This reflection was written for the Sunday Devotion for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on September 20, 2020
THE LESSON
Matthew 20:1-16 NIV
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
The Gospel lesson is from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society and used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
REFLECTION
In an age where equal pay for equal work is one of many social justice concerns, this parable of Jesus can strike one as being out of step with the times. A day’s wage given to all, regardless if they worked all day or just an hour or two of that day doesn’t seem fair, and it is hard not to sympathize with those who worked all day and received the same pay as someone who slipped in at the last hour to do a minimal amount of work by comparison.
Economists will tell us that equality is virtually unattainable in any economic system; that the closest we can get to a sense of equality in economics is simply trying to be fair. We live in a world were fairness is seemingly as good as it gets and, if we’re being truthful, it is often as good as we want it to get.
In fact, we appear to have developed an economic culture that fears equality. Equality sounds good until someone tries to apply that concept in a pragmatic manner to the economic and social concerns of this country. Doing so is likely to get one labeled a socialist, a communist, or an anarchist.
Generally speaking, we struggle with equality because our lives are encumbered with a multitude of perceived differences. We can say all people are created equal but from there, equality begins to quickly vanish and we end up settling for what is fair in our mind’s eye.
In this parable, Jesus is using money to get our attention in order to portray how God sees everyone as one.
In order to explore the meanings that can be derived from this parable, we need to broaden out the minimalist metaphors Jesus employs. For example, Jesus uses a single day to illustrate the entire history of human life. The hours of that day represent the point at which people enter into life, the vineyard which represents the Kingdom of God on earth. God, of course, is represented by the landowner.
The point Jesus is making is that regardless of when people enter into the Life of God (another understanding for the Kingdom of God), they are valued just as any other people at any other time. Jesus thwarts our sense of fairness by establishing an equality based on each person having equal value. Jesus underscores that we are not our own creations and therefore cannot properly determine our worth or the worth of others by what we do or how long we’ve been doing it. Everything we believe we own and everything we believe we’re entitled to is nothing more than an illusion existing in our heads. So Jesus draws us to the heart of the matter, to the center of all things, God.
When at the end of day the landowner is questioned by those who entered the vineyard at the start of the day regarding their receiving the same pay as those who came later in the day, the landowner (God) displays a sense of equanimity, a sense of calm and peace, to explain his equal treatment of all who came at his invitation to labor in his vineyard. Since everything is God’s, God blesses as God sees fit, with a generous equivalency.
The first laborers agreed to work for one denarius, and while it doesn’t strike them (and us) that giving the same amount to those who worked far less than they, the landowner is not depriving them of their expectation or his promise. The landowner is simply being generous.
Jesus literally rebukes our sense of fairness. Not only does the landowner pay everyone the same wage, but he pays those who came last first and those who were first on the job last. By worldly standards this is not fair, but it demonstrates being valued equally.
God treats us equally. In God’s economic formula, all life has a value equal to one, as symbolized by the value of a day’s labor being a single denarius. This is the labor agreement we have with God in Christ; that we become one with each other as God is one with us is.
With that said, what should be our takeaway from this parable?
What comes to my mind is the word value.
Do we value each other in equal terms or do we simply employ the concept of economic fairness when it comes to the value we place on another person’s life and all life on this planet?
When some politicians and economists present the welfare of our economy as a mitigating factor to offset the loss of life during this pandemic, the question of what we value becomes front and center.
When close to two hundred thousands lives (millions worldwide) can be written off as an unfortunate byproduct in order to justify keeping world economies running during a pandemic, shouldn’t we question such systems that treat human life as an expendable commodity? Shouldn’t we question why such economies do not fundamentally place the value of life on this planet as the standard upon which our economies are based rather than the soulless engines that generate monetary profit for profit’s sake?
Likewise, when we choose to deny the known human causes of climate change that threaten all our lives by the politicians we elect and through our complicity with a corporate mentality that encourages unfettered consumerism, something is disturbingly amiss in our calculus of values.
St. Thomas Aquinas surmised that when we to choose to be willfully ignorant about something we ought to know “for a purpose” (i.e monetary profit), we are committing a mortal (soul-damaging) sin. [Summa, I-II, q. 76, a. 1, a. 3]
When our nation’s economic and social policies fail to recognize the equivalency of one as expressed in our nation’s motto, “E. Pluribus Unum” (out of many one), the soul of this nation is being damaged.
When we base the value of life upon who came first, who came last, and where one comes from, we diminish the value and worth of our lives and begin to act like entitled bullies pushing our weight around a school playground When we defer to fairness as being as good as it gets in determining the value of others, we lose the equivalent oneness that is inherent in our being one in God, one with God, and one with all creation.
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Loving and generous God, we thank you for all the blessing you shower on us daily. Open our eyes to see the value of one. Open our hearts to embrace the equivalent value you have given all life on this planet. Help us to live the life you have given us as a labor of love and compassion for all, so that at the end of the day we may be one with you. Amen.
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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