By Rev. Robin Martin
Interim Rector
Interim Rector
Every time I read the parable we hear this morning about the workers in the vineyard it calls to mind my father-in-law. John’s father worked in the steel mills in Birmingham, Alabama most of his employed life, and he began that work as a young man before the mills were unionized. One of the things I learned by marrying into the family was that in those early days men would go to the gate of the mill every morning with no guarantee they would be hired that day. If they were chosen, they made a day’s wages. If not, they went home empty-handed unless they could pick up a few bucks doing something else. I think it’s important sometimes to hear a true story about a real person, someone I actually knew, who worked day-to-day and what that meant to him. It’s important to remember how recently in our history this was how things worked as we yet again hear this parable which we already know is a story Jesus made up to teach us something important about God. It’s also important to remember that the immigrant laborers in our day and time, still have to go out and wait for someone to hire them for the day. Understanding this helps us remember that the story is still relevant today.
I’m thinking that of almost all the things Jesus said in his ministry, this story causes some of the deepest resistance when people hear it. It simply flies in the face of our deeply ingrained sense of fairness because we invariably tend to identify with the men who worked the entire day, not the ones who were hired for the last hour. That kind of identification begins very early in life. If you don’t believe me, try talking about this parable with a young child.
There was clearly some standard for a fair wage in Jesus’ day just as there probably has been in every time and place. The landowner agreed with the workers who showed up first thing in the morning for “the usual daily wage” which I suppose was the first century Palestinian equivalent of the minimum hourly wage in our culture today. Theoretically it was enough to support a man and his family for a day. After that, the owner of the vineyard said to those he hired at nine o’clock, noon, three o’clock and five o’clock that he would pay them “whatever is right.” As the story draws to a close the owner responds to the complaints of the first-hired by pointing out that he has given them exactly what they agreed to when they were hired, and he asks, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
And that really is the heart of the story. God is allowed to do what God chooses with what belongs to God. And you and I do get envious when we think we are not getting as much as we deserve even if we get enough. It is a fact that many people all around this world, including our own nation, are cheated and mistreated by their earthly employers. Some are virtually…or actually slaves to those they work for. And it is a just and righteous thing to protest and resist such treatment. That’s why we need to remember that the parable is trying to communicate something about God, not fair labor practices. What the parable is about is the unfailing generosity of God.
It’s also interesting to hear the parable of the workers in the vineyard on the same day we hear the people of Israel railing against Moses in the wilderness. “We were better off in Egypt,” they complained. “There we at least had meat and bread to eat! Have you brought us out into the middle of nowhere to starve us to death?” So in the face of their fear and anger the unfailing generosity of God provided meat and bread, quail and manna, to sate their hunger, but with a test to see if they would do as they were instructed. They were only to collect enough manna for the day at hand. They were not to stockpile it from one day to the next except on the sixth day when they were to gather twice as much in preparation for the Sabbath. The story goes on in the next few verses of the passage that we do not hear this morning, telling us they flaunted these instructions, and the manna they tried to save became infested with worms and smelled awful. They did not trust the generosity of God to care for them day-to-day.
Again, people in every age have tried to live prudently, to save if they had more than enough against the day when they might not have enough. It only makes sense, and there’s nothing wrong with it. As we know all too well in the present day and time, many people can find no job, much less one that will pay a living wage, and their savings are rapidly being depleted or are already used up just surviving.
There’s nothing wrong with planning for the future. But both the historical story of the Israelites in the wilderness and the made up parable about the workers in the vineyard reveal how easily we forget what belongs to whom. Everything that is, ever has been or ever will be belongs to God, the One who created it: the earth; the things we, by using our God-given abilities and the resources in our world, produce; the wealth that allows employers to pay wages and workers to earn them. It all belongs to God, but we are always forgetting that and believing that we have what we have because of our own efforts, and even more devastatingly, we believe that others lack what they lack because they’re lazy or they just haven’t tried hard enough. This is the hardwired message in our culture right now, even from some of those who profess to believe in the same God we do.
The terrible tragedy of forgetting about the unfailing generosity of God is that we become fearful and grasping. And that fearfulness eats away at our spirit and stunts our own generosity. You and I can do nothing about a culture that punishes the needy and rewards the wealthy except not buy into the myth. If we can stop believing that it’s only by our own efforts that we will be secure, then we will be released to protest and resist such injustice and echoing the vineyard owner in the parable, demand “whatever is right” for everyone.