Opening illustration: One of our favorite teachers in elementary school was my third grade teacher, Miss Titus, an “old school” teacher who maintained a strict sense of order in class but who genuinely cared about each of us. On the first day of school she asked us to line up for lunch and there was a mad scramble to get to the front of the line. After we had lined up, Miss Titus went to the back of the line, smiled and said, “This is the front of the line,” and led the class to lunch. I still remember the surprised grin on the face of the kid who suddenly found herself in the front of the line, as well as the angry response from someone at the back of the line: “This is so annoying!” The next day when we lined up for lunch we all scrambled to be last in line, so Miss Titus went to the middle of the line and said, “Today this is the front of the line.” Eventually we all got the message and the scrambling to be first stopped.
Today’s gospel lesson, the Parable of the Landowner, is unsettling on the surface for many people, and for some people their response to this parable is the same as that of the kid in the back of the line: “This is so annoying!” This parable can indeed be annoying because when it comes to merit, to getting what you’ve earned “thank-you-very-much,” it turns everything upside down.
Let us turn to Matthew 20 and catch up with this story …
Introduction: The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is about the 9th (and 10th commandment. In a very real sense this parable is about coveting. While "covet" may not seem the most obvious word to describe what is going on here, it does fit both the emphasis of Jesus' teaching and the overarching emphasis in Matthew on the Law and Jesus' representation of it in a way that transforms our thinking and doing. Coveting lies at the heart of this parable in a couple of ways.
We covet what God chooses to give to others. A parable is essentially an elaborate allegory. We are invited to see ourselves in the story, and then apply it to ourselves. The wages at stake (even at the moment of Jesus' first telling of the parable) are not actual daily wages for vineyard-laborers, but forgiveness, life, and salvation for believers. We need not literally be laborers in a vineyard, as we are all of us co-workers in the kingdom (1 Corinthians 3:9).
How does the Jesus Economic work?
1. The Hiring (vs. 1-7)
It is threatening to the social mores of his time and to the hierarchical economic structures that controlled commerce and the peasantry. It says something about how owners would treat their workers in a just society, and—more dangerously—it proposes a radical model of behavior for other landowners. What would their livelihoods be like if they decided to treat their workforce as though they were humans with families instead of production elements in the business cycle, to be moved and cut at will and paid the absolute minimum possible to keep them alive and working and not revolting? The backlash of this parable is not reported, but it would be difficult to believe that it would have been received with gladness by the other landowners in the region.
All of this could take you way beyond the text, if you let it, but referencing it on your way to building the sermon, could help keep it sounding contemporary and relevant for your listeners.
(a) “Went out early in the morning to hire laborers”
Unusual action for an owner. Usually they wanted nothing to do with the riff-raff that they hired to work on their farms. They pushed this distasteful task onto their managers (v. 20:8). For what it’s worth, you might note that Arthur T. Demoulas was known to have a hand in at least some of the hiring and interviewing of some of the local managers of his supermarkets. More than likely Jesus has intentionally tweaked the customary so as to make the later confrontation between the disenchanted workers and the owner more face-to-face.
(b) Words and phrases such as “Landowner,” “hire laborers,” “his vineyard,” householder,” his manager,” all indicate that this man was a person of considerable means. Part of the one percent of his day, perhaps even higher. There was no middle class to speak of in First Century Palestine, there was a tiny core of wealthy elites and a vast bottom of poor and desperately poor. The workers in this story are probably representative of the latter group because they evidently have no farmland of their own and no steady employment in the city or town.
© Day laborers…
The market was full of them. By the accounts in the New Testament and other writings, we know that there must have been an enormous number of jobless (and often homeless) people waiting at any given day, for this kind of work. Usually they had lost their farms due to mounting debt and flocked to the cities and towns to look for urban or agricultural work. They waited in the marketplace, the ancient equivalent of the employment bureau. They got by day-to-day during the harvest season, but had to beg or starve during the off seasons. Notice that the NRSV says they were offered the “usual daily wage,” but the Greek word, denarius, could also be understood as the most basic minimum living wage. It was one step up from starvation. It was the least that an employer could offer and still guarantee that his pool of workers would not die and he would be without a workforce. “Their situation was more precarious than slaves,” writes William Carter, author of Matthew in the Margins, “since an employer had no long-term investment in them.”[3] A denarius is only barely a day’s wage, never enough for them to get back on their feet and put something away for the off season.
2. The Payment (vs. 8-14)
The paying began from the last and went to the first. Remember the verse that ended the last chapter and led into this one? “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” On the one hand, setting up the last to be paid first is symbolic of the Kingdom (v. 16, 19:30; 18:4), but also, in terms of the power of storytelling, it forces the last to actually see the first receive their denarii and allows them the choice of getting greedy about how much theirs should have been in comparison to these slackers who were called late and still got full wages.
The owner’s involvement in this is again unusual. It should have been one of his managers. But for the benefit of the story, it allows the conflict between the owner and the workers, and between himself and his fellow owners, to be made clearer.
