

Reflection Questions

1. How would you react if you were king and people refused to join the marriage feast for your son? Do you think he was justified in his reaction?
2. How is Jesus pointing us to be generous in how we invite people into the way of Jesus and welcome them to the feast?
3. How do people experience welcome in your community? In what ways would a new person experience your church? 
4. How can you grow in the ways you invite and welcome people, not just to church, but into friendship and community?

Closing Activity

Ask each person to consider one person in their radius who may need a friend, someone who may not feel “invited to the party.” Consider what it would look like to befriend them and how this might make a real difference in their life. Share how you might extend that invite and what this might show you about the reign of God.

Closing Blessing or Prayer

Teresa of Avila reminds us in her famous poem “Christ Has No Body Now but Yours” that Christ exists in and through us. Consider reading this poem to the group as a way to remind each of us that we get to be God’s invitation in the world.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Amen

Biography

Jay Gamelin is Lead Servant for Family Life at Abiding Hope Church in Littleton, CO. His passion is seeing the transformative work of the gospel at work in families and students. He loves to go to hot yoga, eat fresh basil on pizza, watch sea otter videos, put barbecue sauce on his mac and cheese (very controversial in this household) and admire his amazing wife and four kids. 

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This week’s study centers on Philippians 3:4b–14. Paul writes to a congregation he loves, likely from prison, and begins by listing his credentials: the right family, the right religious training, a spotless record. Then he does something surprising; he calls all of it loss, even “rubbish.” The Greek word, skubala, is cruder than most English Bibles let on. To be clear, Paul isn’t saying accomplishments are evil, but he is saying that accomplishments aren’t the central thing. What holds him up is that “Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12).

Notice, for a moment, how honest Paul is about not having arrived: “Not that I have already obtained this… but I press on.” Paul is not certain about outcomes. He is convinced about who and whose he is. The difference between certainty and conviction is the heart of what we’re talking about today.

The other lectionary texts go there, too. Isaiah 5 contains some cool wordplay in Hebrew: God looked for mishpat (justice) and found mispach (bloodshed), and looked for tsedaqah (righteousness) and heard tse’aqah (a cry). And then in Matthew 21, tenants try to take over control of a vineyard that was never theirs. Both texts show what happens when people grasp for control instead of tending what God has entrusted to them. 

This session also connects to the 2027 ELCA Youth Gathering theme, “Imagine More,” drawn from Ephesians 3:20. That verse follows Paul’s prayer that we be “rooted and grounded in love” (3:17).

A pastoral note: the article describes immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. For some young people in your group, this may be personal. Listen well, and let the focus stay on care for neighbors… you know, the Jesus-y stuff.

Opening Exercise: Finding Balance Together

Invite everyone to find a position of imbalance that works for their body. They could stand on one foot, sit tall at the edge of a chair with feet lifted slightly, or sit with eyes closed and arms stretched out. Hold it for about 20 seconds, then notice how steady or wobbly it felt.

Next, form pairs. Partners face each other and press their palms together, then gently lean into one another until each is helping hold the other up. This works standing, seated in chairs facing each other, or from a wheelchair. For groups of three or more, sit or stand in a circle with hands joined or on one another’s shoulders. Keep it gentle, since the point is support, not strength.

Ask: What was different about finding balance alone versus with someone else? Where in your life right now do you feel a little off-balance?

Texts Read Aloud

Philippians 3:4b–14 (primary)
Ephesians 3:14–21 (optional)
Isaiah 5:1–7 (optional)

Rooted, Not Certain

Quick: where will you be in five years?

If you’re in high school, you’ve probably been asked some version of that question more times than you can count. Your calendar is full of classes, practice, rehearsal, work, and group chats, and everyone seems to want a plan. But let’s be honest and name the elephant in the room: the future can feel pretty squishy. The news changes by the hour. Adults in charge often seem to react to whatever feels scariest right now instead of asking what kind of world they’re leaving for you.

Here’s a secret from a pastor: I don’t have it all figured out either. And I don’t think faith is supposed to make us certain… I think faith is what happens when certainty reaches the end of its knowing.

Listen to Paul: he had the perfect résumé, came from the “right” family, did religion “right”, had the “right” achievements, and a spotless record. And then, poor guy, he had an encounter with Jesus and called all of it rubbish. (The Greek word is even ruder, but if it were translated honestly, grandma would clutch her pearls at the foul language!) Those achievements aren’t bad, but they just can’t hold him up. “Not that I have already obtained this,” Paul writes, “but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

Paul isn’t certain about the future. He’s rooted in something deeper: he belongs to Jesus. That’s the difference between certainty and conviction. Certainty says, “I know how this ends.” Conviction says, “I know whose I am, and who we are together. Let’s GO!“

I learned this in a new way last winter here in Minneapolis. Neighbors on my own block– people I love– were being targeted by ICE agents. It was frightening. Chaotic. And none of us knew what the next day would bring. But I need you to know this: I watched the church in action. Congregations made sure people had groceries and rides. Neighbors checked in on one another and made sure everyone felt known and valued. Networks of love and care grew almost overnight. It looked a lot like the early church in Acts, where believers shared what they had so that no one went without. 

