Posts Tagged ‘labourers in the vineyard’

Enough is enough – labourers in the vineyard

September 23, 2023

Pentecost 17 – 2023
Matthew 20:1-16
Marian Free

In the name of God who gives us all that we need. Amen.

Each received a days’ wage, and yet some grumbled against the householder.

It is not often that one of the Sunday readings provides something of a commentary on another, but such is the case this morning – a reflection on what is going on in the Exodus, resonates with the parable that Jesus’ relates in Matthew’s gospel. In both accounts there is a lot of grumbling going on and though the situations are vastly different in time and context, it is clear that in every age, the people of God find it impossible to trust God and to believe in or accept God’s generosity.

Meg Jenista’s commentary on Exodus 16 this week touched a chord for me . She writes: “The waters of the Red Sea have barely even crashed back together. The victory song has barely even faded off Miriam’s lips. The Israelites have barely even finished filling their canteens at an oasis with twelve springs and 70 palm branches.

“But out in that desert, the people of God melt into a collective toddler tantrum – I mean it really does help if you can imagine them sinking onto the sand like overtired two year olds, flailing and wailing pitifully. “If only we had died in Egypt. Everything was so great in Egypt and God is so mean to bring us here. Moses is so dumb! And now we’re going to die of hunger. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to us.””

Only weeks before, the same people were bent low under the iron fist of Pharoah, making bricks (without the straw needed to bind them), forced to meet impossible deadlines, and impelled to kill any male child born to them. Now, having been miraculously rescued by God (who sent plagues to terrorize the Egyptians) and brought through the Red Sea by the parting of the waters they are safely on their way to the Promised Land. But is this enough for them? – no it is not! These former slaves want more. God might have brought them out of Egypt, but despite everything they have witnessed and experienced, they are unable to trust that God will take care of them in the desert and bring them safely to their destination. (At least in Egypt – awful as it was – they knew where they stood.)

Jenista goes on to point out that, instead of chiding them for their ingratitude, God provides food manna and quail –with a proviso – they are only to gather as much as they need for one day, except on the Sabbath when they are to gather two days’ worth. You would think that when they see what God has provided, they would trust God to continue to provide? But, no! What if there is none tomorrow? So, they gather more than they need, only to discover that it does not last and there is more each day. It seems that whatever God does for them is not sufficient. They have been slaves too long to feel truly secure. They cannot let go of the fear that there will not be enough food for tomorrow. They are still in the grip of a world-view that says that leaders are oppressors who cannot be trusted. They cannot let go of the belief that they have to look out themselves, because no one else will look out for them and they cannot accept that they are of value to anyone just as they are (as opposed to what they can be used for).

These are beliefs and fears that cannot be unlearned in a generation, and they are the sort of fears and beliefs that seem to lie behind the grumbling in today’s parable.
As is the case with all the parables, it is not our task to make sense of the details – like why the householder went into the marketplace on five successive occasions – surely he knew early in the morning just how many workers he needed for the day! What is important to note is that each time he went to the marketplace he saw labourers waiting to be hired, and he hired them. Nor is it up to us to wonder why – at nine, noon, three and five – there were more labourers waiting to be hired – surely they were there at dawn! The salient point is that a householder who needs help with a vineyard, hires people at different points during the day. With the first he has a “contract” – he and they agree that he will pay them the usual daily wage. With the remainder, he simply says: “I will pay you whatever is right.”

We all know the story, those who worked only an hour are paid for a full day’s work, and those who worked for the entire day are paid what they agreed to – the usual daily wage. Our outrage matches that of those who have worked all day. “It’s not fair!” we think to ourselves. Those who worked longer should get more (no matter what they agreed to). We don’t stop to think, that those who worked for one hour, three hours, six hours or nine hours also have families who need to be fed, nor do we consider that those who worked for a day will have enough to meet their commitments at least for a time. Our idea of equity is that some get more than others. The householder’s idea of equity is that everyone gets enough.

Despite ourselves, our lives are governed by a need to prove ourselves, a desire to be recognised, an anxiety that we will not have enough (or that what we have will be taken away). In order to feel secure and to feel valued we, like the Israelites in the desert expect God to do, to give us more than enough and, like those who have worked all day, we want to be marked out as special, more deserving.

It would be so much better if we trusted God to give us what we need, and to be content with the knowledge that God wants everyone to have enough.

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Being seen with God’s eyes

September 19, 2020

Pentecost 16 – 2020

Matthew 20:1-16

Marian Free

In the name of God who sees us for who we are, not for who we are not. Amen.

