Matthew 20:1-16
“That’s not fair!” It’s
something cried out in the playground every day.
“That’s not fair.” Something
mumbled at the dinner table when brother gets a bigger piece of the much loved
lasagna, or when sister gets a smaller piece of the much disliked broccoli.
“That’s not fair” words
tumbling out of the mouth of a student who slaved over a paper only to learn that
another student got an extension.
“That’s not fair”
thrown about in the breakroom when talking about another person’s promotion,
perhaps one you felt you deserved.
To quote my father, and
I would guess most of your father’s “Life is not fair.”
Only, we expect it to
be, don’t we? We expect to get from life what we put into it, and we expect
others to be rewarded the same way. That is part of what our American, pull
yourself up by your own bootstraps, mentality runs on; the premise that if we
work hard enough, do the right things, then we can all arrive at the same
destination.
And perhaps that’s what
makes this morning’s teaching so displeasing, uncomfortable, down right yucky.
I have even heard that there are people who avoid coming to church on the
Sunday this story comes up in the lectionary. They dislike it that much!
Jesus is teaching,
talking really, to his disciples and he again picks up this theme of the
kingdom of heaven is like. . .
We’ve heard these
phrases, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
-the kingdom of heaven
is like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep.
-the kingdom of heaven
is like a woman searching her whole house for one coin.
- the kingdom of heaven
is like yeast
- the kingdom of heaven
is like a treasure buried in a field.
Here we get the kingdom
of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning. . .
With all of these
kingdom of heaven phrases we have a tendency to take some literal
interpretation. God is the landowner, we are the servants. God is the shepherd
we are the sheep, God is the woman we are the coin (or perhaps that’s a bit of
a stretch)
There is a huge problem
reading these passages in this manner. Not one of these parables, in fact not
all of the parables put together, actually describe the literal kingdom of
heaven. Not one! Not all! Parables are comparisons, they are stories, and they
are used to illustrate an idea, a concept that we really have no words to
describe.
When we say March came
in like a Lion and out like a Lamb, do we literally mean that the beginning of
the month of March started with a lion coming down the streets and ended with a
lamb walking away? Of course not. We mean the weather was rough at the
beginning and calm at the end.
That is what parables
do, they explain an idea or concept, not the actual kingdom of God. A picture
is worth a thousand words, and parables give us a picture, a glimpse into the
upside down, tables turned kingdom of God.
There was a landowner
who went out in the morning to hire workers in his fields. And right off we
have something that should cause us to pause. Landowners didn’t hire their
workers, managers hired the workers. What was this landowner doing out in the
marketplace looking for workers himself? That’s odd. His HR person should be
holding interviews for him.
He finds workers,
agrees to the normal day’s pay for a normal day’s work and sends them on to his
fields. He’s a just landowner, he doesn’t try to cheat them; he agrees to pay
the daily rate, not more, but certainly not less. The workers agree and go on
to their jobs.
Later in the day the
landowner goes out again and finds people waiting for work. I don’t know how
many of you have experience with this, but growing up in Lubbock, Texas I
remember groups of men, usually Latin American men, would gather outside of the
local hardware store that my bus drove past on the way to school each morning. Construction
foreman would pull up in their company trucks and load as many workers as they
needed into the back of the truck, with promises of a day’s pay.
Driving home past that
same hardware store there were occasionally still people standing around at 4pm.
They looked tired, desperate, some older, some more frail, but still waiting
for someone to hire them.
This landowner goes out
at 9 am and hires a group of workers and agrees to pay them what is fair, or
right, or just. Then he is out again at noon, then three with the same offer.
And then at 5 pm he goes and finds people still waiting to be hired and says “Why
are you here not working?” And they respond “Well I slept in too late.” “Well I
didn’t feel like working this morning.” “Well, my parents didn’t teach me how
to fill out the proper paperwork to get a job.” “Well I’m freeloading.”
No; they respond “no
one has hired us.” Plain and simple. They have been waiting for a job and none
has been provided. And so the landowner sends them on for the last hour of
work. He doesn’t even promise them a fair wage, just an hours’ worth of work.
But an hours’ worth is better than nothing, and so they go.
An hour later the owner
calls to his manager (he has a manager, so why was he hunting down workers) and
has him gather the workers to be paid beginning with the last and going to the
first.