Nobody had a five-year plan or concrete plans. What we had was one another, and a God who shows up in the middle of the storm, every time.

Next summer, thousands of you will come to Minneapolis for the ELCA Youth Gathering. I serve on the team planning what happens on the main stage at U.S. Bank Stadium, and we can’t wait to welcome you! The theme is “Imagine More,” from Ephesians 3:20, which says that God’s power at work in us can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. Just before that verse, Paul prays that we’d be “rooted and grounded in love.”

Rooted, not certain. That’s how imagining more works. When we stop needing to control every outcome, we make room to dream of a church more ready to welcome all of who we are, across all our beautiful difference. We also make room to dream of a world more just and beautiful than the one we’ve been handed. I’m so grateful that we’re all alive at this moment to materialize that vision together.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You’re already held. So press on, together. Let’s go, buds.

Reflection Questions

1. What does Paul say he gave up, and what does he say he’s “pressing on” toward?
2. The article says certainty sounds like “I know how this ends,” while conviction sounds like “I know who and whose I am.” What’s the difference? Why might conviction help more than certainty when life feels squishy?
3. In the Minneapolis story, what did the church look like when no one knew what would happen next? Where have you seen people show up for one another like that?
4. If you didn’t have to be certain about your future, what might you imagine for yourself, your youth group, or your community?

Closing Activity

One Word, Together. Return to the circle or pairs from the opening exercise, with joined hands or palms together if people are comfortable. Invite each person to share one word for something they hope God will help them imagine more of.

Closing Prayer

God of immeasurably more,
when the future feels wobbly, and the world feels loud,
root us in your love.
Remind us that we belong to you and to one another.
Give us courage to let go of what can’t hold us up,
and to press on toward the life you are already creating.
Open our imaginations to dream of a neighborhood, church, and world
with more welcome, more justice, and more joy.
We pray in the name of Jesus, who has made us his own. Amen.

Bio

Pastor Ian McConnell is the Lead Pastor of Fabric, an innovative and experimental church in Minneapolis, and a career-long youth minister who serves on the ELCA Youth Gathering Mass Gathering Team. He’s a husband, a dad to two awesome kiddos, and a friend and neighbor. He’s a huge Timberwolves and Lynx fan and has recently gotten into the trading card game Star Wars: Unlimited to nerd out with friends.

Editor’s Note – Invitation to Small(er) Church Listening Project Survey:

To every smaller church leader faithfully serving week after week: we see you. The impact of your ministry cannot be measured by the size of your church, your staff, or your budget.

But too often, the voices and experiences of smaller church leaders get overlooked. The Small(er) Church Listening Project from Youth Ministry Consultants was created to change that, and ELCA Youth Ministry is excited to be part of this important work.

We’ve already heard from over 200 leaders like you and would appreciate hearing your perspectives whether you worship 50 or 250 on a weekly basis, find yourself in a rural, urban, or suburban context. Your voice and your ministry matters!

Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SmallerChurch

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Developmental psychologists tell us that one thing adolescents and young adults must do on the path to adulthood is convert the wise council of adults who have aided them in childhood into an internal council that represents their value system. As young folks mature, it is helpful to reflect with them on values like trustworthiness by considering the traits of trustworthy people in their lives and their own (and our own) capacity to be trustworthy.

Brené Brown writes about trust in her book Dare to Lead. She uses the acronym BRAVING to consider seven aspects of trust: boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, nonjudgement, and generosity. You can see how she defines these terms here (you might even print this handout for your group to compare your answers in the opening exercise).

The religious authorities, the chief priests and scribes, ask Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing this?” Truthfully, authority is not exactly trust. Authority is about formal power for decision making. Trust, however, develops through relationships. At the same time, many people in authority will point out that without trust it doesn’t matter what formal power you have, no one will go along with your decisions.

Opening Exercise

Pass out sticky notes – three or four per person. Have participants list characteristics of trustworthy people. Have one person share one of their traits. Ask if anyone has a similar trait and cluster the similar traits together. Repeat with another person sharing and gathering similar sticky notes. Repeat until all the notes are shared. Ask, “What do you notice?” and affirm all answers.

Text Read Aloud

Matthew 21:23-32 (CEB)

Can I Trust You?