There is a video that does the round of FACEBOOK from time to time. In it a group of Christian school leavers are lined up as if for a race. They are told that the winner will receive $100 – but this is no ordinary race. The organiser begins not with a starter’s gun, but with instructions: “I am going to make a couple of statements. If those statements apply to you, take two steps forward.” He begins: “take two steps forward if you grew up in a stable household, take two steps forward if you had access to a private education, take two steps forward if you never had to help mum and dad with the bills, take two steps forward if you never wondered where your next meal was coming from[1].” As the ‘race’ continues those who are taking the lead become increasingly uncomfortable as they leave the others behind. At the end of the instructions, some are near the finish line, but there are still a few who have not even left the starting blocks. When he has finished with the instructions, the organiser reminds the students who are in the lead: “Every statement I’ve made has nothing to do with what you have done or decisions that you have made. The reality is that despite that you have been given a head start and its only because of that head start that you are going to win this race called life.” 

While video is simplistic and just a little preachy the “race” is something of an enacted parable. It dramatises the fact that some of us have advantages that give us a head start with regard to education and therefore to employment and to a career.  The “race” serves as a reminder that there are many in our community who never get to leave the blocks in the race of life – children who can’t concentrate at school because they are always hungry, who can’t complete their homework because they do not have a stable home, or because they cannot afford school books. It helps us to recognize that there are adults who have never been able to overcome the abuse or neglect that they suffered in their childhoods or who have physical or mental disabilities that limit what they can and can’t do: that there are men and women who cannot work because they have been severely injured in an accident or who are suffering from a terminal disease. At present, we are being forcibly reminded that forces not of our own making can leave people without work or with reduced hours at work. The global pandemic has meant that even those who thought that they were secure, that they were easily employable and that they could always pay their bills are now in danger (through no fault of their own) of falling behind.

Today’s parable is problematic for many of us. It offends our sense of justice. We see only the surface of the story and bristle with indignation at the unfairness of it all – what possesses the landowner to pay everyone equally? The latecomers – the lazy, good-for-nothing lay abouts – do not deserve a handout. 

The video of the race, however simplistic, gives us a different way of looking at the parable. Hopefully it helps us to be more sympathetic to the late comers – there might after all be reasons for their still being in the marketplace at the end of the day.

Today’s gospel is a parable, not a story or a piece of history – there is no vineyard and no marketplace. It is intended to challenge or confront our established modes of thinking about God.

A little background is useful. Palestine in the time of Jesus was occupied by Rome. Large parcels of land had been given to Roman soldiers as a reward for their service. The effect of this was to push farmers off the land. People who had previously scraped a living from the soil were now forced to earn a pittance as day-labourers. This entailed going to the square in the morning and hoping that someone would employ them. Employers had their pick. One imagines that they would pick the fittest first. Why pay for someone who would not work as quickly and as productively as another? 

Parables are notoriously short on detail, so we tend to add our own. It is unlikely that a landowner would return again and again to the marketplace – he would have known how many people he required. Maybe rain was imminent, or the original workers were not as efficient as the landowner had hoped. Whatever the case, when the landowner returned to the marketplace, he found those whom others had not employed – those who would contribute little to the harvest, those who clearly had less to offer an employer. Regardless, they have not gone home. They have not given up. The workers who are still there at the end of the day are not lazy. They are still there – waiting, waiting and hoping that they might get at least one hours work and have some small amount of pay to take home to their families.

In the end the detail does not matter. The parable is not about who gets paid what or who works the longest. The point is that God does not distinguish or discriminate. God doesn’t measure us up one against another or dole out God’s love according to merit. God loves us equally – whether we deserve it or not.

It is not, and never will be a competition – you can pray more than me, you can fast more than me, you can come to church more than me, you can do more good works than me, you can be more humble than me – and all that is good. But I am confident that no matter how far short I fall; how imperfect I am or how faltering my spiritual journey – God will not love you more and me less. At the end of the day I know that God loves you and I can be confident that God loves me.

[1] For the video and a commentary see – https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/as-a-video-about-white-privilege-goes-viral-again-experts-caution-it-could-actually-cause-more-damage-170528763.html

I’ve adapted it somewhat as it is a little superficial and very American.

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It’s not fair – the injustice of God

September 23, 2017

Pentecost 16 – 2017

Matthew 20:1-16

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generosity overlooks our faults and opens the gates of heaven to all who believe. Amen.