Everyone who has lined
up for kindergarten or concert tickets or Black Friday specials knows that this
is NOT how things are done. First come, first served. But that is not the way
this landowner chooses to act.
The last shall be
first, it didn’t endear him to his workers then, it wouldn’t endear him now.
They workers begin receiving
their pay. Those who worked an hour received a day’s wage. The gossip spread to
the back of the line. “If they worked and hour and got that much, imagine how
much we will get.” They begin to think. And as they received their wages, their
faces fell. They received a day’s wage for a day’s work.
It was exactly what had
been promised. They had agreed to it in the early hours of the morning. But now
it was not enough. Now they felt cheated. Now they felt taken advantage of.
Why? They made a
contract and it was honored. Why feel put out, angry, cheated?
The landowner replies “Why
are you upset? I paid you what was due. Are you envious because I am generous?”
Yes
Yes, they are envious.
And yes we often are as well. It isn’t so much that other people get things
from God that we don’t get. It’s not that they got more or better rewards. The
problem seems to be that they got the same, and they don’t deserve it.
That’s the issue these
workers have. They did the work, so they deserve the day’s wage. The other’s
didn’t do as much, as hard, as good what have you work and therefore shouldn’t
get the same things.
It’s not that they have
been cheated, they got exactly what they had originally expected. It’s that
others got the same amount. “You have made them equal to us.” Is their
response.
Dr. Ira Brent Driggers,
an Associate Professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary puts it this way “Even
the workers hired early in the morning . . . roll out of bed unemployed. But
the owner finds them and gives them
work. I imagine they were, no less than the nine o’clock hires ‘standing idle
in the marketplace.’ Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t working. There was no
real livelihood prior to the owner seeking them out. But by the end of the day
they seem to have forgotten this. Or maybe they never really understood. What
is clear is that, come payment time, they are thinking only in terms of just
reward. Pay must be commensurate with the hours worked – as if the work itself
was not the real ‘reward.’”[i]
The workers do not
recognize the gift of grace they have received in order to have work in the
first place. They have become convinced that they are being treated unfairly
because other’s received the same amount. And so the landowner asks “Are you
envious because I am generous.”
Rev. Doctor Emerson
Powery says the landowner’s question, “Are you envious because I am generous?”
(verse 15), is the translation of a Greek idiom which literally translates as
“Is your eye evil because I am good?” An “evil eye” (ophthalmos
poneros) suggested a deeper problem than meets the eye. As Jesus taught
earlier, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your
whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy (ophthalmos
poneros; so, if you have the “evil eye”), your whole body will be full of
darkness” (cf. 6:22-23). In this account, the “evil eye” was the opposite of
generosity (e.g., jealousy, greed, stinginess, etc.).[ii]
Viewing someone else’s
good fortune as our demotion is ridiculous at best, and evil at worst. We have
not earned our place as children of God, we can’t do that. It is grace, a gift,
unmerited favor. Yet there are those who would act as if they somehow deserve
their standing with God. I think that Matthew shares this parable to remind us
that whether we are 7th generation Christian, or just walked in off
the street to hear the Gospel for the first time, our status is the same,
laborer for God, child of the king, beloved.
Who do you identify
with in the parable? The laborers who worked all day, received enough to feed
their families, and yet feel cheated? The workers who were only there an hour
and yet were blessed with enough to feed their families?
How we see this parable
tells us a lot about how we see our role in the kingdom of God. “Faced with
God's boundless love for the world, especially when it is lavished upon others,
we reveal whether we view our own labor as a gift from God or as benefit to
God, as the joyful fulfillment of our created purpose or as the mere endurance
of scorching heat.”[iii]
The Gospel Truth is
that we are all equal recipients of God’s gifts. The truth in our hearts is
that sometimes we are jealous when such gifts are shared with others in equal
measure.
To quote the great
theologian Louis CK,
“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
The kingdom of heaven,
my friends, is like a generous landowner, who went out every hour seeking to
give people a job, a calling, a vocation; and never stopped seeking even when
there was little time left to work. And then gave them all enough to feed
themselves and their families. Let us
not be evil eyed toward the gifts other’s receive. Let us rejoice that they too
have their daily bread.
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