"Standing in the Marketplace"
Matthew 20:1-16
In many farming communities, migrant day laborers stand on corners from the early hours of the morning, waiting for someone to hire them.
Workers who are standing at the corner of a park, the market, or the hardware store in the early afternoon have probably been up since four or five in the morning.
Those who do not get hired by the various local landowners will probably have nothing to eat that night.
Often the people who are hired first are the young, strong men--the people who are healthy and in the prime of their lives.
The older folks, the women, and children are the ones who suffer most.
They often wait all day long to be hired.
They wait, they hope, they pray that someone will come...
...needing them...
...wanting them...
...with mercy and grace.
Oftentimes they go home empty handed.
Or if they are hired toward the middle or end of the day, they certainly won't make enough money to survive.
This parable in Matthew Chapter 20 continues a theme of what Jesus has been talking about in Matthew Chapter 19.
The theme is God's love for those who are most vulnerable in society.
It illustrates God's love for the poor, in a similar way that Matthew 19:1-12 illustrates God's love for divorced women.
It illustrates God's love for children reinforcing what Jesus says in Matthew 19:13-15.
It also points us toward the right attitude as it pertains to wealth.
In Matthew 19:16-29 we have the story of Jesus and the rich young man.
The greed of the rich young man, his unwillingness to let go of and share his fortune leads him to reject Jesus' call to "come, follow me."
This causes Jesus to say, with, I imagine tears in His eyes, "I assure you that it will be very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.
In fact, it's easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God's kingdom."
The social situation in Jesus’ day was that many small farmers were being forced off their land because of debt they incurred to pay Roman taxes.
This violated God's command in Leviticus that land could not be taken away from the people who work it, but of course the Romans didn't care about this.
As a result, large pools of unemployed people gathered each morning, hoping to be hired for the day.
They are the displaced, unemployed, and underemployed workers of their day.
Those still waiting at five o'clock have little chance of earning enough to buy food for their families that day.
Yet the landowner pays even them a full day’s wage.
In this parable, about the way things work in the kingdom of heaven, the landowner represents God.
The day laborers waiting in the marketplace to be hired are the lost, the hungry, the broken, the marginalized.
They are the lost sheep.
The lost coin.
They are the meth addict.
They are the prostitute.
They are the hated tax collector.
They are the corrupt business person.
They are the sexually abused, and they are the abuser.
They are the least, the last, the lost.
They are you and me...
...they are our neighbor next door.
They are waiting for something.
They are searching for meaning in life.
They are desperate.
They are hungry.
They are thirsty.
They are naked, poor and in prison.
And the Landowner is out looking for them.
He's looking to take them from the marketplace to the vineyard.
He cares for them.
He has mercy on them.
His heart breaks for them.
He has work for them to do.
And He will pay them all the same wage--whether they are hired first or last...
...whether they are the most hated criminal in the world, or the most venerated saint.
The main theme of this parable is God's outrageous generosity!!!!!
The beginning of this parable is fairly typical of many of Jesus' parables, and it's consistent with ancient farming and modern farming for that matter.
Again, the landowner goes out to hire day laborers, and he does so early in the morning.
The laborers agree on a denarion for the day's work.
And this agreement will be crucial in the final scene of the parable.
Then, after this familiar opening scene, the parable becomes increasingly strange.
With each moment the parable starts feeling less like a story about farming, and the characters seem to be less and less the owner of a real vineyard and real farm laborers.
The owner goes back to the marketplace later in the morning and in the mid-afternoon, searches out and finds more unemployed workers.
We are told that they are "standing around the marketplace doing nothing."
The landowner promises to pay these folks "whatever is right."
This really is very unusual because normally the owner would have hired all the laborers he needed early in the morning.
But he keeps going back and looking for more!!!
As we read the parable, we start to get the sense that the landowner hires these people later in the day, not because he needs them, but simply because they are there.
In other words--they need him!!!
Then, the story gets even stranger.
The landowner goes back to the marketplace at the end of the day.
He finds more laborers "standing around."
These would be the laborers that no one else wanted.
