The Parables of Jesus
Week 3 Lesson
Questions to Get You Started
1. Read Matthew 20:1-16 for yourself (try two or more different translations). What stands out to you about this parable? What questions arise in your mind as you read it? What do you think Jesus is trying to communicate with the parable?
2. What different perspectives or points of view could you take up in this parable? What difference does it make?
2. What different perspectives or points of view could you take up in this parable? What difference does it make?
Questions for further discussion
1. Do you think of yourself as an “all-day” worker? Or an “eleventh-hour” worker? Or somewhere in between? How does recognizing ourselves as “eleventh-hour” workers, as Dr. Anderson suggests at the end of the lecture, help us to appreciate God’s generosity within this parable and within our own lives today?
2. How does the “respectable sin” of envy crop up in your life? What other “respectable sins” might we find ourselves guilty of? How might the character of God, especially as exhibited in this parable, help us recognize and overcome such faults and be better laborers for God’s kingdom?
3. The Collect for Proper 22 (Book of Common Prayer 1979, pp. 182/234) reminds us that God is “always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.” Keeping in mind the “diagnostic” from last week’s lesson on the “pesky widow” (Luke 18:1-18), how might our trust in God’s generosity translate into action? How might we live our lives in the light of God’s generosity as we ask God to “forgive us those things of which our conscience is afraid,” and “give us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask”?
2. How does the “respectable sin” of envy crop up in your life? What other “respectable sins” might we find ourselves guilty of? How might the character of God, especially as exhibited in this parable, help us recognize and overcome such faults and be better laborers for God’s kingdom?
3. The Collect for Proper 22 (Book of Common Prayer 1979, pp. 182/234) reminds us that God is “always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.” Keeping in mind the “diagnostic” from last week’s lesson on the “pesky widow” (Luke 18:1-18), how might our trust in God’s generosity translate into action? How might we live our lives in the light of God’s generosity as we ask God to “forgive us those things of which our conscience is afraid,” and “give us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask”?
