“When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ (Matthew 20. 8-15)
The parable that Rabbi Jesus tells in today’s gospel is found only in Matthew’s writing. Often called the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the story really isn’t about the workers who spend the day in a vineyard, but more about the owner of the vineyard who employs the workers. As a result, contemporary scholars prefer to call the story the parable of the good employer.
Regardless of the title we give it, the parable regularly raises our rackles. It is a rare person who hears it that is not bothered by it. A quick look at the parable tells us why. The storyline is simple. The owner of a vineyard needs laborers to bring in the harvest, so he goes to the marketplace early in the morning to hire workers, agreeing to pay them a denarius for their day’s labor, the customary wage.
During the day, the man returns four more times to hire more workers, going at nine o’clock in the morning, noon, three o’clock and finally at five o’clock in the afternoon. He agrees to pay these laborers “whatever is just.” Each group agrees to work for the vineyard owner, returning with him to the fields where they join the earlier groups to bring in the harvest.
The shocker comes at the end of the day when everyone lines up to be paid. As we heard, the foreman begins with the last ones hired and, inexplicably, gives them one denarius, as if they had worked the entire day, leading the first ones that had come to work to think that they are going to be paid a bonus. But not so. When they are paid, they receive a danarius, the same as everyone else, leading them to complain, “These last ones worked one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the heat.”
The vineyard owner’s response is straightforward, pointing out that he has paid them the amount that they agreed to. He then asks them, “Is it not allowed for me to do what I wish with my own money? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” Rabbi Jesus concludes the story with a familiar refrain, “The last will be first and the first last.”
To say the story is bothersome is an understatement. The story rubs us the wrong way. Our initial response is to say, “It ain’t fair.” We quickly identify with the workers who have put in the long hours in the field only to be paid the same wage as the latecomers who worked for only an hour or more. We’re upset by the owner’s reckless disregard for fair play and, all things considered, are not persuaded by his question to the unhappy workers, “Are you envious because I am generous?”
So, what are we to make of the story? In many ways, Matthew’s telling of the irate workers in the vineyard is the same as Luke’s story of the prodigal son, both of which end with somebody feeling unfairly treated. In this story, it is the workers who began their day’s labor early in the morning. In Luke’s story, it is the older son who has done everything his father has asked him to do, only to find that his younger brother who absconded with his inheritance to live a life of debauchery has returned home after spending his last cent and has been welcomed with open arms by his jubilant father who throws a party in his honor, so overjoyed is he with his errant son’s return.
Both parables leave the listener with a knot in the stomach, our natural inclination being to agree with the unhappy vineyard workers as well as the ill-tempered older brother, their sense of being treated unfairly ringing true to us. At the end of both stories, we’re standing on the sidelines, flummoxed and frustrated, calling into question Rabbi Jesus’ sense of fairness.
In these instances, it is good to take a step back in order to get the big picture. Both stories clearly want to stress the mercy of the Most High God, a God whose heart overflows with love, even for those not easy to love, such as spoiled sons and late coming slackers. Viewed through the lens of mercy, these two stories should be more palatable.
However, we have a tendency to welcome God’s mercy when it is applied to us, and less welcomed when it applies to others. Our memory is short when it comes to the mercy that the Almighty shows us and long when it comes to the sins of others. Of course, such small-mindedness says more about us than about God. Or, as the vineyard owner rightly asks, “Are you envious because I am good?”
That, of course, is the right question to ask. Rabbi Jesus, as we know, was continually battling the scribes and Pharisees who, as a lot, were quick to judge others harshly while avoiding any serious self-scrutiny. They badgered and belittled Rabbi Jesus for being, in their words, “the friend of tax-collectors and sinners.” Both parables–that of the workers in the vineyard and the prodigal son–were efforts on his part to explain that the God whom he called Father was a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
The core problem, as I see it, is our innate tendency to see others as competitors. When life is viewed as a playing field with everyone competing against each other for the trophy, then we are indeed prone to quick envy and to harsh judgment of others, particularly if we believe they are undeserving and unequal to us, the inequity based on anything and everything from social standing to skin color to a summary sheet of sins committed.
