Good Dispositions, Atlantic Subscriptions

Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
September 20, 2026
XVII Pentecost, Matthew 20:1-16

In you, O Lord, have we taken refuge; for the sake of your name, lead us and guide us.¹ Amen.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.²

Many of Jesus’ parables prove difficult to understand, and his disciples frequently misinterpret the truth he intends in those stories he tells. Adding to his followers’ difficulties, we – with two thousand years between us and the culture, politics, and economy of Jesus’ time and place – we can struggle to relate the agrarian, slave-holding world he references, to our own situation. Therefore, we postulate the U.S. dollar value of the ancient talent – study the biology of mustard seeds – all in hope of discerning the mystery of Jesus’ teachings.

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard, however, makes no esoteric reference to either Galilean lending systems or Greco-Roman political philosophies. Rather, its challenge is its clarity, for the parable is not difficult to understand, only hard to accept. See, like the laborers in the vineyard we begrudge God’s generosity, believing we know better how to order not only earth, but heaven. We believe we have earned what God offers only as a gift.

In our contemporary American experience, we strive for position: academic hoods and social clubs, political connections and social-media Likes. The windup of today’s parable baits us into proudly relating ourselves to those strong-backed, stronger-willed laborers who arrive at the field before dawn and toiled all day. We then join their watching others receive preferential treatment, and together we all disagree with the Lord’s order of things! We dare the audacity to petition God for fairness rather than for grace. We urge the owner of the vineyard to recognize that the earthen privileges we enjoy have been hard-earned, and we expect heaven to show equal regard for our achievements.

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.”³

Mrs. Ruby Turpin would certainly presume her place among those arriving early to work. Daring the shopwear and shadows of a dated illustration⁴, when a horse kicks her husband, Claud, the Turpins set off for the town doctor in the rural south of the early 1950s. As Flannery O’Connor describes the scene in her short story, “Revelation,” that office’s entry, “which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered, and Mrs. Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence.”⁵

Around the perimeter of this waiting room sits a cast of characters representing the various social strata by which Mrs. Turpin makes sense of the world and her place within it: those who labored a full day, and those who arrived just before the closing bell, with their hand out for a check. There waits “a blond child in a dirty blue romper who should have been told to move over and make room for the lady. He [slumps] down in the seat, his arms idle at his sides and his eyes idle in his head; his nose [runs unchecked].”⁶

Across from the child sits “a well-dressed gray-haired lady whose eyes [meet Mrs. Turpin’s] and whose expression said: if that child belonged to me, he would have [had] some manners and moved over.”⁷

Next to the gray-haired lady, a “girl of eighteen or nineteen, [scowls] into a thick blue book which Mrs. Turpin [sees is] entitled Human Development. The girl [raises] her head and [directs] her scowl at [Mrs. Turpin] as if she did not like her looks … The poor girl’s face [is] blue with acne and Mrs. Turpin [thinks] how pitiful it [is] to have a face like that at that age. She [gives] the girl a friendly smile, but the girl only [scowls] the harder.”⁸

Two seats down rests “a thin leathery old woman in a cotton print dress.” Ruby thinks to herself, “‘We have three sacks of chicken feed [in] the same print,’” having seen “from the first that the [snotty] child belonged [to] the old woman. She could tell by the way they sat – kind of vacant and white-trashy, as if they would sit there until Doomsday if nobody [told] them to get up.”⁹

Next to the well-dressed pleasant lady is “a lank-faced woman who was certainly the child’s mother. She [wears] a yellow sweat shirt and wine-colored slacks, both gritty-looking, and the rims of her lips [are] stained with snuff. Her dirty yellow hair [is] tied behind with a little piece of red paper ribbon.”¹⁰

Now, “without appearing to, Mrs. Turpin always noticed people’s feet. The well-dressed lady had on red and gray suede shoes to match her dress. Mrs. Turpin had on her good black patent leather pumps. The ugly girl had on Girl Scout shoes and heavy socks. The old woman had on tennis shoes and the white-trashy mother had on what appeared to be bedroom slippers, black straw with gold braid threaded through them – exactly what you would have expected her to have on.”¹¹

[The owner of the vineyard replied,] ‘Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’¹²

O’Connor’s characters emerge from her rural Georgia upbringing, a world in which she recognized classism, bigotry, racism – all so deeply embedded in her community’s way of life that few could diagnose the judgmental diseases they carried … and fewer still even knew they had taken ill. Writing as a devout Roman Catholic, she took issue with a Christian journey where worldly accomplishment and acquisition marked position in heaven as on earth, and her vision of the Gospel set her at odds with both literary critics and the mainstream Church. Late in her career O’Connor reflected that she was an author “with certain preoccupations,” namely “that belief in Christ is … a matter of life and death.” That conviction, she observed, “[has] been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.”¹³

Like the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, “Revelation” assails a piety of achievement, charging belief in Christ as a undertaking of humility and heart, and not of promotion.