Once, when I was a teenager and a new driver (no, there were no dinosaurs then…though there were also no smartphones—yikes!), I went to a youth group Christmas party at someone’s house. My parents were concerned about parking and suggested I park down the block a bit to avoid any problems with other new drivers and their cars. But when I got there, it was dark and I was too nervous to park far away and walk. When it was time to leave the party, things happened as my parents feared: I avoided one collision, but in doing so scraped up someone else’s car. I worried that I had betrayed my parents’ trust by not parking where they’d told me to. Yet, when I explained the situation to them, they had enough trust in me to have made a choice based on that situation: walking a far distance, alone at night.

Trust is complicated. How do we know who to trust? What makes a trustworthy person? And how do we become trustworthy people ourselves?

It is a tense scene in today’s story from Matthew. We’re late in the gospel—the Monday of Holy Week. In the story’s timeline, yesterday Jesus entered Jerusalem (awkwardly, riding a donkey and its colt at the same time) and drove the moneychangers from the Temple. On the way into the Temple this morning, he cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit. And now, back in the Temple, he is confronted by the chief priests and elders. They are scared.

Between the big parade and the brouhaha in the Temple, they are worried the people are getting stirred up. And if that happens, there’s no telling how Rome will react.

Can I Trust You?

When the chief priests ask Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing this?” they are asking Jesus, “Can we trust you? Can we trust you to keep the people safe, teaching in ways that lead to life and not to death?”

The early Christians who first heard Matthew’s Gospel had many of the same questions. In 70 AD, in the recent past for them, the people had gotten stirred up and rebelled. Rome came and squashed the rebellion, killing over a million people and destroying Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside. They wonder if Jesus is more of the same, and if following him would be risky. Can they trust Jesus?

The poet Maya Angelou was quoted as saying, “If people show you who they are, believe them.” This is Jesus’s response to the chief priests and elders—in a parable. There were two sons, one said he’ll work in the vineyard and doesn’t; the other said he won’t work in the vineyard but does. It is as if Jesus tells the chief priests, “I could tell you all day by whose authority I do these things, but why would you believe me? I could tell you that I want life for the people, but why would you believe me? You will only believe me if I show you.” And, by the end of the week, he will show them on the cross. Jesus is how God says, “You can trust me.” Trustworthiness isn’t proved by saying the right thing. It is revealed when our actions match our words. And in Jesus God makes and keeps God’s word to us.

Reflection Questions

1. When the chief priests ask, ‘by what authority are you doing these things?’, what things are they talking about?
2. Why are the chief priests and elders wondering if they can trust Jesus?
3. Thinking about what you know about God from your experience, from worship, or from Scripture, what makes God trustworthy?
4. What practices or disciplines can we try to become more trustworthy people?

Closing Activity

Like the sons whose words don’t match their actions, play the improv game “What Are You Doing?” The first person mimes an activity like doing their math homework. The second person comes in and asks, “What are you doing?” The first person must answer with anything other than what they’re actually doing: “Playing ping pong.” Now the second person must mime playing ping pong and answer (with something else!) a third person’s question, “What are you doing?”

• After everyone has had a turn, reflect together: What happens to trust when our words and actions don’t match? What helps someone become a person whose actions show that their words can be trusted?

Final Prayer

Faithful God, in Jesus you show us that we can trust you. When we are uncertain, unsure, or afraid, put trustworthy people in our lives to help us. Grow us into trustworthy people who mirror your love and faithfulness in the world, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Bio

Adrianne Meier serves with the people of God at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington. Right now, she is furiously picking and preserving the harvest of her garden and learning to play the tin whistle.

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Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard has been seen as a story of “who gets to heaven when and how.” It’s interpreted almost like a “gotcha” Jesus plays on the Pharisees, who Matthew’s gospel loves to paint as grumbling rule followers. This reading turns the parable into an allegory, with each character representing someone in Jesus’s world—or ours.

The trouble is parables aren’t allegories. They’re not even fables with a moral lesson at the end. Parables are like prisms. Pick them up, hold them to the light this way and that, and see rainbows here, there, everywhere! I love how Jerome Berryman describes parables in his Godly Play curriculum. The props for telling the parable stories are housed in golden boxes, and the storyteller picks up the day’s box and wonders aloud with the children, “I wonder where it will open today?”

It may be that your group needs to be reminded that God’s grace is for everyone, falling equally on people who’ve been a part of the group for a long time and for new people. Seeing cliques? Maybe there’s something here that speaks to our human tendency to break into factions.