What results from our unbridled need to compete against others is the classic sports categories of winners and losers. So long as competition is our modus operandi, we divide the world into winners and losers, with ourselves regularly put in the category of winners and the people we don’t like put into the category of losers.
And while it may work in the sports world where everything is decided by a scoreboard at the end of the game, it doesn’t work with Rabbi Jesus. Nor, in fact, does it work for the world at large, where pitting people against each other in a continuous slogfest of competition only ends up in fractured communities, broken societies, and world wars.
When others are viewed as opponents on the playing field of life, rather than as partners on the journey of life, then the result is always going to be enmity and enemies rather than brothers and sisters. And in a world constructed on the duality of winners and losers, everybody loses in the end. Everybody. Marriages end. Communities splinter. Nations are destroyed.
For whatever reason–call it sin, call it selfishness, call it a nasty streak–we are strongly disinclined to disavow this destructive tendency, instead choosing to orient our lives in a way that pits ourselves and others in a continuous cycle of battles and blood baths. In doing so, we become enraged gladiators in the Roman arena who fight until only one remains standing, while the bodies of the losers lay scattered on the ground, making it look like the floor of the butcher’s shop where bloodied and beaten pieces of flesh pile up, detritus left for the dogs.
Rabbi Jesus, in his singular way, demolishes our bloodthirsty drive to compete against others by insisting that “the last shall be first and the first shall be last,” a dismissal of striving to be first if there ever was one. In place of competition, he calls for community, a recognition that the Father in heaven does not look at his creation in terms of winners and losers, but sees it as a household made up of all his children.
And if some return home late or arrive at work late, he is not going to scold or scorn them, but opens the door and welcomes them inside, happy that they have found their way back. With God, there is no aristocracy, no meritocracy, and no autocracy. There is only love, ever-flowing and never-ending, a river from which all on earth can drink, not only the early risers and the better-behaved, but one and all, including tax-collectors and sinners, which–in the end–is all inclusive.
Rabbi Jesus asks of us the same generosity that his Father offers to us, urging us to put away our scorecards and our self-righteousness, replacing them with love and mercy. A world built on the twin pillars of love and mercy is a world very different from a world built on cut-throat competition and a fight to the death.
And, of course, for that same reason Rabbi Jesus begins this parable of the discontented laborers with that familiar phrase, “the kingdom of heaven is likened to,” the phrase indicating that the story that follows is not like anything found on earth, but found only in heaven where the ways of God are truly practiced and experienced.
But, in laying out the ways and wishes of the Almighty, Rabbi Jesus makes clear that those who call themselves his followers are to strive to implement the ways of heaven even while living on the face of the earth, in this way renewing creation and conforming it to the design intended and implemented by the Most High God.
Is it a high reach for us? Of course it is. Our feet are always stuck in the mud of this world even as we reach our arms towards the heavens. But the simple truth is that our world cannot long survive on its present path where our enemies are more numerous than our friends. Our salvation–personal and collective–depends on our desire to see others as friends, not as enemies.
And perhaps that is the whole point of the story, found hidden in one word that the landowner says. When an unhappy worker contests the vineyard owner’s generosity, the first word out of the owner’s mouth is “friend.” He says to the irate man, “Friend, I did you no injustice.” Even in that heated moment, the landowner still sees the other man as a friend, not as a foe.
Later in the gospel, Matthew will use the same phrase when Rabbi Jesus nears his end, spending his last night in the garden, awaiting his persecution and death on the cross. As his betrayer Judas approaches in the darkness, leading the band of henchmen, Rabbi Jesus looks at Judas and says to him, “Friend, do what you have come for.”
If Rabbi Jesus could still call Judas a friend in that dark moment of betrayal, surely we can make a start at seeing those late to clock in as our friends, not as our competitors or as our enemies. If and when we can make that jump, we will have initiated the kingdom of heaven on the face of the earth, moving it towards a place of community, not a place of competitio.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 