It’s
not fair!
How
often have you heard that phrase?
How
often have you said that phrase?
The
idea of fairness, of being treated fairly is one we seem to grasp early on in
life.
If
my brother or sister gets a treat, I should get one too.
It’s
not fair!
I
can imagine the workers who started at 6 am or 9 am saying this: it isn’t fair,
we worked all day in the hot sun, we
deserve more than these later comers.
Jesus
introduces this parable, saying, the kingdom of heaven would be like:
a
man who went to hire some workers
and
hired more throughout the day
then
paid the ones who started last
before
the ones who started earliest.
so how can the Kingdom of heaven be
like this, if it isn’t fair??
What is going in here?
As
we think about this parable, I am aware of how we name parables, as shorthand
for parables.
This
parable is often called “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” but Amy-Jill Levine [a
professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University’s
Divinity School] has suggested that “The Parable of the Generous Landowner” or
“The Parable of Full Employment Where Everybody Gets a Living Wage.”[i]
This is a parable that tells us something
of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It has been ‘explained’ in terms of salvation
– those who confess Christ recently have the same salvation as those who
confessed Christ many years ago. It has also been suggested that this could be
about the people of Israel and Gentile converts.
But I wonder what the people Jesus was
speaking to would hear in this parable?
What might it tell us about God?
To me it highlights the difference
between what is fair and what is just or righteous. It is fair for people to be
paid according to their work, but it is just that all have the opportunity to
work and that everyone has what they need to live.
“We might have thought that the most
important thing in life is to be fair, which means to be impartial. But perhaps
the more important criterion is to be generous.”[ii]
In the time of Jesus, there were people
who relied on getting casual work each day to be able to feed and support their
families. They turned up at the town square each morning nice and early, in the
hope of getting work for the day.
We hear from those who worked all day,
they got the silver coin that was the payment for a casual worker for the day,
and they complained when they saw what the others were getting.
But what of those who waited in the
town square all day? how might they have been feeling? think about
it, you arrive early in the morning, and no one picks you; you may be a little
older, or you may have an injury – and so you wait, wondering what will I feed
my family today, and what if no one picks me again tomorrow, how will I look
after my family?
then late in the day, close to the end
of the work day, you and some others are still standing there, wondering how to
feed your family, when someone offers you an hour’s work. you jump at the
opportunity, it won’t pay much, but anything is better than nothing, and maybe
he will hire me for longer tomorrow.
And then you get paid what you need to
feed your family – how would you feel?
Not only that you get paid before the
ones who were hired first.
If we think of ourselves as one of the
workers hired in the morning, we might think this is unfair; but if we are hired
later in the day, we might think of the generosity of the farm manager.
We live in a culture that says we get
what we deserve: study hard, work hard and you will get a good job, be able to
buy a house and you will fine. But we know life does not always work that way. Not everyone has the same capacity to study or
to work, not everyone has the opportunity to study or work. And we live in a
culture that values some types of work more than others, for example average
salaries[iii] for the following:
aged care worker $41,000 per year;
Paramedic $60,000
finance manager $91,000 per year;
how did we decide that a finance
manager is worth more than twice as much as an aged care worker?
A few years after my father died, my
mother married again. One time they were visiting, I remember there was something
on the news about social welfare. I can’t remember which group, but someone was
getting an increase, and he was not getting one in his pension class – well he
was so annoyed. How dare anyone else get social welfare. No else was deserving as he was.
What is it that causes us to get angry
and upset about single parents, indigenous people or people who are unemployed
getting support from the community through the taxation system? Why do we see some
groups as more deserving than others?
Those who started work earlier in the day
thought they deserved more. They received what was agreed to, and what was
enough. It was comparable to what a manager from the next farm would have paid
them.
Is this really what God is like?
Not giving us what we deserve, but what
we need?
Being generous rather then fair?
“Is this kind of maddening equality,
regardless of what one has contributed to God’s kingdom,
really a part of the new reality God is inaugurating in Jesus?
For Matthew’s Jesus, the answer is ‘yes.’[iv]
regardless of what one has contributed to God’s kingdom,
really a part of the new reality God is inaugurating in Jesus?
For Matthew’s Jesus, the answer is ‘yes.’[iv]
“God’s deep generosity
toward others can actually trip us up if we think of the kingdom in terms of
limited amounts of grace being distributed based on ‘deservedness’.”
[Jeannine K. Brown, Matthew (Teach
the Text New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015) 230.][v]
If you wanted to see over a fence, some
of you will need taller ladders than others – is that fair?
How often do we feel dissatisfied, not
with what we have, but because it is less than what someone else has? How often
do we compare our houses, cars, clothes, pay packets, church attendance, number
of friends… ?
How often do we feel upset because we
have been working for the church for many years, and then someone new comes in
and gets the benefit?
The kingdom of heaven is like a
landowner, who hires and pays people according to their need.
The Kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of
justice, a kingdom of need being met, not because we deserve it, not because we
earned it, but because God is generous, and gracious and knows our need.
Where do you need to accept God’s
generosity?
Where is God challenging your generosity?
[i]
https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/levine-parable-of-landowner-and-laborers-teaches-importance-of-generosity/?fbclid=IwAR33BZPG6PZlOPGg6yvAlOARGUegZkpvnFZBHx0RaDzBaj1AD5ttBVRW5aY
[ii]
https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/levine-parable-of-landowner-and-laborers-teaches-importance-of-generosity/?fbclid=IwAR33BZPG6PZlOPGg6yvAlOARGUegZkpvnFZBHx0RaDzBaj1AD5ttBVRW5aY
[iii]
https://www.payscale.com/index/AU/Job
[iv]
https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/levine-parable-of-landowner-and-laborers-teaches-importance-of-generosity/?fbclid=IwAR33BZPG6PZlOPGg6yvAlOARGUegZkpvnFZBHx0RaDzBaj1AD5ttBVRW5aY
[v]
https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3869