The pay scandalized Jesus' followers the most, however. Imagine the most dedicated and hardworking were paid the same as the others. And they were paid last! Beyond the question of money lie the question of social treatment. The owner treated those who worked for only an hour as he would treat his own family. Those hired at dawn were treated as mere workers. The owner gave greater honor to those who worked the least by paying them well and paying them first. The owner belittled those who worked all day long by paying them so little and paying them last. And, when the workers grumbled, the owner rebuked them in public. No wonder they gave him the "evil eye." [20:11-15]
Jesus had a bitter message for Christians, especially their leaders. The followers of Jesus would sacrifice a sense of fairness for the Kingdom. Those who grew in the faith would feel lonely. Those who grew in ministry would feel abandoned. God did not have favorites in the Kingdom. But he did have the saved community where the most senior and the neophyte shared equally in God's very life. Indeed, the first would be last and the last would be first. [20:16]
A traditional way of reading the passage is to think in terms of salvation. It doesn’t matter when you come to faith, even on your death bed; the heavenly reward is the same. How can we who have been Christians all our lives complain that death bed converts get what we get? After all, salvation is a gift of God and not something we earn. But is Jesus talking here about salvation?
If we look at the parable in economic terms, the dissonance is more present. Shouldn’t pay be based on the work done? The more you work, the more you should be paid. In a capitalist system like ours, even if it is a regulated form, we assume that this is the way things should work. Not only that, we assume that the higher you rise in rank the higher your pay. That just seems like the right thing to do. So built into the system, both private and public, are pay grades. Even clergy fit into this scheme. The more education, the longer you’ve served, the larger the congregation, the more you should earn. Truth be told, one of the reasons why some clergy pursue doctor of ministry degrees is so that they can command a higher salary. That’s not true of all, but it is true of some. This is just the way it is supposed to be – except not in the kingdom of heaven.
It would seem that in this parable, Jesus is laying out a vision in which the people of God should expect to live in a context of radical equality. Everyone gets paid the same, no matter much labor is put in. The point is not reward for work, but sustenance for life. Charles Campbell points us to the story of God’s provision of manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16 – the passage I’m preaching from this week), suggesting that it provides a lens by which we can interpret this parable. He speaks of God creating a new people – in both cases – “who will embody an alternative to the ways of Egypt, the ways of domination and submission, rich and poor, powerful and powerless.” The provision of God – the manna – is not fancy or special. It is simply the provision of what is needed to survive. It is subsistence living. It is what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer – “our daily bread” [Campbell in Feasting on the Word, Year A,: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers: 17-reign of Christ), p. 93]. It’s not the new Cadillac or the new iPhone – it’s basic sustenance, that’s what God provides.
At issue here is the nature of our relationships as the people of God. What are the expectations? Are we competing for fame and fortune, superiority and status? And where should we begin to see this vision expressed?
3. Love VS Justice (vs. 15-16)
We know that in some sure and certain way God loves all people equally. But the parable of the workers in the vineyard that demotes the first to last and elevates the last to first, along with Jonah who complained about God's tender love for Israel's bitter enemy Nineveh, remind us that He somehow has a special love for the least, for those whom we normally exclude, reject, and even hate. Jonah complained openly about God's lavish love toward a sworn enemy. The geography of divine grace that embraces Nineveh and the economy of his love that pays a full day's wage for one hour of work confound our puny and parsimonious human metrics that complain about instead of celebrate divine generosity.
However we choose to read the parable, whether spiritually or economically, the word we hear in this passage is that in the kingdom of heaven, the king is generous. The king provides sustenance. It is not based on merit but on grace. Yes, the vineyard owner declares: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ (vs. 15). If the vineyard owners stands in for God, then should we not follow the lead and live lives of generosity and grace? When we see a person in need, should we not welcome opportunities to provide for their needs? Yes, Paul does say that if one does not work, they should not eat. But the contexts are different. In Thessaloniki, some Christians were abandoning their work to wait for the return of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-13). They were expecting others to provide their needs so they wouldn’t miss seeing Jesus come back. In this case, people are looking for work, but can’t find it. Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to be filled? What is just and what is right? What is God’s attitude toward those who are in need? Is God not generous and gracious?
I think that Jesus is using this story as a metaphor for class distinctions, even though at this point in the story, he is applying it now to distinctions between the workers themselves and not the workers and the owner. There isn’t an exact parallel between the people who show up late and early and people who are rich and poor or powerful and powerless, but it’s similar. Instead of reinforcing expectations about class over workers and strong over weak, Jesus surprises the listener by saying everybody should be paid equally. Note that their complaint was “you have made them equal to us” (v. 12). A terrifying thought, even though the majority of these workers were all poor themselves. We got ours and we don’t want you second class people to get the same thing.
That is the most important line for knowing what Jesus wants you to see and hear in this story. The people who thought they deserved much more were complaining that Jesus treated the others equal to them.
Some of us are the long termers. We saw the steeple go up, we fixed the chowder suppers. We built the cross, we constructed the table, we wrestled with inclusive language, and we painted the classrooms, and now some young scumbag comes along and gets converted a week before he dies and God says he loves that guy just as much as he does us.
Illustration: It isn't fair, it doesn't comport with capitalism and the American free market system. He didn't pay his dues. He shouldn't be made equal to us. It isn't the way we have been taught to believe the system works. But that's because we are thinking in terms of Wall Street Journal economics. Jesus is thinking of Biblical economics. It's the Listerine principle. We don't like it, but in our heart of hearts it's true. We know it’s right.
Application: What does the desire to be number one indicate from our faith perspective? Whether it is the USA? a congregation, or an individual? Is it wrong to try to be the best at something? On the other hand, I don't think that striving to be the worst we can be, so we can claim to be the last, is what Jesus intended for us. What about the vast majority of us who are somewhere in the middle? We're not the greatest and we're not the worst. We're just mediocre. Does the verse say anything to us? Striving to be first or last, is still human striving. The key to the passage is that whatever position we might be in, our heavenly reward comes solely as a gift from God.
