Matthew 20:1-16
September 18, 2011
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like What?!
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
There is more than one way to skin a cat, the old saying goes. That may be true, but if it is,it is a truth that as far as I am concerned will remain untested. But I do know that there is more than one way to read a text. And never more so than when the text is one of the parables of Jesus.
A landowner goes to the market place to hire workers to work in his vineyard. He hires some very early in the morning at the rate of one denarius for a day’s work. He discovers that he needs more workers and so returns to the market and hires more at mid-morning, at noon and at mid-afternoon. He still needs workers and hires more an hour before quitting time. He promises to pay them a fair wage.
Then he has the workers paid, beginning with the last ones hired. He pays them all one denarius. The first workers hired complain of unfairness. He dismisses their complaints on the grounds that he has the right to be as generous as he wants with his own money.
That’s the story, but how do we read the story? What do we make of it?
The first person to make something of the story is the writer of Matthew. He (or she) concludes that “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” That is, that God has a way of turning things around or upside down. For Matthew’s community, a community that had both Jewish and non-Jewish Jesus followers in it, this meant that Jewish people—who were God’s covenant people and by rights should have had pride of place in the world—had lost their place because they mostly dismissed the claims of Jesus to be messiah. In their place God had promoted non-Jewish people who had embraced Jesus as messiah.
The assumption is that the parable is actually an allegory, a story in which each of the elements of the story stands for something else. Very early in the Christian tradition of reading this parable then, we have the idea that the landowner is a figure for God. The workers hired early are the Jewish people. The workers hired late are the non-Jewish followers of Jesus. The payment is the heavenly reward given to them equally.
With small changes here and there this becomes the traditional way of reading this parable. The biblical theme material from our new curriculum, The Whole People of God, suggests that the story is a picture of God’s love that is equally available for everyone:
The landowner was such a generous person that he had given all of the workers a full day’s wage—daily bread for their families. Those who had come in the morning felt they deserved more and would not celebrate the landowner’s generosity.
Because the traditional reading sees the landowner as a figure for God, the landowner comes off as the hero of the story. The others in the story end up looking bad. In our curriculum the workers who complain are labeled as those who “would not celebrate the landowner’s generosity.” Other readers are even less kind. The great German scholar of the last century, Joachim Jeremias, sees the later workers as lazy:
Even if, in the case of the last labourers to be hired, it is their own fault that, in a time when the vineyard needs workers, they sit about in the marketplace gossiping till late afternoon; even if their excuse that no one has hired them (v. 7) is an idle evasion...a cover for their typical oriental indifference, yet they touch the owner’s heart.1
Not only does Jeremias call the last workers lazy gossipers he throws in a racist stereotype just for good measure. Nonetheless the landowner’s (God’s) heart is touched. God loves even the worthless.
Even a reader who has a lot of sympathy for the workers assumes that the landowner is a God figure. Pablo Jiménez, a latino theologian, recognizes that the workers have much in common with the day laborers who gather on street corners of our major cities looking for work. His fellow congregation members may hear in this story that God loves them and will provide what they need.
Now, as you may have guessed, I have some issues with this way of reading this parable. It’s not that I don’t believe that God loves and cares for all, even the Kardashian sisters. Nor is it even that I don’t appreciate the irony of the fact that this Jewish movement got so much traction among non-Jews.
It’s just that I’d like to try something before I simply assume that there is only one way of reading the parable. Instead of assuming that this story that only seems to be about a “landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard”2 and instead is actually about God’s generosity poured out on all alike, let’s try something different. Let’s start by assuming that this story about a “landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard” is actually a story about...a “ landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.”
So there was a landowner. Jesus and his hearers recognized this figure. The economy in Galilee in Jesus’ day was changing. Peasants who had been subsistance farmers were being shoved off their land. Wealthy landowners combined their small plots into large farms that grew luxury crops for export. Many peasants were forced into the life of the day laborer.
I say “life,” but in fact it was a slow death. A denarius was supposed to be enough to feed an adult for a day,though it wasn’t quite. Day laborers didn’t work every day, nor necessarily all day when they did work. No work meant no pay. No pay meant no food. No food meant weakness and vulnerability to disease. Day laborers were not able to support a family, any more than a minimum wage worker is able to support one today.