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”¹⁴

Sitting in that waiting room, Mrs. Turpin and her companions discuss the fecklessness of the local working classes, the difficulty of people [other than themselves, of course], and the shame of wasted opportunities. One such waster, they surmise, is Mary Grace, that eighteen-year-old in Girl Scout shoes. As her mother explains – in front of the teenager, talking across her – “‘I think people with bad dispositions are more to be pitied than anyone on earth … [and,] I think the worst thing in the world … is an ungrateful person. To have everything and not appreciate it. [Why,] I know a girl,’ she said, ‘who has parents who would give her anything, a little brother who loves her dearly, who is getting a good education, who wears the best clothes, but who can never say a kind [word,] who never smiles [and] just criticizes all day long.’”¹⁵

“‘Is she too old to paddle?” Claud asks, perhaps raising a knowing eyebrow toward the unhappy girl, who’s “face was [now] almost purple.”¹⁶

“‘It never hurt anyone to smile,’ Mrs. Turpin [interjects,] ‘It just makes you feel better all over … [and] If it’s one thing I am,’ Mrs. Turpin [says] with feeling, ‘it’s grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, “Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!’”¹⁷

“…Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!”

The absurdity of Mrs. Turpin’s exclamation reminds us readers that we cannot begin the Gospel work of redeeming the world if we refuse to acknowledge the world’s need of redemption! And we know our first thoughts: are there not a few of us here [just two or three] who have already taken comfort in O’Connor’s decades-old Southern categories, uncritically and immediately setting ourselves above these shameful souls? Oh, bless their hearts.

See how swiftly and easily we imagine: “Why, surely we have no seat in such a waiting room as that!” Without a second thought, we deploy our own regional snobberies, if not boasting “a good disposition besides,” then subscriptions to The Atlantic and our noses pointed high. We fail to recognize our own dependence on “the way things are.”

Jesus’ parable challenges all who justify themselves by their earthly statuses and privileges, those who claim power and wealth, framed degrees and partisan gnosis as expressions of moral superiority. Jesus’ life and ministry threaten such belittling and bullying, whether we deliver our attacks with the gross passive-aggression of O’Connor’s judgmental patients; the not-so-subtle smuggeries of New Englanders; or the balder, outright-aggressions of bigoted antagonists.

Back in the waiting room, as the Turpins and Mary Grace’s mother volley back-and-forth their criticisms of the teenager, tensions build … and build … until … “The book [strikes Ruby] directly over her left eye. It [strikes] almost at the same instant that she [realizes the girl is] about to hurl it. Before she [can] utter a sound, the raw face [comes] crashing across the table toward her, howling. The girl’s fingers [sink] like clamps into the soft flesh of her neck. She [hears] the mother cry out and Claud shout, ‘Whoa!’ …”¹⁸

The staff [leaps] to Mrs. Turpin’s aid and [pulls] Mary Grace away. The girl, “held down on one side by the nurse and on the other by her mother, [wrenches and turns]. The doctor [kneels] astride her, trying to hold her arm down[, before finally managing to] sink a long needle into it.”

“The girls’ eyes [focus on Mrs. Turpin]. [Those eyes seem now] a much lighter blue than before, as if a door that had been tightly closed behind them [is] now open to admit light and air.

“Mrs. Turpin’s head [clears, as well,] and her power of motion [returns]. She [leans] forward until she [looks] directly into [those] fierce brilliant eyes. There [is] no doubt in her mind that the girl [knows] her, [knows] her in some intense and personal way, beyond time and place and condition. ‘What you got to say to me?’ [Mrs. Turpin asks] hoarsely and [holding] her breath [and] waiting, as for a revelation.

“The girl [raises] her head. Her gaze [locks] with Mrs. Turpin’s. ‘Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,’ she [whispers]. Her voice [is] low but clear … [and] Mrs. Turpin [sinks] bank in her chair.”¹⁹

The language of this story – those verses quoted, and those left unspoken here – remains coarse as a dress made of feed sacks. Like the parable, “Revelation” is not difficult to understand, only hard to abide, for when we claim indignation and cast ourselves as those arriving to the vineyard before dawn, we admit our Turpin tendencies [let’s call them] to begrudge our Lord’s generosity. As Human Development strikes Mrs. Turpin’s head, Mary Grace’s words strike harder at the woman’s heart, O’Connor suggesting that she – and we – pull comfortable footwear out of our closets, because if we continue in our self-righteous ways? Well, we’re going to be standing in Saint Peter’s queue for a good, long while.

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard may be the most dangerous story in scripture. Jesus asks us to turn upside-down “the way things are” and to reorder the realm: by gifts, rather than wages; by grace, rather than fairness; by understanding, rather than evaluation; by mercy, rather than judgement. Demanding faith in Christ as a matter of great consequence! … not as an identity among many others we whittle only along the edges of our lives and when our spare time allows, no. These stories expect faith in Christ as a matter of life and death – at the center of existence itself! – for our own good and for the sake of the whole world.

That from these stones,

we would love so dangerously, so faithfully, I pray;

Amen.