Admit it. There’s a problem with this story Jesus is telling. Of all things, you’d expect him to teach about the fairness of God. For goodness’ sake, he even introduces it as, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” The parable of the vineyard workers basically says that God favors socialist philosophy, regardless if someone put in the work or not. Whatever happened to reap what you sow, give and you receive, an equal exchange of action and reaction, deed and consequence? Otherwise, how else can we know that God cares about what everyone does? Is God an L?

The Hiring Line

Go ahead, shake your head, and examine what this owner of a large estate does. Very early in the day, he hires workers for his vineyard with the agreement to pay them the normal daily wage. They go to work. Then at nine o’clock, at noon, and even at five o’clock, he finds people just “standing around doing nothing.” (You know the type, chronically unemployed, lazy bums likely hanging out on the street corners.) When asked why they aren’t working, they simply say, “Because no one hired us.” (Well, if you’d get up and get moving when most of the hiring is happening,…oh, never mind.) The owner hires them, telling them to join the other workers hired earlier that day.

Fee for Service

That’s nice. Everyone gets a little something. God’s provision is there for those who show up and respond to the call. Except there’s more to this story, and not from what comes next as much as what went before.

Take a deep breath now. He did it again. Good old Peter just had to say it, and in more than one way, Jesus had to adjust his thinking. The repetition of this scenario seems to indicate it’s a lesson not easily learned.

“We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get out of it?”  Peter asks. (Mathew 19:27) Jesus had just indicated to a rich young man that to follow him, the man needed to sell all he had and give to the poor. (Matthew 19:16-26) For this guy, it was a tougher sell than for the relatively poor fishermen who dropped their nets when Jesus called them. Even so, Peter and the other disciples had basically sacrificed their entire lives to get behind Jesus. Shouldn’t this “Kingdom of Heaven” reward them in some way when it was all over?

Divine Reversals

Yes, Jesus says, but not like you may think. “Many who seem to be important now will be the least important then, and those who are considered least here will be the greatest then.” (Matthew 19:30) Reversals are the mode of operation in divine action. Healing reverses illness, peace reverses anxiety, joy reverses grief. So too, the kingdom of heaven reverses personal importance and status.

So, it’s no surprise that at the end of the day, the owner tells his foreman to pay first the last workers, and pay them a full day’s wage. Everyone else, regardless of how long they worked, get paid the same.

Ok, God, healing, peace, and joy are spiritual entities. You’re talking about people’s wallets here. If you are supposed to be fair and just, pay people according to the labor they put in, or at least pay those who worked longer hours more than the ones who worked only at the end of the day. Raise the minimum wage if you want but be fair about it.

Let’s back up here again. This is not some labor union meeting. Nor is it a welfare program being proposed. What did Jesus say? “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” And like it or not, heaven’s view of what’s fair and equitable isn’t like ours. So Peter, and the rest of you for that matter, make the adjustment.

Questions of What’s Fair and Just

What is fair and just and the way we believe and understand how the world should work isn’t the point here. Yet, Jesus sets the story in the familiar place of work and benefits with rewards associated in the labor market. It doesn’t seem right or fair, yet Jesus knew unless our perspectives are sometimes shaken, those of us who sit in Peter’s camp might not buy into his message. It would come down to doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Jesus was up against the mentality that everything good in life must be earned. That’s a paycheck as well as eternal life. That rich guy had asked Jesus, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Peter also was reminding Jesus what the disciples had done. Jesus had to deconstruct that expectation, and he did it right where people sit.

The world values persons by the size of their bank accounts and financial portfolios. No, he says. “What’s important now will be least important then.” Heaven is not earned by work, nor by what you give, nor by how you serve. You’re not going to balance your account with God like this.

A Liberal Grace

What does work is in the response to the owner of the vineyard. All the workers that day answered the owner’s call. It wasn’t the work they went out to do that got them a reward, but the fact that they said Yes to the owner. Every Yes was the same. And so, everyone who said Yes, regardless of the amount of work they put it, was rewarded with the same pay.

Interestingly, some of those who had worked the longest are the ones who protested. You can hear them now shouting how the system is unjust. Recognize this story is not about your dysfunctional systems of the world. This is God’s will to bless all who say Yes to the owner. God’s response, again to Peter and the rest of us who need some kind of hierarchy on which to sit, is, “Should you be angry because I am kind?”

In the end, Jesus is saying that God is an L, that is, God is a Lover. God’s love is the source of forgiveness, mercy, and grace. It’s overly generous, beyond fair. Not to mention costly to God, worth being crucified over. It’s not to be weighed on our understanding of what is just, our sense of equality and equity. That’s not to say these are to be dismissed in the relationships we have with each other. But it does mean, in saying Yes to God, a greater principle and operative has been designed to bring all persons who respond to that love and grace into the Kingdom of Heaven. And if God is at all liberal, it’s how no one is ever too late to receive it. That’s why,

“Many who are first now will be last then, and those who are last now will be first then.”

Matthew 20:1-16

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