It is grace which threatens those who are convinced they must earn all they receive. This grace has the power to transmute their envy into community. The vineyard owner is motivated by concern for the good of others. He expresses his interest not just in himself, but in meeting the needs of others. Grace, the parable shows, is the dynamic for radical change in social, political and religious institutions.
Grace is the power which transforms egoism into love of neighbor.
Grace is the permanent possibility of change, the ever-renewed sense of what is at the core of life, namely, the love of God, which is embodied in the parable and in the person offering it. This counter-ideological grace transcends our routine, embedded ways of thinking and being and calls us to risk changing our ways of seeing, hearing and acting. Creating a parable is work, and it is art. A work of art does not simply illustrate the life of a culture, or reinforce the dominant values and beliefs of the age. That would be advertising or propaganda.