Matthew 20:1-16
“That’s not fair!”
“Well, life’s not fair!”
I don’t know about y’all, but that is a very familiar exchange from my childhood, and every year that I’ve been alive has been another opportunity to learn just how unfair life really is.
The parable of the generous landowner, as it is known, is about unfairness. It is also, although less obviously, about justice. This is another one of Jesus’s “the kingdom of heaven is like…” sermons. It is not an analogy, there are not exact one to one equivalences between each of us and each character in this parable, and any attempts to make God any specific character in this parable will run us into trouble. The function of the parable is to make us think, to stretch our imaginations and to help us ponder the nature of God’s kingdom.
The kingdom is heaven is like this. There is a landowner, and there are laborers, and they need each other. The laborers need to be paid so that they can feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families. The landowner needs someone to tend the vineyard so that its fruit can be harvested and turned into food and wine and profits. Already you might see how the landowner isn’t exactly God, because God does not need as we do. God does not participate in the exchange of goods and services, although there are some Christians who may believe that God does play a direct role in profit and loss. But still, we can learn about God from one another, and so we can learn about God from this landowner and these laborers.
So the kingdom of heaven is like this. The landowner goes to the market five times, and each time he finds people in need of a day’s wages, and so he hires them. This must be some vineyard, to need so many hands to tend it. It must also be some landowner, to be so persistent in hiring even those who no one else would hire. So everyone does what they are asked to do, and at the end of the day its time to settle up, pay the workers what they are owed. But the landowner is like the kingdom of heaven, and so he doesn’t do what we expect him to. He pays the last to arrive first, and pays them a full day’s earnings. The usual daily wage in ancient times is not what we might think of today as minimum wage, because today’s minimum wage is not a living wage by any stretch of the imagination in any part of this country. No, see in ancient times when you paid someone a daily wage, you paid them enough to support themselves and a small family of dependents for the day. You were, quite literally, providing them their daily bread. It wasn’t enough to amass much in savings, and it was still difficult to get ahead, but it was enough to survive. So somehow, the kingdom of heaven is like that. Like daily bread, a living wage, for someone who only worked one hour. It is also like giving the same wage to someone who worked the entire day. It might not be fair, but it is enough for each to live on. It isn’t fair, but it is just.
The ”that’s not fair” folks grumble, and complain, and accuse the landowner of shorting them. He hasn’t, of course, and although it may not seem fair, he has given them the agreed upon rate and no less. The kingdom of heaven is like that, like getting what you were promised even if you lost sight of its value.
The folks who grumbled had the privilege of employment, of a promise of a fair wage for reliable work. They were hired first thing in the morning, while others were overlooked. The others may not have been able to find work due to physical ability, or age, or because someone needed to take care of the sick kid that morning and they got out the door late. They might have been hired but laid off when their employer came up short at harvest time, or they might have been dismissed as lazy or unfit for the color of their skin or the language they spoke. They might have worked half or most of the day, only to be sent away with nothing and no explanation, like so many undocumented workers experience wage theft in this country with no recourse available to them. The workers who came late probably know just how unfair life can be, and I’m sure they overheard the grumbling. It might not have been the first time someone said they didn’t deserve their earnings.
So Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like generosity and daily bread, like the last being cared for first and the first being brought to the back of the line. The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who calls disgruntled laborers friends and looks for the left behind and gives them back their dignity. The kingdom of heaven is like a capitalist system inverted, where those who have plenty make sure everyone else has enough. It might not sound fair to us, but isn’t this just?
So what does this mean for the way we live? If the kingdom of heaven is like all these things, then how are we to find it for ourselves? As I said, this is a parable, not an allegory, so there are many directions we might go. Perhaps Jesus is calling you to look into the minimum wage in our area, and how it compares with the cost of living or even just the cost of rent in your neighborhood. Have you tried, recently, to find a housing option for someone who makes 7.25 or even as much as $12 an hour? I have. Try a little googling, see how long it takes you. Perhaps Jesus is calling you to wonder about daily bread, and how many people are going without it due to costs and barriers to access. Perhaps Jesus is inviting you to consider how difficult it is for disabled people to find gainful employment, and how our laws prevent many of them from marrying or owning homes. Because this parable tells us something about God, and it also tells us something about ourselves, about the world we live in and the systems we create. We pray every day for God’s kingdom to come. Jesus is telling us what that kingdom is like.
Life may not be fair, but neither is the kingdom of heaven. If fairness was how salvation was given out, I’m not sure I’d want it. Fairness is so often decided by those who have enough, and usually what they call fair is more about making sure they lose nothing than it is about making sure no one is lost. But Jesus tells us he came to save the lost. Jesus came for the one sheep out of ninety nine, and the laborer who only showed up at the very end of the workday. Jesus also came for the landowner, and the grumbler, and the vineyard. Jesus came to teach us about God’s justice, to give us more than just enough to survive one day at a time. Everlasting life has nothing whatsoever with what we deserve, or what we work for, or what we earn, or what we believe we’re owed. It has everything to do with the generosity and abundance of God, who has never stopped inviting us in. So the last will be first, and the first will be last. And every last one will have more than enough.
Mother A Writes 