This landowner had a vineyard. Wine was one of the luxury goods being produced on land that had been seized from peasants. There are times in the year when maintaining a vineyard requires extra labor. So, the story says, the landowner went to the market to hire some workers.
This is did not happen. A landowner did not hire day laborer sany more than the president of General Motors personally hires casual labor to sweep the floors. A landowner did not even manage a vineyard directly. A landowner lived in a city. He had people to manage his properties. Even his property managers would not have gone to the market to hire workers. A property manager had people to hire workers. The landowner was insulated from all that messy stuff. The landowner could devote his time to politics, culture and drinking with his friends. His minions did the heavy lifting and the dirty work.
This parable of Jesus stripped bare the layers of pretense that normally disguised the relationship between the elites at the top and the day workers at the bottom,day workers who held on to life by their fingernails. It does this by collapsing the vast social distance between them. In the parable Jesus’ listeners were able to see the true relationship between the very wealthy and the very poor.
This landowner went to the market where the day laborers were gathered, hoping to eat that day. He hired some for the usual wage, a denarius, and sent them to the vineyard. But they weren’t enough, so he went back. There were still workers available so he hired and sent more. He would pay them “whatever would be just.” Again and again this landowner went to the market and secured more workers. An hour before sunset he was still at it. Not, of course, without insulting the workers he was hiring: “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” The rich are always convinced that the poor are lazy, that the unemployed are to blame for their unemployment. But there was a simple explanation. They were still in marketplace because no one had hired them. All day they had been there waiting. Even an hour before sunset, when the chances of being hired were nearly zero, they were still waiting. The landowner implied that they were lazy. They let the insult roll off them. What choice did they have?
Then it came time to settle up. The landowner gave these workers a show of his power. He paid the last ones hired in the presence of those who had “borne the burden of the day and the heat” so they would know what the others had been paid.
A man who had become a day laborer had lost his land. He had no trade to practice. He didn’t have enough capital to start fishing. The only thing he had was his labor. He could sell his labor for his daily bread. It was a precarious existence, but it was better than the abject begging that would come next as he slid along the path of downward mobility. At least he still had the little dignity that remained to a man who still had something that was worth a denarius. The landowner stripped away the last shreds of this dignity by turning payment into charity, and justice into alms-giving. Little wonder the workers grumbled.
The landowner singled out one of the grumblers and made an example of him. “Friend,” he began. “Friend” is what he would have called his drinking buddies. Addressed to a day laborer “friend” was a warning that he was about to be destroyed. “I have done no injustice,” he purred. “We agreed on a denarius. Take your denarius and go. The money is mine; I can do anything I want to with it. Or are you giving me the evil eye because I am good?”
The landowner certainly is acting like he can do anything he wants to with his money, but we know that’s not true, not for those who live in the biblical covenant. He promised to pay a just wage. He could have started by paying a living wage. He could have recognized that the poor are not to be blamed for their poverty. He could have given his workers some respect instead of implying their laziness. He could have respected his workers’ work.
Instead he mistook power for innocence and singled out one of his workers for “special treatment.” With no National Labor Relations Board, even one as underfunded and toothless as we have, the worker had no recourse. And, given that rich people talk to each other, it is unlikely that he would ever work again.
I think that’s the story that Jesus’ hearers would have heard. Now, where to from here? I suggest we go back to the beginning of the parable: “The reign of God is like...” it began. What is the reign of God like? Is it like the powerful landowner whose money and power allow him to do whatever he wants, to represent his tight-fistedness as justice and charity and to pass himself off as a “job creator”? Or is the reign of God like the day laborers who see and name aloud the injustice that is destroying their humanity and their very lives? who name it even at great risk to the little resources they have left? Which is the reign of God like? I know which makes more sense to me, but you’ll have to decide for yourselves.
©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
1Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (Scribner, 1972), 26. (Cited in Pablo A. Jiménez, “The Laborers of the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) : A Hispanic Homiletical Reading.” Journal for Preachers 21, no. 1 (Advent 1997): 36-37.
2Common English Bible, Nashville (2011).
No comments:
Post a Comment