I spent some time this week wondering what a modern version of this parable would be like—one that used a situation from right now. I came up with a few ideas, so that we could feel the same shock Jesus’s original audience felt with his stories. So let’s try this:
The kingdom of heaven is like a company developing a COVID vaccine, but then distributing it so that the most vulnerable in the population get the vaccine first, regardless of the insurance they have or don’t have, or their ability to pay. And when challenged about this passing up of potential profit, especially by people who are willing to pay a premium to get that vaccine first, the CEO and board points out that a healthier population is better for everyone, even in terms of economic health in general.
What would be your reaction? Would you be scandalized? Intrigued? Filled with admiration? That’s how Jesus’s parables are meant to work.
Because Jesus’s parables use such common everyday situations and characters, his audiences—then and now—often get lulled into that familiarity. They start taking things for granted, thinking, “Ah yes! We know this!” Jesus’s parables are so familiar to us, because we love stories, that they become like a lucky penny that gets worn down in your pocket. But it is just when we begin to get comfortable that Jesus’s parables always take their plot twist—a plot twist we may not get because we’ve heard these parables for so long the twist now becomes the expected. But we need to never forget what those twists mean.
For instance: A Samaritan being “Good” and righteous—especially when other decent, respectable folk avoided helping a man in distress—flew in the face of all of the audience’s biases. It was equivalent to finding a boa constrictor wrapped around a baby, not to kill the baby, but to keep the baby warm and protect it from the cold.
Planting a mustard tree in the middle of a garden was considered crazy, because then this great big shrub would be taking up valuable real estate and inviting birds in to eat all your produce.
And in another parable with a message very close to this one, having your kid brother return from being lost forever, but only being able to obsess about your father throwing a party when your younger brother has blown half the family’s assets, does NOT make you an especially good son OR brother.
Just like with the parable of the Prodigal Son, the twist in this parable is that God’s radical generosity and abundance flies in the face of our own human-manufactured insistence that scarcity makes things valuable. The twist in this parable is that God insists, no, in the end whether you spent your life believing in God, or if you converted in your heart in the last week of your life, God loves you just the same no matter where we are in line-- and that means God loves us beyond our wildest imaginings. What if we lived our lives by trusting that truth?
Sure-- it's human nature to try to divide each other into categories. We like order. We like lines. We especially like lines when we are at the front of them. We tend to imagine ourselves as those who were at the front of the line, who worked hard all day and expect that length of service to be taken into account.
But there’s probably a reason why that last group of workers was still standing around the marketplace is the evening approached. If indeed they have been standing there all day, they have already been passed over many times, possibly by that same landowner’s agents. Or maybe they were late. Maybe they couldn’t find child care. Maybe they had to take care of a sick relative during a large part of the day.
If these workers in Jesus’s parable are day laborers, they have no special skills, no land of their own, or they would be farming it. They are among the poorest of the poor in Jesus’s time, at the mercy of working from day today with no illusions about job security or hope for betterment. These are the people for whom Jesus inserted the line “Give us today our daily bread” into the Lord’s prayer. If these day laborers don’t get hired today, they will not be able to obtain food enough to help them survive until tomorrow. These are not people for whom the days’ wages go into a savings account, or into purchasing a luxury item. These are people for whom when they get paid, that money goes right back out of their hands so that they can get food or shelter. They are working each day literally to survive.
Yet we are already clued in that this is not going to be a story that plays by human rules of exploitation and scarcity, but by God’s rules of generosity and abundance. We know that because Jesus starts off with these key, easily overlooked words: “The kingdom of heaven is like….”
The kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard in that a vineyard is a proclamation of abundance. Sure, there is always work to be done, and that work must be shared. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” Jesus will remark later on. And that’s why Jesus calls us not just to be fans of his work, or simply beneficiaries of his saving work but to share in it for the sake of others. The point of the gospel is not selfishness, but the liberation of the world from the powers of scarcity and death. And as we mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the great champion of equality for all, we are reminded that equal opportunity is often denied to those who are placed at the back of the line.
But here is an important point. Jesus always talks about the kingdom of heaven in the PRESENT tense. We are so used to thinking about heaven as a place where we hope to go after we die. But that is a misunderstanding from hell, since it makes our lives a shadow instead of substance. For too many people, hell is right now. It comes from all the forces that tell us to suspect each other and fight each other and leave some of our kindred behind to die. But heaven begins right now-- and it begins with our choice to follow Jesus and to trust in his promises.
