Every morning they line up on the streets – dozens of people outside the temporary services agencies in Chicago. They’re lined up at 6:00 am each morning looking for a job, but these agencies won’t find jobs for them. They’ll only find them work to do – work for one day. By 7:00 am, over 100 of the people waiting will be “hired” at this agency. Eight hours later, another 100 will be “hired” for the next shift. Eight hours later, the pattern will repeat yet again.
And these few hundred at this particular temporary services agency are just a few among the estimated 30,000 day laborers across Chicago who are hired each day for only one day’s work. They are part of the workforce that helps make the economy run. They make the meals for airlines flying out of O’Hare. They stuff envelopes for marketing firms. They count inventory at warehouses. They package orders for shipment for internet retailers. They do light manufacturing and industrial work. 30,000 day laborers do this every day during the peak season.
Once they have been “hired” for the day, they are assigned an employer, they agree on a wage – usually the $5.15 federal minimum wage – they are then responsible for getting themselves to their workplace, and at the end of the day they receive their pay – barely $41 for the eight-hour shift. And at the end of each day, they don’t know if there will be work for them tomorrow. But for at least one day they know that they will be able to sustain their family and make it one more night.
When we look at the parable of Jesus this morning, we see a very similar pattern in first century Palestine as we see in twenty-first century Chicago. The same group of workers lining up first thing in the morning looking for work for the day. This time it’s at the marketplace rather than the temp services agency. This time it’s a vineyard owner doing the hiring. And this time they’ve agreed on a wage of one denarius for the day’s work – a typical day’s wages for manual labor. There is some disagreement among the biblical scholars as to just how much a denarius was worth, but it seems it’s rather more generous than the $41 minimum wage we have. The one number I saw indicated it was worth maybe $100 of our money today – nothing extravagant, but certainly a decent wage that can support a family.
So in the parable, the workers are invited by the vineyard owner to go to the vineyard to work. Hard work, to be sure, but work done with the knowledge that $100 was waiting for them at the end of the day.
Several hours later, the vineyard owner returns to the marketplace and finds others who are still looking for work. He hires them and tells them he will pay them “what is fair” for their labors. He repeats this throughout the day, until his final trip to the marketplace at 5:00 pm, when he hires the final group of workers for the vineyard.
At 6:00 pm, the end of the workday comes, and the vineyard owner pays the workers. The ones who had just been hired at 5:00 are paid $100 each. So of course, those workers who have been hard at work since early in the morning are impressed with his generosity and begin getting excited – if he’s giving $100 to the latecomers, surely those who worked all day long are in for a nice bonus!
So then the vineyard owner pays those who worked for part of the day -- $100 each. Those who had been working since 6:00 am get a little anxious. When it is time for them to be paid, they receive the same $100 as everyone else!
They’re indignant! “Where is the fairness?!” they cried! By the time any kid gets to kindergarten, they’ve got a strong sense of fairness – any six year-old would tell you that it’s not fair to reward someone who worked hard for twelve hours the same as someone who worked for only one!
The vineyard owner’s response? He tells the workers that he is generous in his giving, that he rewards all who work for him equally, and that they should appreciate what they have been given rather than envious that others were given the same. The parable doesn’t tell us if those who worked all day ended up agreeing with the vineyard owner or they just continued to grumble.
So on one side, I laid out the struggle of the day laborers here in Chicago. And on the other side, I described the parable of the vineyard owner. There are a number of parallels, and the situations sound quite similar. But the day laborers in Chicago are in a situation probably none of us would choose to be in (and in fact, 97% of them say they would prefer to be in a regular job that works regular hours and pays a regular salary) while the parable is described by Jesus as a way to understand the Kingdom of Heaven!
It is hard to imagine how we could compare the ordeal people go through each day at the temporary services agencies with the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven, so what is the difference?
The answer is… the boss. Whereas day laborers in Chicago often have employers who seek to take advantage of them, the vineyard workers are working for a vineyard owner who loves them and cares for them and provides for them. Jesus clearly placed himself in the parable as the vineyard owner, describing all people as potential workers in the vineyard, and the denarius as the gift of salvation, given by God.
