Reading the parable in today’s context
Unemployment continues to be a serious concern in the United Kingdom and across the world. The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1.778 million people aged 16 and over were unemployed in the UK in May to July 2026, an unemployment rate of 4.9%. This was 83,000 higher than a year earlier, although the quarterly change was small. Behind these figures are people seeking work, dignity, security and recognition. Why are people not employed? Who defines merit, and whose gifts are overlooked? It is in this context that the parable in Matthew 20:1-16 must be read and re-read.
Many migrants attend interviews possessing all the required qualifications, skills and experience, yet repeatedly find themselves unsuccessful in securing employment. This recurring pattern cannot always be explained as an individual failure or a lack of merit. Among the many possible reasons are the often-unspoken realities of racism and xenophobia, expressed through prejudice about a person’s name, accent, ethnicity, nationality, migration status or overseas qualifications. In our quest to build a fairer and more inclusive society, we must therefore interrogate what we mean by success, merit, ability and capability. We must also challenge the ideology of the “survival of the fittest,” because those considered “fittest” are often those already favoured by systems of privilege. The question raised by Matthew 20 is not simply, “Why have these people not succeeded?” but, “What barriers have prevented them from being recognised, welcomed and employed?”
The parable of the labourers in the vineyard tells of a landowner who hires workers at about six in the morning, nine in the morning, noon, three in the afternoon and five in the evening. We might imagine that those judged strongest, most experienced and most impressive were chosen first, while others were repeatedly passed over. Yet the landowner returns even at five in the evening and asks those still waiting, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They answer, ‘Because no one has hired us’ (verses 6-7). Their answer shifts our attention from supposed idleness to exclusion: they are waiting because no one has made room for them.
1. The Kingdom of heaven disrupts the norms of the meritoriously powerful:
Why had no one hired those who remained at five o’clock? Perhaps they could not compete in a world where the powerful define merit and then use their own standards to judge others as incapable. Perhaps they were disabled people excluded by ableist assumptions, women constrained by patriarchal stereotypes, outcasted Dalits who couldn’t compete in the meritocracy of dominant castes, refugees or people seeking asylum denied opportunity by immigration status or language barriers, or people from minoritised ethnic communities facing structural discrimination. The label ‘idle’ conceals the systems that have repeatedly refused them work.
The Kingdom of heaven therefore disrupts the norms of the meritoriously powerful. It exposes the fiction that those selected first are necessarily more worthy, and it refuses to let market success determine human value. God’s economy begins with the equal worth of every person, not with the rankings created by privilege.
2. The Kingdom of heaven directs us to meet the divine on and among the margins:
The landowner keeps returning to the marketplace. The final journey at five o’clock is not an afterthought; it reveals where the kingdom directs us to look. God is encountered on and among the margins, with those still waiting to be seen, called and welcomed. The question is not only, ‘Why are they standing there?’ but also, ‘Why has no one hired them?’ It moves responsibility from those who have been excluded to the social, economic and political arrangements that exclude.
In an economy that often prizes profit above human worth, powers such as patriarchy, caste, class, racism, ableism, war and xenophobia continue to decide who is preferred and who must wait. The parable calls the church to shift its location and attention towards those waiting at five o’clock. Unless friends and communities at the margins become central to our mission, our faith loses its savour and public relevance.
3. The Kingdom of heaven demonstrates love, justice, equity and liberation:
The landowner not only hires the people who are still waiting at five o’clock; he also pays them the same daily wage as those hired earlier. This unsettles those who assumed that longer service gave them a greater claim to generosity. The payment is not a denial of work but an affirmation that every household needs enough to live. Here the kingdom demonstrates love, justice, equity and liberation by ensuring that nobody is abandoned to poverty because they were chosen last.
Equality gives each worker the same wage; equity recognises that each worker needs the means to live. Divine grace challenges an economy organised around deserving and undeserving people. It invites us to build communities in which dignity is not earned through productivity, and nobody’s life is treated as disposable.
A call to the church
The call before us is to recognise God among those still waiting at five o’clock, affirm the worth God has given equally to all, and confront the forces that push people into unemployment and poverty. This requires more than charity. It calls us to challenge discriminatory recruitment, resist the stigma attached to unemployment, support fair wages and secure work, listen to people most affected, and advocate for social arrangements in which all can flourish.
Where is God in this parable? For me, God is present among the people still standing “idle” at five o’clock, waiting to be employed and hoping against hope that someone will recognise their worth. They are called idle, yet they have not abandoned hope; they remain present, expectant and ready to work. The God revealed in Jesus does not look upon them from a distance but identifies with them and becomes one among them, the rejected, overlooked and last in line. God meets them in their waiting, restores their dignity and offers them hope and justice. The God of this parable is therefore the five-o’clock God. The God who stands with those whom society has passed over and insists that they, too, deserve life in all its fullness.
By locating the divine among the margins, we are challenged to become a church that stands with people pushed into poverty and exclusion. A church with the poor becomes credible only by becoming a church of and from the poor. May we therefore join God at the five o’clock marketplace and work for a kingdom that disrupts privilege, meets us among the margins, and embodies love, justice, equity and liberation.
Rev. Dr Raj Bharat Patta
Painted in Arles on 4 November 1888,
Oil on canvas
© Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
1 comment:
Dear Anna,
well-written article, it exposed the ploy of structures that subjugate people and the notion of privilege that is built upon on the premise of race, caste, gender, ability and so on. The pains and challenges of the marginalised often go unnoticed; the call for the Church to act like the master in the passage is urgent, to listen to the cries of those who are suffering and to act in the time.
from
Prashanth
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