When I was young, I wanted a rabbit fur coat. I was born in 1970. So, the late 70s and early 80s formed everything about us Gen X: jeans tucked into knee-high boots, leg warmers, blue and teal eye shadow, Love’s Baby Soft perfume, Trapper Keepers, and GINORMOUS Texas hair! My friend Karie Davis had a rabbit fur coat, and it was so soft. For my birthday that year, I did not get a fur coat. I asked mom when I could get one because Karie had one, and I knew my best friend Lorie Moser was going to get one for Christmas. Mom’s response was, “I’m not their mother, I’m yours. It doesn’t matter what their parents do.”
Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
As a child of the 70s and 80s, when math rally meant one team answered all the math problems before the other team, when the winner of the bible drill meant who could find Obadiah first, I’m really challenged with the gospel this morning. If I work longer than my neighbor in the next cubicle, I should get more money. People in cars in line for food distribution get mad if there’s a Lexus in line ahead of them. The older son gets mad when the prodigal comes home and a celebration is prepared. When Mary of Bethany poured the outrageously expensive bottle of nard on Jesus’ feet, the disciples were offended that she didn’t sell it to give to the poor.
In our current economic system, companies like Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, Meta, Dollar Tree have record-breaking profits year after year while workplace injuries increase, wages remain stagnant, and companies carry out massive layoffs which restructure and boost share prices.
And let’s not bring in insurance and drug companies who report outrageous profits while their insured people receive auto-batch denials and stockholders gamble that those denials won’t be appealed.
Are these companies and systems of business engagement ethical? Of course they aren’t. But, who cares about ethics if you’re the dragon Smaug sitting on a mountain of gold coins. Must we exist within these manipulative, egregious systems? Unless we revolt and/or engage vastly different systems, yes we must.
Our gospel today appears to follow the question Peter asked back in Matthew 18 with, “Who’s the greatest in the kingdom of God?” Jesus never truly answers Peter’s question, but responds to the rich young man that everyone who gives all they have and believes in Jesus will be saved. Peter hears this and responds, “But, we have given up everything for you. So what will we have?”
The field workers saw a binary: the amount of work equals an amount of pay. This is actually an accurate system…for a salaried job. As a store manager of a jewelry store, I made a certain salary. When I had a day off but an employee called in sick, it wasn’t my day off any longer. During the Christmas season from Thanksgiving to the New Year, I clocked in 85 hours per week. The week of Christmas, and the week of Valentine’s Day, I clocked in 100+ hours. But my employees worked hourly plus commission. Their paychecks were always higher than mine for December and February.
The challenge with this parable is where we place our chair to sit and observe. If we look at this parable from the first hired, yeah it isn’t fair. If we position our chair as the last hired, hurray we get a full day’s wage when we only worked an hour. In the boots-on-the-ground real world system, this parable breaks down. Who in their right mind would show up first thing in the morning to work a full day when those who worked a short shift receives the same money?!
At a middle school track and field competition, the winner of the 200m dash gets a blue ribbon, second place gets the red ribbon, and third place gets a white (or yellow) ribbon. Same with 100m and 400m and long jump and high jump. Why in the world should everyone else who competes get a green participation ribbon?! I mean, come on! They get a stupid ribbon just for showing up?!!
Is it fair? Well, in God’s kingdom, that’s an irrelevant, hollow question. That question is generated from a capitalistic binary system. Amy-Jill Levine says, “Jesus is neither a Marxist nor a capitalist. Rather, he is both an idealist and a pragmatist. His focus is less on ‘good news to the poor’ than on the ‘responsibility of the rich’” (Short Stories of Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine). She continues by saying that Jesus follows Deuteronomy 15:11 that says to open the hands to the poor and the needy neighbor on one’s land. There’s a caveat, however, in that the rich who fail to open the hand will receive punishment at the end of days. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what your education is, if you are not doing kingdom work, you’re really not working. You may be pulling down a big salary and putting in long hours in this world, but in the age to come you’ll receive what kingdom work you’ve done. Uselessness is not only a problem for the unemployed but also for the well-employed who have not responded to the call of God. All Christians are called to salvation, service, sacrifice, and simplicity” (The Parables: Jesus’s Friendly Subversive Speech, Douglas Webster). Levine also continues that Jesus follows a “corporate” system of existence. Matthew 5:45 says that God makes the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike. Meaning, both the good and the bad receive equally. What benefits the one also benefits the whole. I hear Spock saying, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” In other words, if you succeed…so do I…and so do we.
Jesus does not work from a place of scarcity. We see a pie and envision the number of pieces we can get out of it. We see an hour and wonder how many pages of our favorite book we can read. Jesus challenges not only our worldly attachment to things, to wealth, but he also challenges our moral attachment to things and wealth as well. He challenges the child in us who stomps her foot saying, “I know I put it down. But, you can’t have it because I was playing with it first.”
This parable is a “warning to spiritual pride and a testimony to God’s grace” (Webster). While Peter did avoid the idol of money and wealth, he tripped into the ditch of self-justification (Webster). The priority of the landowner was to get the work done, and that goal was achieved. What Peter wanted was “to turn the mercy of God into a merit badge he earned on his own” (Webster).
“This parable causes us to wrestle with our disappointment with God. We, too, can feel like these grumblers who have worked all day in the Lord’s vineyard. We compare ourselves to others and complain that God has not met our expectations” (Webster).
The gospel this morning forces a hard examination of what Jesus holds as primary in kingdom work. The system that Jesus calls us into is antithetical to the economic system in which we exist. It’s as if we are living in George Orwell’s society of 1984, and we must engage in doublethink. God’s economy is not the world’s, or even America’s, economy. God’s inclusion is not the same inclusion of this modern era. What we are called to do is to engage God’s eternal work of salvation, service, sacrifice, and simplicity. While the work we accomplish here and now might put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads, unless we are loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves, our efforts are worthless in the forever and ever. God’s production line is drastically different from the system in which we exist, and God’s economy does not use the same pay scale and benefits package that we are accustomed to. I pray that we understand the onboarding requirements and will successfully fulfill the terms of God’s eternal contract.
Amen.
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