These would be the real outcastes.
These would be the paralytics, the blind, those with missing limbs, the lepers, the old, the widows and the very young.
"Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?" the landowner asks.
"Because no one hired us,' they replied.
He responded, 'You also go work in my vineyard.'"
Notice that the landowner doesn't even promise to pay them anything.
Then, when the day ends, the landowner not only pays those who were hired last first, he also pays everyone the same wage.
But those who were hired first, "grumbled against the landowner."
This parable is kind of similar to the parable of the Prodigal Son.
The older son in the story is furious that his younger brother who squandered his inheritance is welcomed home by their father with joy and a great celebration.
It's not fair.
It's not fair that the older son, who stayed home and did what he was supposed to do, doesn't get more than what the younger son gets.
And how unjust it is that the landowner doesn't pay those who labored all day more money than those who only worked an hour.
How unfair of the landowner to treat all of the laborers equally!!!
But, one thing that the persons who were hired earliest miss is that they were given the great privilege of working much longer than those major outcastes who had to stand around all that time, being rejected again and again--wasting much of their lives.
To be invited into the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of the Vineyard Owner is the greatest thing that can ever happen to us.
As soon as we start working for God, our lives take on meaning.
We start to become transformed.
We experience a peace and a joy that the world can never know.
And we have LIFE--REAL LIFE, right here and now!!!
To come in late is to miss all that.
How could we ever grumble?
Think of the miserable experiences for those who do not yet know the Lord.
It is a living hell, to live in this broken, dog-eat-dog world without a personal relationship with God...
...without hope...
...true meaning...
...and without experiencing the unconditional love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
One thing we learn from this parable is that the landowner gives everyone in the story work.
Each of the laborers are eventually employed.
They all begin the day in the same situation, but by the time the day is done, those hired early in the morning easily forget where they started.
Have you ever forgotten where you were before you were found by God and saved by His amazing grace?
It's not hard to do.
But, let’s face it, we all were lost until we were found in the marketplace.
Life is a marketplace of people waiting for the opportunity to do what they were created to do.
Every person has great potential which is waiting to be discovered.
All the laborers in Jesus’ parable would have stayed in the marketplace all day if the landowner had not come
and offered them a job.
The landowner’s call--like our call from God--was the beginning of their self-worth and their productivity.
There is no room for human pride, since our only choice is either to answer the call to work in God's kingdom or to stand idle and waste our lives.
And it's not God's will that anyone's life should be wasted, so God extends the invitation repeatedly, searching and seeking out the lost in order to gather in as many people as possible into God's vineyard.
Everyone is equally deserving or undeserving of the opportunity to work, and the reward is equal for all as well.
"I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give you.
Don't I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me?
Or are you resentful because I am generous?"
The landowner has the right to pay His workers not on the basis of what they themselves have done, but on the basis of His own compassion.
And those of us who worship this kind of God must imitate His generosity, mercy and love.
As we spoke so much about in the last month or so, you and I are the Body of Christ on this block.
Are we searching out those who are standing around idle, wasting their lives as those unemployed by God?
Are we offering them a job in God's Kingdom?
Some scholars have suggested that Jesus told this parable as a defense of His close association with tax collectors, low life's, drunks, homeless persons, prostitutes, you name it--and the fact that even though others look at them as the scum of the earth...
...even though they may have come into the Kingdom late in life--they would be paid the same as those who had, perhaps, come from the nicer side of the tracks.
I have a close colleague who sometimes says to folks, "I'm warning you that you may see me hanging out with hookers, drunks, homeless folks and the like.
I give rides to people who are victims of human trafficking.
I can often be found in dirty and dangerous places--under bridges, in homeless camps talking to the addicted and the insane.
My posse may look like a band of crooks and robbers.
Please don't get the wrong idea.
God has called me to go into the marketplace, over and over again, inviting the precious human creatures He loves and died for saying, 'You also go into the vineyard.'"
There can be no better news!!!
We serve a God Who's generosity is outrageous!!!
Rejoice and be glad!!!
And if you are not already doing so, get to work!!!