Imagine this scenario: Ever since you were a small child you had one ambition – to swim at the Olympics. To achieve your goal you got up at 5:00am every morning – summer and winter – and trained for at least an hour before school. After school you would be back at the pool for more training before going home and completing your homework. As you grew older your social life was non-existent. Your friends were all out partying, going to movies and forming relationships, but your life was focused on swimming. Swimming dictated almost every aspect of your life, how much you slept, what you ate, how much you exercised. And it was not only training that took up your time. There were also the competitions – local, state and national – that not only ate into your holidays, but also required you and your family to raise enough money for transport and accommodation.

Never mind, all your hard work and sacrifice has finally paid off. You have made it to the Olympics. You come first in the heats, first in the semi-finals and now you are ready for the finals and, you hope, for gold. The gun sounds, you are off to a good start. You know that you are swimming well, keeping to the plan. You can’t be sure, but it feels like you are ahead of the others in the race. You make the final tumble and put everything you have into the last lap and yes! when you raise your head from the water the swimmer closest to you is only just reaching for the end of the pool. It’s yours! the gold medal that you have worked for most of your life. You are already imagining yourself on the winning podium, wearing the medal and proudly hearing the national anthem fill the stadium.

You get out of the pool grab your towel and head towards the waiting journalists when your daydreams are interrupted by a “special announcement”. “We are pleased to announce that for the first time in the history of the Olympics we are going to recognise the hard work of all the competitors in this event. Everyone is a winner. Everyone will take home a gold medal!” Such largesse is extraordinary and unheard of, but you find it difficult – no impossible – to feel happy for the other competitors. Their gain is your loss. The moment you have dreamed of for so long. All your hard work was for nothing. It’s simply not fair.

Even thought two thousand years have passed, this parable still hits a nerve. We, who live in quite a different time and place, still bristle with indignation – the injustice of it all! Of course this was Jesus’ intention. He wanted his listeners to sit up and take notice. The last will be paid as much as the first. God can do no less.

To understand this parable, we have to go back a few verses to the question asked by the rich young man: “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (19:16) This man mistakenly thinks that he can earn eternity, that if he only meets certain criteria he can be assured of eternal life. The disciples seem to have the same view. Peter says: “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (19:27)

In order to set the record straight, Jesus tells the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. He is hoping to shock us into seeing that it is not a matter of how much we have done compared to others that determines our place in the kingdom. What matters is that we have done something. Whether we have worked all day or only part of the day, the outcome is the same.

There is not a sliding scale. Heaven, (or whatever eternity is) not incremental or fractional – it is all or nothing. A person cannot inherit just a little bit of heaven. Having just a portion of eternity is simply a nonsense. We either inherit eternal life or we do not. And that is just the problem with our human sense of fairness. We want to think that somehow if we have lived a better life than someone else that our reward will be greater. The problem is that there is only one reward, and like the labourers, we either receive it or we do not no matter how much or how little we have ‘worked’.

It might offend our sense of justice that those against whom we measure ourselves will receive the same reward, but what if we think of the situation from the point of view of those whose goodness and holiness far and away exceeds ours? What if we compare ourselves not with those whom we consider to be less worthy, but with those whom we recognise are far more worthy than we will ever be – the Joan of Arcs, the Catherines of Sienna, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Francis’s of Assisi?

Going back to the parable, can you imagine arriving in heaven (thinking that you have lived a life worthy of such a reward) only discover that over to one side are a host of disgruntled saints wondering why on earth you deserve the same reward as them? Can you imagine Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Catherine of Sienna, Francis of Assisi and the myriads of saints and martyrs – instead of being pleased for you – complaining indignantly to God: “He/she has done nothing compared to us and yet you have made them equal to us.”

Suddenly the parable makes sense. There is no sliding scale. There is only eternity and God chooses to give it to whomever God will. If the parable make us indignant, if we bristle with the injustice of it all, then we like those who have worked all day demonstrate that we just don’t get it, we like those who have worked all day haven’t yet realised that God’s generosity works to our advantage.

God is unfair, because will almost certainly reward us (with the saints) with eternity. If God’s unfairness works to our advantage, how dare we begrudge God’s extending that generosity to others?

 

 

 

 

 

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God does not discriminate

September 20, 2014

Pentecost 15 – 2014
Matthew 20:1-16
Marian Free

In the name of God who values each one of us equally and desires only that we allow ourselves to be loved. Amen.

One of my favorite movies (and books) is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. It tells the story of five Chinese women and their daughters. The mothers have all fled traumatic experiences in their homeland and have made a new home in America where, like many Chinese women, they want their children to excel. This desire puts a great deal of pressure on the daughters who, not surprisingly, find that while they are like cousins to each other they are also each other’s competitors.

