“Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic” rails Ivan Karamazov against God in Dostoyevsky’s classic work The Brothers Karamazov.(1) Those who encounter, or are encountered by the parables and stories of Jesus often feel a similar sentiment. For the parables of Jesus are often exceptional in upsetting religious sensibilities, sometimes vague, and many times enigmatic in their detail and content.

The parable of the laborers in Matthew 20 serves as a case in point. A landowner hires laborers to work in his vineyard. They are hired throughout the workday and all the workers agreed to the wage of a denarius for a day’s work. The enigmatic and exceptional punch line to this story occurs when those who are hired at the very end of the day—in the last hour—are paid the same wage as those who worked all day long. The long-suffering laborers cry out, “These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day” (20:12). Those workers that were hired first are not paid any additional wage. The first are not first, in this story. Instead, the landowner replies with a radical reversal: the last shall be first, and the first last.

Not only is the conclusion to this story exceptional and enigmatic, it also seems wholly unfair. For how could those who worked so little be paid the day’s wage? Yet this upending of any sense of fairness is a recurring theme in other parables of Jesus. Indeed, the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, while a familiar story for many, functions in a similar manner and upsets our sense of what is fair and right, just as in the parable of the laborers.  A careful reading presents an extravagant display of grace towards all wayward sons and daughters, even as it illuminates a human parsimony with grace.

Jesus presented the story as a crowd of tax-collectors, sinners, and religious leaders gathered around him. All who listened had a vested interest in what Jesus might say. Some hoped for grace; while others clamored for judgment. “A certain man had two sons,” Jesus begins. The younger of the man’s two sons insists on having his share of the inheritance, which the father grants though the request violated the Jewish custom that allotted upon the death of the father a third of the inheritance to the youngest son.(1) With wasteful extravagance, the son squanders this inheritance and finds himself desperately poor, living among pigs, ravenous for the pods on which they feed. “But when he came to his senses” the text tells us, he reasons that even his father’s hired men have plenty to eat. Hoping to be accepted as a mere slave, he made his way home. “And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him” (Luke 15:20).

The religious leaders listening to Jesus might have gasped at this statement. How could the father extend such grace towards a son who disowned him and was so wasteful and wanton? The father’s action towards the son is truly prodigal; extending grace in an extravagant way, and upsetting every sense of justice and fairness for those hearing the story. His prodigal heart compels him to keep looking for his son—he saw him while he was still a long way off. And despite being disowned by his son, the father feels compassion for him. With wasteful abandon, he runs to his son to embrace him and welcome him home. The father orders a grand party for this son who has been found, “who was dead and has begun to live.”

The older brother in Jesus’s story provocatively gives voice to a deep sense of outrage.(2) In many ways, his complaint intones the same outrage of the laborers in the vineyard. “For so many years, I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours….But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with harlots; you killed the fattened calf for him” (Luke 15:29-30). We can hear the implicit cry, “It’s not fair!” The text tells us that “he was not willing to go in” to the celebration. He will not hear the entreaty of his gracious father both to come in to the celebration and to recognize that “all that is mine is yours.” Just as in the parable of the laborers the last shall be first, and the first last.

While not vague in their detail or content, these two parables of Jesus are both exceptional and enigmatic. If we are honest, they disrupt a traditional sense of righteousness and of fairness. Both portraits of the prodigal father and of the landowner present a radical fairness of God. God lavishes grace freely on those often deemed the least deserving. Perhaps the sting of the exceptional and enigmatic aspects of these parables is felt deepest by those who see themselves beyond the need of grace.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Cited in Mary Gordon, Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels (New York: Pantheon, 2009), x.

(2) Fred Craddock, <i>Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching</i> (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 187.