Sunday: 19th Sunday after Pentecost A
Reading: Matthew 20:1-16
Preacher: Peter C. Lane
Jesus is quite the provocateur. Even when he is talking about mercy and generosity he can really bug the heck out of you. Sure it was generous to give a whole day’s pay to the guys that worked only an hour. But why then be such a stickler about fair being fair with the guys who worked all day? It’s no way to run a popsicle stand; irritate the most productive workers? I couldn’t help but think this week of Hank Paulsen as vineyard owner. The Treasury Secretary didn’t have to bail out Bear Stearns or AIG, but he did. He must have left the Lehman Brothers people thinking, “Where’s the love?” Or to say this another way… Recently, I talked to some kids who told me that their parents had come up with a scheme to get them to practice the piano. You know, 20 minute of practice gets you a sticker, 50 stickers gets you Mario Kart for your Nintendo Wii—or something like that. Imagine if one of the siblings dutifully earned all fifty stickers, but then the parent decided to be merciful and bought both children new video games. Not only would the parents have lost forever an effective motivational tool, they would hear an uproar from the kid who worked so long, even though that child wasn’t cheated. I can just the hear the kid, “The last worked only one hour, and you have made him equal to me who has born the burden of the day and the scorching heat?” The vineyard owner, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and the piano parents are irritatingly generous.
Let’s look at our story. It begins with a very normal event. The vineyard owner does something that he probably did every day during harvest and planting season—he went out at 6:00 a.m. to hire workers. He agreed to pay them the standard daily wage, established as one denarius, enough back then to feed a large peasant family for a day. Then he repeats the exercise at 9:00, Noon, 3:00, and amazingly 5:00. With these later groups, he did not agree on a wage, only saying that he would pay them what was right. At the end of the day he has his manager pay the workers in reverse order. When the guys who had only worked one hour got a whole days’ pay, the others anticipated a bigger payday themselves. But no, you work 12, 9, 6, 3, or 1 hour you get the same pay. The vineyard owner responds to the predictable grumbling by pointing out that he had not cheated them at all and could do whatever he wanted with his money. “Are you envious because I am generous?”
It makes me ask two questions about our text. First, in what way does the Gospel of Matthew intend the parables to be models for our lives? Second, what then should we take from Matthew’s parable?
First, we should not take the parables as universal models of behavior. Rather we need to look at the text and see what specific issue Jesus is talking about. Jesus is not answering a question about how to run a vineyard and he is certainly not speaking to central bankers about mortgage securitization (whatever that is.) Jesus is talking and has been talking for some time about the kingdom of heaven. This batch of parables is in what scholars recognize as the fourth series of sayings in Matthew. This fourth series begins back in chapter 19 when Jesus left Galilee and went south to the region of Judea. The knowledgeable hearer knows that that means Jesus is headed down to Jerusalem were he will be crucified and then raised. The teaching that follows his turn toward Jerusalem describes the kingdom Jesus will usher in. There is a story about blessing the little children, a cautionary tale about the rich young man who must give away everything, and then our laborers in the vineyard. It is all in the context of Jesus’ preparing those around him for what his death will mean for the kingdom of heaven. None of the stories in this little section of Matthew tell us everything about the kingdom, but they each tell us something. You know, the first words Jack read were, “For the kingdom of heaven is like…” The parable is not a model for life but a description of the kingdom of heaven.
I would argue then that this parable isn’t about wages at all. It is about the disruptiveness of God’s grace. When God treats everybody the same, it throws us off. Underlying our story is the Old Testament idea that God the creator is good, that God is generous to all. The psalmist says, “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made” (145:9). Jesus himself, earlier in Matthew, describes a generous God, who “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (5:49). While our parable makes clear that God is not unjust—the early workers did get what they deserve—it clearly pictures a God where compassion far outstrips justice. That overthrows the apple carts of our expectations. It is not about money. It is about gracious and undeserving gifts. Jesus’ ministry was about “a gracious transformation, a divine reclamation” of the world. In the kingdom of heaven we don’t get what we deserve.
So what should we take from Matthew’s parable? What is the Holy Spirit saying to God’s people? If the parable is about the kingdom of heaven, does that let us off the hook? No. We pray all the time that God’s kingdom will come “on earth as it is in heaven.” As Doug Hare says, we should imitate God’s generosity, not begrudge it. If the parable is about the disruptive nature of God’s grace (about a situation where generosity trumps justice), then we need to see where generosity can trump justice in our own lives. Many who are against giving amnesty to undocumented workers living in this country point out how unjust it is, allowing those who knowingly break the law in, while keeping out some who have dutifully followed the rules. I agree it doesn’t seem fair. It seems like a situation where generosity is more important than justice. Or how about those of us “older brothers” who often see the “prodigals” get what we have worked hard for. It’s exasperating. Our parable today says that if you get upset, that might be the kingdom of heaven. No one will get cheated, but many (all?) will get far more than they deserve.
How can we make sure we are emulating God’s generosity here at SPR? I propose an irritation test. We can only call something “radical hospitality” if it irritates somebody. Host a big, expensive dinner in this room and invite the beggars from in front of Dunkin’ Donuts. That’ll pass the irritation test—radical hospitality. Do a last minute switcheroo and take the hospitality food to the Open Kitchen and serve their large vats of soup after the 11:15? Irritation. We, I, like to do hospitable things that are quite comfortable. I don’t usually think of making people angry as being hospitable. But that is what Jesus described. If we lavish generosity on the part timers in our lives, not only would we be irritating, we would be bringing the kingdom of heaven that much closer.
Douglas Hare, Matthew (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 230.
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