One of the daughters Jing-Mei doesn’t fit the competitive mold. She is quiet and unassuming, always blending into the background rather than drawing attention to herself. At social functions, it is Jing-Mei (June) who hovers around the older women ensuring that they have what they need – drinks, snacks and so on. It is June who takes the worst piece of crab at a dinner party and who can be found in the kitchen washing the dishes when the meal is finished.

Though June has happily and willingly taken on the role of nurturer, there are times when she cannot help but feel that she is unappreciated and unseen.

On one occasion, when June is clearing up yet again after a dinner party, all her pent up frustration bursts out. She says to her mother:

Jing-Mei: I’m just sorry that you got stuck with such a loser, that I’ve always been so disappointing.
Suyuan: What you mean disappoint? Piano?
Jing-Mei: Everything: my grades, my job, not getting married, everything you expected of me.
Suyuan: Not expect anything! Never expect! Only hope! Only hoping best for you. That’s not wrong, to hope.
Jing-Mei: No? Well, it hurts, because every time you hoped for something I couldn’t deliver, it hurt. It hurt me, Mommy. And no matter what you hope for, I’ll never be more than what I am. And you never see that, what I really am.

But her mother has seen, her mother knows her and loves her. She does not want June to be like her friend’s daughters but to be herself. She responds (referring to that night’s meal):

Suyuan: That bad crab, only you tried to take it. Everybody else want best quality. You, you’re thinking different. Waverley took best quality crab. You took worst because you have best quality heart. You have style no one can teach. Must be born this way. I see you.

All this time, June had thought that she had to work hard to be noticed and that if she only did enough she would stand out from the others and her mother would see and value her. All that time, she hadn’t realised that who she was was enough. Her mother did not compare her with her friends, but valued her for herself. June did not have to earn her mother’ love, it was already hers.

It has been said that the parable of the labourers in the vineyard is “the gospel in a nutshell” and while June’s story is not an exact parallel it does illustrate the point that we do not have compete for love and certainly not for God’s love. God’s love is not something that we have to earn – it is already ours. If it is ours, it is others also. It doesn’t matter if a person recognises God’s love at the eleventh hour – like the thief who is crucified with Jesus – or whether – like many of us – one has known God’s love since birth. It is not a competition. God’s love is given in equal measure to each one of us no matter who we are or what we do.

In first century Galilee, many of the small land holdings had been consolidated. This meant that there were many men who had no means of support and who had to hire themselves out on a daily basis. These men would gather in the market place every day in the hope that they would be offered work. Landowners would come to the market place to hire day-labourers. (Even if they could afford slaves it was cheaper to pay a daily rate, than to expend money on slaves who had to be fed and kept even if they were sick and unable to work.)

What is unusual in the parable is that the landowner comes out at dawn and at the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour and even the eleventh hour. He agrees with those hired at dawn to pay them a denarius for the day. Those hired at the third, sixth and ninth hour are simply told that they will be paid what is just – no amount is specified. Those told to work at the eleventh hour are not made any offer of pay.

Our attention is caught by two details: first that the landowner should take on anyone so late in the day and second that the landowner has not specified any recompense for the latecomers. The tension is heightened when we discover that those who arrived last are paid a denarius – the same amount that was offered to those hired first. We, the audience expect that those who have worked all day will receive more – despite their initial agreement with the landowner. We join the gasp of surprise and resentment when they receive only what was promised. After all, those who were hired first have worked so much longer and have born the burden of the day. In human terms the landowner’s action is simply unjust.

That is the point of course. The landowner is God, as the parable makes clear by calling him the “lord” of the vineyard. God is not just in human terms. God does not discriminate according to how long or how hard a person works. Everyone who responds to the call of God – whether early or late – is treated in the same way, because there is only one thing that God has to offer and that is salvation or eternal life. It would be nonsense for someone to be one third or one half saved or for God to give the late-comers only a representative proportion of eternal life depending on when they came to faith. Eternal life is eternal or it is not.

This is why the repentant thief is told: “today you will be with me in Paradise” and why those who come last receive the same as those who came first. There is no such thing as partial salvation or limited eternal life. One is saved or one is not, one belongs to the kingdom or one does not, one has eternal life or one does not. Those who work all day are no more saved than those who come in late.

At the heart of the gospel is God’s inclusive love. No one who accepts that love is excluded from the kingdom – not tax-collectors, not prostitutes, not even sinners. In God’s eyes we are all equal and all equally loved. If God chooses to love, who are we to begrudge that love to others? If God makes no distinction, who are we to compare ourselves favourably with others?

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