I see you

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, September 20, 2026

I have painful memories of sitting through synod assemblies before 2009 when the ELCA changed its policy on gay pastors in relationships. I had to compartmentalize. Speakers at the red or green microphone were talking about me, whether they knew so or not. I wasn’t seen for who I was. More about that at the forum following worship.

I see you. To be seen for who you are. To have someone get you. With all your idiosyncrasies and contradictions. A gift for the giver and the receiver. Pure grace.

Yet much of life is transactional. Tit for tat is not the way to build healthy relationships. When life is transactional, all you think about it ROI, Return on Investment.

And when you bring God into it, watch out. Transactional theology is a way to control God. If I do this, God will do that. God becomes an ATM, dispensing goodness if we enter the correct PIN.

We’ve all had the experience of having a transaction denied! Insufficient funds. Wrong account. The system is down. What do you do when you don’t receive what you expect? Or worse, what if the very transactional system is set up to be unfair?

Enter today’s parable. One of the hardest to wrap our heads around. One to certainly tick us off and make us squirm. The landowner contracts with laborers at sunrise for the usual daily wage. He goes out again at nine and noon and three and does the same. Finally, he goes out at five and what he sees is this: a bunch of folks hanging around without work. So he sends them into the vineyard to work. So far, all good. All fair.  

Until quitting time and the time to settle accounts. Everyone gets the same pay, the same daily wage, whether they worked nine hours, six hours, three hours, or one hour. This is not equal pay for equal work. Something is fishy.

Remember: this parable is about the kingdom of God. It can’t be imitated deed for deed. It isn’t the basis for a personnel manual. Though it certainly has implications for how we see those in need of work and dignity, it isn’t a blueprint for economic policy or worker’s rights. If so, you’d have to throw out not only capitalism, but also socialism, Marxism, agrarianism, feudalism, barter economy—all of them!

It’s a parable, a story with a strange, bizarre ending. It challenges all of our notions of fairness and reveals a God who is not only unpredictable but can make us uncomfortable.

The children’s book, It’s Not Fair, makes clear how our whining over such things begins early in our lives. The book starts: Why’d I get the smaller half? Why’d he get the bigger laugh? Why can’t I have a pet giraffe? It’s not fair.

One father tells of a time he was making a smoothie and he gave his older daughter the extra slice of mango left over. The younger daughter sees this and protests, “it’s not fair, Dad, I didn’t get any.” “That’s right,” the dad replies. “But it’s not fair,” the girl protests a second time.

“I don’t even know what that means,” the dad goes on. “Sometimes she gets things and you don’t and sometimes it’s the other way around. You’re never going to get the same things as other people. It’s never going to be equal. It’s never gonna happen in your life so you might as well learn it now.”

“But it’s not fair.”

The dad is losing his patience. “Who said anything about being fair. You were fine until you saw what she got. The only time you should look onto another’s plate is to see that they get enough.”

In the parable, we first see those hired in the morning grumble and grouse about their unfair treatment. I relate, don’t you? Those who worked all day should get more, or the johnny-come-latelies should get less. The landowner replies, “stop whining. You got paid what you were promised. Are you envious because I am generous?” The meaning of the Greek is: “is your eye evil because I am good?” As Jesus taught earlier, the eye is the lamp of the body. How are you seeing other people?

The evil eye is an ancient myth in Middle Eastern culture. I remember seeing these symbols everywhere in Turkey. There are pendants and charms and souvenirs of them all over. The evil eye is a malevolent glare cast on someone. Often the English translation of “evil eye” in the scriptures comes off as jealousy or stinginess or mean looks. As one rabbi put it, the evil eye refers to a person who cannot bear the good fortune that falls on others. Like the whiners in today’s parable.

If God is like the landowner, truly seeing those who need work, looking into the eyes of those waiting to be hired or loved, and then giving all the same pay at the end, we are in a quandary. Is God fair?

The most helpful analogy for me is one I discovered recently: the contrast between Lady Justice and the God who sees. We know Lady Justice as a figure who stands for fairness in the legal system. She is often blindfolded and holds in her hand a balance scale. Since she cannot see who comes to the court of justice, she treats each one equally and impartially.  This is the best system we have for human rights. A good one, indeed.

But the parable shocks and unnerves. God is not Lady Justice. God is not blind but sees the plight of the needy and the oppressed. God sees those waiting to be hired at the end of the day. God is the one who sees.

In the world we need fairness contracts. Everything is based on negotiation and transaction and obligation. And for many, religion is that way. You said you would bless me, God, if I do this or that, or if I come to church every Sunday, or if I give a lot of money away.

Yet the God of this parable cannot be controlled or manipulated. We are both drawn to this kind of God and repelled. We need such grace and mercy but then we are left baffled because our human standards are blown out of the water. 

And we are mystified. Like Garrison Keilor who remarked that the religion of his childhood that was clear, rational, irrefutable. But it is miraculous, he says: ancient tribes wandering in the wilderness discovering they are seen and loved by their Creator who allows them to suffer in hopes that it would draw them closer to God.

“I don’t get it, but I go for it,” Keilor concludes. “And the choir was glorious on Sunday. Oh my God in heaven, what a joyful noise.”

Maybe you feel that way. You don’t get it. But you are seen for who you are. God sees you, even when grouse and grumble. And so you go for it. You’re all in for this unpredictable, mysterious gathering around the treasures of grace. And the God whose giving knows no ending.

And you join this community in learning how to love and to truly see others for who they are. Whatever the color of their skin. Whoever they love or marry. However they pray or see the world. And at the end of the day, whether they receive more, less, or the same as you.

It’s all good. It’s all grace.

SOURCE

Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God.