Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, the landowner found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ 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?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20.1-16)
On this Twenty-Fifth Sunday, we find ourselves face-to-face with a parable that appears only in the Gospel of Matthew. More importantly, it is one of Jesus’ parables that very few people like. It gnaws at our sense of fairness and gets under our skin much the same as Jesus’ reprimand of Martha when she complains about her sister Mary’s laziness. It just doesn’t pass the smell test with us.
The parable begins innocently enough, evoking classic images that Jesus’ listeners were familiar with, setting the stage for his story with a landowner who has a vineyard. The prophets of old often used the same image when they spoke of Israel’s relationship with the Lord God. “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside,” Isaiah the prophet says in one of his scoldings of the wayward Jews who failed to stay true to the ways of the Most High God.
So, all is safe at this point. Jesus then proceeds to tell of the landowner who needs workers for his vineyard. He goes to the town square to hire laborers for the day, much the same as people do today on street corners or on parking lots when they are looking for a day laborer. However, the landowner makes five trips into town to get workers, beginning in the early morning, and going back again at 9:00 o’clock, noon, 3:00 o’clock, and 5:00 o’clock in the evening.
The story has followed a familiar script thus far and everyone is nodding their heads in agreement. But that is soon to vanish as the landowner begins to pay the day laborers for their work, beginning with those hired last. Surprisingly, they received wages for a full day’s work, although they had worked only one hour.
Watching all this take place, those who worked the most hours anticipated a similarly generous payout, seeing dollar signs already. But when it came time for them to receive their wages, they received the same amount as the guys who showed up at the last hour. Visibly upset, the day-long workers protest the unfairness, telling the landowner, “These last ones worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who bore the day’s burden and the heat.”
Hearing their protests against the clear unfairness, we are sure to take their side, knowing this just isn’t right. But the landowner stands his ground, replying, “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?”
And so the story ends. Jesus simply adds a final take, stating, “Thus the last will be first and the first will be last,” which, all things considered, may stay true to the narrative, but doesn’t really address the main point of the story. And just what is the main point? That’s the question we want to answer because honestly we’re unsatisfied with the storyline as it is.
If we look carefully at the parable, there seems to be several truths that it is teaching, probably the biggest truth being the landowner’s answer to the workers, “Are you envious because I am generous?” The story wants to tell us about the inexplicable generosity of God, a generosity that goes beyond the rational and enters the irrational.
In many ways, it is the same message that Luke puts front and center when he has Jesus tell the story of the Prodigal Son. Once again, we find the father in that story going overboard in his generosity to his wayward son. Seeing his younger son, bedraggled and head bowed in shame walking down the road, he runs to meet him, embraces him, and welcomes him back into the fold. If that were not enough, he throws a coming home party, inviting all the neighbors and putting a huge spread on the table for all the guests.
However, in that story, as in this one, not everyone is happy. In the parable of the prodigal son, the older brother ends up bitter and angry, feeling unfairly treated because he has been the good son all his life and yet his father has never ever thrown a party for him, while this ingrate of a son screws up and still ends up with the fatted calf.
As we easily see, the older son is in the same spot as the day laborers who worked all day and who have to stand on the side while the landowner throws money at the latecomers and at the same time doles out the same pay to them, although they have, as they are quick to say, “bore the day’s burden and the heat.”
Both stories are basically the same, each pointing to the great mercy and generosity that the Most High God shows to sinners. The prodigality of God is mind-blowing in both instances. And, of course, Jesus’ own mission and ministry have shown this same generous acceptance of tax-collectors and sinners, regularly receiving criticism for his association with them. It is easy enough to see the older brother in one story and the day long laborers in the other as stand-ins for the scribes and Pharisees, men who saw themselves as playing by the rules and, hence, unnerved and bothered by Jesus’ casual acceptance of low-lives and rule-breakers.
Here it is important that we go back and hear what Jesus says at the start of this story. He began it with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner.” So, had we listened carefully, we would have expected a twist in the story, a head-flip that throws us off balance. Jesus’ teaching from the start has been to inform the crowds that the kingdom of heaven is not like the kingdoms of this world. He made it clear in his words, as this story does, and in his actions, as his ministry to the sick and to the sinner showed again and again.
In the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s ways rule. And, put bluntly, they are not the ways of the world. God sees himself as the father of one and all, not only the father of the good and the just. He welcomes back wayward sons and he shows generosity to those who show up late to the game. It simply is his way–not to reject the sinner, not to turn his back on the fallen, not to wash his hands of the weak-hearted. He cannot sleep at night until all his children are safely at home.
Obviously, the world around us uses a different calculus. It looks at performance and dishes out rewards and punishments accordingly, gold cards provided to those with high credit scores , gold stars given to those with high academic achievement, gold watches given to those who worked long years on the job. It’s a world that always looks at differences, and ends up dividing people according to success and failure in meeting certain standards.
Not so with the Kingdom of God where everyone is a child of God, not just the well-behaved and the well-mannered. Sure, they have a place at the table, but so do the worn-out and the drop-out. The same divine spirit flows through one and all, not just the few and the chosen. God looks at his children and sees their similarities, same spirit, same heartbeat, same paternity.
Which, of course, is what rubs the long-day-in-the-sun workers the wrong way. “You have made them equal to us,” they say to the landowner. What they intend as a criticism is, in the end, God’s most striking attribute. He excels at equality, not at inequality. And if a few of his children run away or run late, that means far less to him than the fact that they come back home, even if it is past curfew.
If there is one word that sticks out in the story, it is the word envious. The landowner says it to the disgruntled workers, asking them, “Are you envious because I am generous?” That question forces us to face some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Truths such as the fact that we are envious, resentful, and begrudging. Like the Pharisees, we don’t like it when Jesus sits down with sinners.
Of course, the problem with envy is that it is almost always narrowly focused, seeing what someone else has and what we don’t have. It is the same problem that we find in the jealous workers in the vineyard. They focus on what the late-comers have been paid and they fail to see that they have been paid a full-day’s labor. In other words, the landowner hasn’t cheated them a dime. He paid them fair and square, but they don’t see that fact because their eyes are focused on what others have received.
So, if we want to take a lesson from this story, perhaps that is where we should start. Not with what others have received, but with what we have received. If we look with a careful eye at what God has given to us, we may be surprised at the abundance of his generosity to us. Not to mention all the things we fail to see that have come to us through the bountiful love of God and known to him alone.
Sibling rivalry is an ugly thing. It has been since the story of Cain and Abel and, unlike wine or cheese, it doesn’t get any more palatable with age. As we listen to Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers, we don’t want to find ourselves playing the part of the ungrateful workers who received a full-day check but who were too busy eyeing what others got paid to see how good they also had it.
We will never understand what makes God so generous. But he is. The parable asks us to open our eyes to see that his generosity is shown to us also. It would be a grievous mistake on our part to allow our green-eyed envy to make us blind to his bountiful goodness to us. Jesus puts resentful older brothers and petulant day laborers before us not as role models, but as wake-up calls.
–Jeremy Myers
