Have You Every Been Angry at Mercy?

Not mercy in general. Somebody specific.

A sibling who put the family through years of chaos and got welcomed home like none of it happened, while you were the one who stayed and cleaned up. A coworker who cut corners for months and still walked out with the promotion, because somebody decided he deserved a clean slate.

If either one is familiar, you already know more of the Bible than you think.

This Sunday's readings put two people in that exact spot — one in a vineyard, one on a hillside outside a city he just saved — and neither of them gets to feel good about it. They get mercy done around them, for someone else, and it costs them something they don't expect.

God asks both of them the same question, more or less: is it right for you to be angry?

Neither story answers. That's not a plot hole. That's the point — the question doesn't get resolved on the page. It gets resolved in whoever's listening.

I'm not going to give away where it lands. Come find out Sunday.

Proper 20, Year A — Jonah 3:10–4:11 / Matthew 20:1–16