Status Games, Racism, Trauma, and the Kingdom of God

A reflection on Jesus's parable of the workers in the vineyard

As someone who’s always been tuned into issues of fairness and justice, Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard has always fascinated and frustrated me.

A landowner hires workers throughout the day to work in his vineyard. The result is that the workers hired at the end of the day end up making the same amount of money as those who worked the whol…