And that's why Jesus calls us not just to be fans of his work, or simply beneficiaries of his offer of salvation, but to share in it for the sake of others. The point of the gospel is not selfishness or self-interest, but the liberation of the world from the powers of scarcity and death. The point of Jesus's work and call to us, especially as we meet this day during the Jewish High Holy Days, is what our Jewish kindred call tikkun olam, the restoration of the world to the vision that God had for it in the beginning: justice, plenty, community, generosity.
It’s a dissonant message that Jesus proclaims- and we have been fooled into scoffing at it. But that is hell talking. We have been programmed to grab while the getting is good. We have been programmed to value only what is scarce, and fail to see that such thinking often leads us to devalue or take for granted what is common—the steadfast love of a lifelong friend, the beauty and uniqueness of every sunset we are privileged to witness, the gift of forgiveness we give each other without keeping score. We also want grace for ourselves, but consequences for others. And that is human, all right—but it is also not living according to the values of the gospel, and if that sounds like something we’ve heard over and over, it’s because we HAVE.
There is a key point being made here about the grace of God. Jesus is reminding us that there is no rank among God’s children. There is no rationing of salvation, but more importantly salvation is not inwardly focused, but outwardly directed. Salvation is not a possession; it's a way of relationship g to the world with love and hope in action. In the kingdom of heaven, we truly all are equal. And because the kingdom of heaven is what we are called to work for now, Jesus is calling us to organize our lives around this abundance and open-heartedness to each other now.
Now, once again, we like to imagine ourselves as the workers who have been working all day. But just for a moment, imagine you’re still sitting there in the marketplace as the shadows lengthen. Your children are hungry and if you don’t get hired, they will not eat that night. The fact that you were still in the marketplace indicates that you haven’t given up in despair, and in the calculus of the subsistence wage, something is certainly better than nothing.
And the miracle wrapped into this parable is found in the final sentence: “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” After watching the distribution of the wages, those who have worked all day complain that the landowner has made those who worked for only an hour “equal to us.” The landowner points out, reasonably, that he has done no wrong to them by paying them what had been agreed. And what had been agreed was what was necessary for subsistence.
But here we see the tension that runs riot in our society right now—the tension between fairness and generosity, yes, but accelerated by the power of the narrative of scarcity that holds us all by the throat. This parable urges us to rejoice in the generosity that others receive, rather than keeping a tally card of who should be first and who should be last.
The landowner lets the first laborers see that he is paying the last one hired a full day’s wage—in fact, this is what necessitates their grumbling—the same grumbling we heard in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures. Even though they agreed to work for a day’s wage, they get their hopes up when they see the latest laborers being paid that amount. Hauerwas notes that this is a reminder to us that God doesn’t hide the truth from us, and that God means what God says. If we are all equal in the eyes of God, we are all equal in the eyes of God.
It's a hard thing to let go of. We all want to be in the front of the line. We take pride in how hard we work, and we fool ourselves that in this country how hard you work determines how much you get paid—which is not the case at all. Nurses and teachers work harder than anybody, but they certainly aren’t the best paid.
We all want to be in the front of the line. But it’s interesting to note that the front of the line is where all the grumbling is. You might be in the front OR the back of the line out of sheer luck or circumstance. But in Jesus’s parable those in the front cannot bring themselves to rejoice that some of their kindred workers have to received enough to sustain them and their families for another day. It’s at the end of the line where all the rejoicing is found. Where gratitude swells up into a holy shout of praise. And Jesus is calling us to be happy and glad for each other, no matter where we are in that line. We’ve all been assured of being fed! Where’s the bad news in that?
But the love of God is not expressed in half measures. Those who come late to the table still receive the full benefits of the fellowship. And really, if we think about it, we wouldn’t want it any other way. The values of God turn the values of the world and justice on their head, because the kingdom of heaven is based upon mercy and abundance. And as citizens of the kingdom of heaven we are called to base our lives on mercy and abundance, too. No matter where we are in line.
Amen.
Preached at the 5:15 pm Outdoor Eucharist on September 19-- the 55th anniversary of the founding of our parish-- as well as at the 10:30 am worship service on September 20, 2020 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
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