Matthew 20.1-16 Translations and Notes - RCL Year A Lectionary 25/ 17th Sunday After Pentecost

Image generated by DALL-E with prompt "a 3D rendering of migrant workers and a boss in a grape vineyard"

Matthew 20.1-16 is the RCL Year A assigned reading for Lectionary 25/ 17th Sunday After Pentecost. It's the parable usually called "Laborers in the Vineyard." When I teach this parable, I label as "All in a Day's Wage" or "The Line Forms at the Rear."

It's a well-told story, and I try to capture more of the conversational tone in my translation. (Cf. link below.) I think that one of the challenges of the parable for modern hearers is that we want fairness, not equality. This parable is closer to Marx's "From each according to ability, to each according to need." It also is a dramatization of the Lord's Prayer petition, "Give us today our daily bread." 

One more thing... The closing to the parable is the well-known, "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." I suspect that most people picture this as a vertical / hierarchical kind of reversal. I think that's problematic, because it means there will be an endless cycle of reversals. Think instead of a vertical / hierarchical order being changed into a horizontal equality. I.e., it really means that the first will be the same as the last and the last the same as the first. That's what I think God's dominion looks like.

Here's the link to the downloadable file. My translation is on the last 2 pages.

• Matthew 20.1-16 translations and notes and MGVH translation

Matthew 13.1-23 Translations and Notes - RCL Year A Lectionary 15 / 7th Sunday After Pentecost

Image available under a CC-BY license from OpenBible.Info

Matthew 13.1-23 is the RCL Year A assigned reading for Lectionary 15 / 7th Sunday After Pentecost. Actually, it's only vv1-9 and 18-23. This is such a disservice to the text, since vv10-17 are the critical center explaining what's going on. Preacher, I recommend you read all of vv1-23 and shorten your sermon if you have to. 

Attached here is my translation of the text. There is a lot going on in the Greek that escapes notice in the English, so after my translation I have included some notes. 

Tldr: I hope no one preaches a sermon encouraging people to be “good soil.” (How is that even possible? I can only picture dumping manure on the soil to enrich it! Can a person choose what soil to be?) The people are the plants, and Matthew’s version of this parable both accounts for the rejection of Jesus’ message and the encouragement to be and the promise of being extravagantly productive followers of Jesus.

My translation and notes: Matthew 13.1-23 mgvh notes

Luke 18.9-14 Translations and notes (Judge and Widow: Lectionary 30, 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C)

The Revised Common Lectionary gospel text for Lectionary 30 (on 23 October 2022) is Luke 18.9-14, the parable told be Jesus commonly known as "The Pharisee and the Tax Collector." There are some interesting word choices that need to be made (just- or right- cognates? exalt / lift up / promote <> humble / bring down?), so you may want to check my translation and notes. 

We have had all these parables lately in the lectionary, and one resource I recommend is Robert Farrar Capon's Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. (Affiliate link) I really think he has the right idea about how the parables work. You may not always agree with him, but he's always provocative in a way that I have found him to be a good conversation partner with this parables. For this Pharisee and tax collector parable, check out this short reflection. (It's from a 1983 interview on the Chicago Sunday Evening Club and 30 Good Minutes. The original transcript is no longer on the web, but the link is to where someone preserved it.) He gets right to the heart of why it should not be easy to preach this parable. Are you just hoping for the tax collector coming back and being able to humble-brag pray like the Pharisee? "The answer is we fear salvation that is so cheap that it saves everyone in his or her death." And to see just how hard it is for people to hear this, check out the interview that followed Capon's presentation HERE. The interviewer just can't get his head around it despite Capon's insistence the parable is about death and resurrection, not about being a better person.

• Luke 18.9-14 mgvh notes and translation

 One other resource to note if you are not familiar with it is the GoTell website. Lots of excellent stuff. Check under the Stories header to find comments on specific texts. Here is the page for Luke 18.9-14.

Luke 18.1-8 Translations and notes (Judge and Widow: Lectionary 29, 19th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C)

https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/.a/6a00d8341c3e3953ef0240a4ba489d200d-320wi

The Revised Common Lectionary gospel text for Lectionary 29 (on 16 October 2022) is Luke 18.1-8. It seems to be a simple enough parable that Luke explains for the reader in verse 1: Always pray and don't get discouraged. That's good advice, but there is lots more going on in the parable than that. 