It may also be that your group is keying into injustice in the world. Perhaps there might be space to wonder aloud with them about what happened the next day. Would the first-hired come back? Or would they risk not working in the hopes of having a few hours off in the morning? Would anyone ever work for this guy again? What does your group make of the landowner’s retort that he can do what he wants?

parable of the workers in the vineyard

Eventually, I drew the parallel to group projects, at least in part because my tweenager had her first honest-to-goodness group project already this school year. Unfortunately for her, one of her parents has taught group communication for years, and there may have been a mini-lecture on Bruce Tuckman, a psychologist and educator, who taught that groups cycle through stages: forming, storming, norming, performing.

In other words, it is common for groups to go through rocky periods and to learn how to work together. If your group took a summer break and is newly reunited, perhaps this group of workers might provide the opportunity to think about why you gather. I appreciate Tuckman’s theory because it reminds me that conflicts are normal in a group and give us the opportunity to name our expectations of one another and remind ourselves what we’re about. I wonder how the early church heard this parable. We know that a unique feature of early Christianity is that it grew among interesting and unexpected groups of people: widows, slaves, outsiders. Perhaps this parable encouraged them to include others in unexpected ways.

Opening Exercise

Using well-known cartoon or animated movie characters, describe what you are like when you have to work on a group project. Why did you pick that character? (Bonus question: is this another character that describes what you wish you were like when you work on a group project?)

Text Read Aloud

Matthew 20:1-16 in The Message

Laboring Together

I thought my high school chemistry teacher liked me. Then he assigned a group project in class. Not only that, but he assigned the groups, separated my friends, and put me in a group with this guy who was surely too old to be in high school and taking chemistry for at least the second time. If he wasn’t screwing around in the back of the class, he was asleep. We both knew who was going to carry the weight of this project. It didn’t seem fair at all.

This is pretty much what happens to the first-hired workers in the vineyard. They work all day, but on payday they get the same amount as the people who come in to work hours later. It doesn’t seem fair.

In Jesus’s time, many people worked as day laborers, depending on each day’s work to provide for their families. The laborers would stand in a common place each day, hoping wealthy landowners would hire them to work on their farms, fishing boats, or in their industries. Most of the time, they would get just enough to keep their family fed, but not enough to restore what had been lost.

But what if morning turned to afternoon, then to evening, and you waited and waited, yet were not hired? Do you even bother to go out into the field if you think you’d only bring home pennies? What is fair for these last-hired workers, who equally need to feed their families?

Laboring Together

And yet, the first-hired workers needed all the other laborers, even if they didn’t want to admit it, because, if the conditions are right for harvesting, you harvest. Neighbors help neighbors to bring everything in before animals eat it, weather ruins it, or it overripens on the vine.

The landowner kept bringing in more people to help, giving the earliest hired the opportunity to rest and pace themselves. In the end, the harvest happens because of every character in the story. The landowner needed the workers; the workers needed enough money to support their families; the workers needed each other.

I would love to wrap this up with a beautiful story about how I learned this lesson on my group project. But I can’t. I spent the project resentful and frustrated and whiny. I finished the project, mostly by myself, while that guy goofed around. Occasionally, though, he told a joke that made me laugh and untangled my overly serious self for a second or two.

Group projects are hard because we have to figure out what we’re doing, how we’re going to do it, and who is going to do what work. We must figure out how to include different personalities and learn how—for at least a little while—to trust each other to get the work done. We have to admit that we need each other, even if it is only for a few jokes and a finished chemistry packet.

Reflection Questions

1. What makes this a difficult parable?
2. What does it mean to be fair? How do you determine if something is unfair?
3. Is the landowner fair in this story?
4. How do you include others in groups you are a part of? What has been particularly helpful in including new people?
5. What does it feel like when a group is working well together? When a group isn’t getting along?

Closing Activity

Divide into groups of three or four. Tell the group, “In a few minutes we will pray together. We will hold hands, and squeeze the hand of the next person as we are finished praying. Today, you have to pray for someone else in your small group, and everyone has to be prayed for. So, in the next few minutes, decide who is praying for whom and then share one thing you’d like others to pray for. It doesn’t have to be complicated or deep, it can be about an upcoming test or sports game or a project you’re working on.”

Give them roughly two minutes per group member to share, then gather them for prayer. If your group is only a handful, listen carefully to one another and have each person pray for the person on their left. Consider starting or ending the group prayer with the prayer below.

Final Prayer

Loving God, when we work with others, help us to be gracious, fair, and kind to each other and clear about our plans. In the groups that we are part of—youth group, sports teams, after-school clubs, and even groups of friends—be with us; help us to include and care for one another and to be included and cared for ourselves. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Bio

Adrianne Meier is an ELCA pastor who serves among the people at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington, Indiana. When she’s not working—and even when she is working—you can find her furiously knitting.