Whether we become a Christian as a child and serve God faithfully for decades or become a Christian in our old age and serve God for only a few days before dying, our reward of salvation is the same. Because, as the parable makes clear, it is not the quality of our work in the vineyard or the length of time in the vineyard that earns us the denarius of our salvation, but all who make the choice to accept God’s invitation in the marketplace to come and to serve in God’s vineyard and to accept the love and provision of the vineyard owner will receive the same gift of salvation equally.
While this may not seem fair by the world’s standards, we can thank God that God has always loved us more than we would have expected. God has always given us more than we deserve. God always cares for all who have accepted the invitation to allow Jesus Christ into their hearts – even when we in our selfishness don’t think God should be nearly so loving. So the message of the parable then draws our attention away from our perceived unfairness of the situation and toward the amazing grace of God – the self-giving love that God gives us. God shows grace to us, and that isn’t fair, because God’s grace is much more than we deserve – thanks be to God!
When we recognize the amazing gift of God’s grace that was generously given to all who accept the invitation to come and serve God in the vineyard, the rest of the parable takes on all new meanings! Because the workers of the vineyard now know that the vineyard owner, God, will be faithful in taking care of them. They need not worry about providing for their families – they have already seen God’s generosity in rewarding the workers. They need not worry if they will work the following day – they saw God go and recruit more workers again and again and again to come serve – all were invited. They need to view their work as drudgery to be endured simply to receive payment – they can count it a privilege to be laboring, productive and using their time and energy to serve God, while feeling deep gratitude that their “boss” always has their best interest and their spiritual well-being in mind. They can live their day in confidence and assurance rather than the uncertainty that those who stayed most of the day in the marketplace must have felt.
This, I believe, is the real reason that those workers who labored in the fields the entire day were wrong to be envious of the latecomers. They missed the joy of serving and working for a God who loves them and cares for them, and began thinking instead only of their reward – thinking of what God could do for them rather than what they could do for God. And of course, as soon as they lost sight of the magnitude of their reward, they began thinking that they really had worked hard enough to earn their own reward – to earn their own salvation – not realizing that God had given them their reward as just as much a gift as the latecomers. Twelve hours of hard labor in the vineyard had not earned their salvation any more than one hour of labor had.
The reward came simply as a generous gift from the vineyard owner. The hard work in the vineyard brought joy to those who recognized what a blessing it is we can serve such a God. We serve God in our daily living not because we will earn ourselves “more” salvation – because all who love God and accept Christ’s sacrifice on the cross receive salvation equally – but we serve God because we know the joy of having a God who yearns for our well-being and our wholeness.
Those who complained about the reward not being fair knew that working in the vineyard was hard work – and serving God is *always* hard work! – but they failed to recognize the magnitude of the reward they were given. And they failed to recognize the true blessing that the work brought – the blessing of serving our Creator and living as the human beings God created us to be and always imagined us to be.
We have been promised the reward of salvation if only we accept the invitation Christ makes to us to allow him into our heart and into our lives.
Serving God is hard work, and it is also a true joy and a great blessing.
These two things are true. This parable expresses both of these truths.
If these are new truths to you – or if they are old truths you may have forgotten – let me tell you, God is heading back to the marketplace at this very moment, searching for a new group of workers to invite to come and work in the vineyard. God is looking earnestly for those who wish to serve in the Kingdom of Heaven, ready to share the generous blessings a life of service to God brings, eager to give the reward of salvation to those who accept it.
If for whatever reason you were not at the marketplace the last time God came searching for you – if you were distracted by the things of this world, if you were confused and were waiting for God to appear in other religions or in other philosophies, if you were shutting your ears to God’s invitation – anything that has kept you in the past from recognizing God’s invitation for you, I invite you to come before God in prayer, waiting at the marketplace where God is arriving at just this moment, inviting us to come and to serve our Creator and to receive our reward.
Amen.
