25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, RCL)

As someone who is “first” in this world, am I in trouble with God?

What is manna? Is it a Hebrew pun on mah hu, or as Everett Fox suggests, “Whaddayacallit”? Is it mountains of sweet insect excrement, as proposed by some scholars, or the stuff of legend?

Can’t the landowner see how unfair this is?

When I was a kid growing up in the Willamette Valley, local teenagers and migrant laborers would go out together into the strawberry fields to help with the harvest. This parable, with its setting in the vineyard, describes the emotions of us workers—we wanted a fair wage for a fair day’s work.