When I go over this parable in my classes, I don't have people look at the text, and I start and just read the parable in verses 2-5. When you do so, the judge is clearly the focus. I then include verses 6-7 which also reinforce that interest in the judge, but the logic here is from lesser to greater, a typical pattern: If a bad judge can do good, how much more so a good God. Okay, that works, but it is an odd way to think about God's actions as simply being better than a bad example.

But now when I include verse 1, the focus switches to the widow. The word typically used to describe the widow is "persistent," and that is reflected in her actions of keeping on coming and keeping on pestering the judge. (The verbs are present tense with the sense of a repeated or ongoing action.) Okay, that's fine, but I think the key is not just about persistence but also about not getting discouraged.

Then, I add verse 8 to the reading. Suddenly we have introduced the Child of Humanity and the issue of faith. Further, reference is made to the Child of Humanity "when he comes." Here we should note that the verb used twice to describe the widow is the same "coming" verb. What if... the God / Jesus figure in the parable is the widow and not the judge? In that case, this parable functions similarly to the Luke 15 parables where the shepherd persists in finding the lost sheep, the woman persists in searching for her lost coin, the father persists in trying to bring home both his sons. And if we are to think about ourselves in this parable, I suspect we are closer to the judge by not regarding God properly and thinking about ourselves more than others. 

While it's good advice to always pray and not get discouraged, this parable is also one of grace. Does it matter whether the judge ends up doing right even for the wrong reason? The parable points to a persistent God who will not stop until the unjust do the just thing. In the end, that's what really matters.

If you want to study further, here is my collection of translations and notes. I also include my own translation. If you go to the end you will see how I have highlighted themes in the parable. The parable also has a nice oral quality to it that I try to capture in my translation.

• Luke 18.1-8 mgvh notes
  

Luke 16.19-31 Translations and notes (Rich Man and Lazarus: Lectionary 26, 16th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_man_and_Lazarus#/media/File:Gustave_Dore_Lazarus_and_the_Rich_Man.jpg

The Revised Common Lectionary gospel text for Lectionary 26 (on 25 September 2022) is Luke 16.19-31, the well-known parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lots going on in the parable, and even in Luke's improved Greek style, it 'sounds' like an orally told story.  Here is a collection of translations with my notes and my own translation: Luke 16.19-31 mgvh notes 

For a couple examples of historic takes on this parable:

• Frederick Douglass
• Martin Luther King

 And check out this Virtual Museum of artistic interpretations of the parable. 

Mark 4.26-34 Translations and Notes (RCL 3rd Sunday after Pentecost Year B)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Crucifix_Masaccio.jpg/800px-Crucifix_Masaccio.jpg

Mark 4.26-34 includes two fascinating parables of Jesus: The Growing Seed and the Mustard Seed. The Growing Seed is somewhat obscure, but it affirms the certainty of the harvest = the full realization of the Dominion of God. Personally, I think Matthew found it confusing, and the result is his version of it known as the Weeds and the Wheat (Matthew 13.24-30) For the Growing Seed, I've suggested it be used as a kind of Lectio Divina. See what you think with this video I created that can be as long or short as you want.

For the Mustard Seed parable, it most certainly is not about "From small beginnings come great endings." It's much more about the scandal of depicting God's dominion to what is basically a weed and contrasting it to the more typical image of a mighty cedar tree. (The image at the top of this post by Masaccio is one I like to use as an example of a scandalous tree which is also a tree of life.)

Here are is my handout of Mark 4.26-34 with a variety of translations and my translation notes. 

• Mark 4.26-34 Translation and Notes.PDF
• Mark 4.26-34 Translation and Notes.DOCX
  

I include my own translation, and it should be noted that my translation is actually very close to the oral character of Mark’s Greek. My rendering is not good literary English which most English versions turn it into. It does work, however, as casual, spoken English. Try reading it out loud, and experiment with pacing and pauses in the text. E.g., in 4.30-31, you can almost hear Jesus thinking and engaging with a crowd when he asks two questions of them about what God's dominion is like. He pauses, and then in v31 he comes up with his answer: A mustard seed! The Greek is grammatically awkward, but it sounds perfectly fine when read out loud.