Being the oldest of three children is not always as glamorous as it seems. On one hand, you tend to get a good bit of attention early on, and sometimes get privileges because you are the oldest. On the other hand, though, you’re the Guinea pig for your parents as they learn the ropes. This means, at some point, you will watch your younger siblings get to do things you never would have been able to do at that age. Somehow, they get to stay up or go out later, watch more grown up tv shows, and generally be way less supervised. And they never get in nearly as much trouble. Admittedly, as I observed my brothers growing up, multiple times I found myself exclaiming, “that’s not fair!!!”
That’s not fair could be the title of today’s story in our Bibles. It’s the exclamation of those who have worked all day, long and hard, and get to the front of the line to receive exactly the pay they’ve been promised, likely a small amount, but the going rate that was fair for a day’s pay. If you consider just their experience, such a cry seems odd. They came, agreed on a price, worked as agreed, and got their reward. So why are they so cranky? Because from the back of the pay line they have seen the landowner paying others, those who had worked far less. Based on that pay, they’ve come to expect more than was promised. Surely they had earned it. And yet, they only get the original amount promised. Just like those who arrived last.
It’s just not fair. And actually, that’s kind of the point of the parable, illustrated plainly in the conversation with the landowner, who reminds those laborers that he has fulfilled his promise to them in full; why are they resentful for graciousness shown to others? Jesus introduces this as an example of what the kingdom of heaven is like. Emile Deith, former president of Montreat Conference Center, used to greet conference attendees with a joke about such an image. He’d comment that “Montreat is a lot like heaven; you see a lot of people you didn’t expect to see.” The joke fit, reflecting the connectional, small world nature of the Presbyterian church, where you smile as you see friends you haven’t seen in a while in that holy mountain spot beyond the gate. But what if you said it as a summary of this parable: “in the kingdom of heaven you will see people who haven’t worked as hard or as long as you but get the same reward?” Well, that almost offends us if we’re honest. This parable rubs us. Something doesn’t seem right about it. That’s because we’re probably the most like those all day workers, and it’s hard to reconcile the gracious generosity of the landowner. We, too, might be equally envious and grumble a bit. So were many of the original listeners.
Commentator Patrick Wilson reflects that:
We may be entrepreneurial enough to agree that the owner of the vineyard can run his business any way he pleases, but we cannot rest comfortably with his payroll policies…. If the master is determined to be generous, why not pay those fellows who worked all day a bonus? That also would be fair. The way generosity gets passed around in this tale abrades our sense of justice[1].
Considering that this is a parable, and clearly the landowner is meant to represent God, we might quickly conclude the following: God’s not fair. The parable is great news to those hired at the end of the day, promised to be paid what was fair, and even to those hired midday, with the same unnamed but just amount promised. It’s harder to hear it as good news if we’ve been there all day. We take the exchange and salary for granted, not truly wrapping our heads around the gift that it is.
We are too close to ourselves, too wrapped up in our own skins, too bundled in our own terrible needs, to see truly what God gives us. What God, in goodness and generosity, gives us we are likely to assume is our due, something we have earned, a goodness we have fabricated for ourselves. We see other people more clearly than we see ourselves[2].
And in this context, our cries of “that’s not fair!” more likely than not expose our own warped sense of entitlement; or at least our privilege and our resistance to sharing it with anyone else.
The workers protest that in his decision, the landowner has made the later in the day workers “equal” to them, and you can imagine that word “equal” said with a dirty taste in the mouth. It seems the workers, and us, rely on systems of inequality in order to maintain our own sense of self-worth and value. Work is more than just earning a daily wage; it determines whether or not we are considered successful or a failure, superior or inferior. It is a source of division and competition[3]. And the landowner upsets the apple cart by showing generosity to everyone.
In my family, my brothers and I would jokingly compete for the title of “favorite child” with my parents. We used it as a tool of persuasion and a way to harass each other. It was a game to us most of the time, but also reflects a very real part of our nature to want to be the chosen one. That’s why this parable offends us so much I think. If the landowner, if God, is going to be extravagant and generous, why not towards us? We want to be the favorite children of God.
Here’s the thing- we are all “favorites”. In showing generosity to the other workers, the landowner wasn’t taking away from the first workers. He was simply adding to those who would be blessed. It’s not like God was giving out one pie, and dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces of pie because more people were there. Everyone was getting pie.
This parable reminds us that there is an ongoing tension between our sense of justice and fairness and our understanding of God’s radical and abundant grace. And it’s a story that plays out over and over again in our scriptures:
Jonah sat on the brow of the hill outside of Nineveh and pouted when God spared the city. The elder brother thought his father a doting old fool when his father invited him to join the celebrating at the prodigal’s return. The Pharisee at prayer thanks God that he is not like the sinful publican. Divine grace is a great equalizer which rips away presumed privilege and puts all recipients on a par[4].
Parables are meant to turn the mirror on us, and beg us to put ourselves in the story. No matter where we are in the payment line, this parable asks us to consider how we might respond to God’s grace, whether expected because of a relationship established long ago, or something that comes in the middle of the day or even at the last minute.
If we find that we are among the grumbles, this parable might just be calling us to check our privilege, and ask us why we are so guarded about others receiving the most basic daily needs. The landowner asks those who grumble to take a different perspective. The literal translation of the question he asks about envy reads “is your eye evil?” The struggle in the text isn’t about the transaction between the landowner and those later laborers. It’s about the struggle with the lens through which the original laborers are viewing the situation. Perhaps, if they can understand the true beauty of the grace shown to those they deem undeserving, they might realize that the same measure of unbelievable, unmerited, loving grace is what has been given to them all along as well.
Grace is something we talk about a lot, but never really know what to make of or what to do with it. Renowned Southern writer Flannery O’Conner wrestled with it in her fantastic short story titled “Revelation,” which details the scene of a well-to-do woman, Mrs. Turpin sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, passing deplorable judgment on those around her, not just in her head. After some time, a young woman finally explodes from the confines of her own chair and lunges after the protagonist, screaming that she is a “wart hog from hell.” The final moments bring Mrs. Turpin to consider what truth these words might be, even considering her charity to the less fortunate and church-going ways. She brings her wrestling to God. O’Conner writes:
What do you send me a message like that for?” She said in a low, fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. “How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?[5]”
Such a moment calls attention to the ongoing need for us to examine ourselves, to realize that perhaps we aren’t really as deserving of the privileges we hold, and instead are completely reliant on God’s grace alone. Such a revelation on our part will bring about some hard questionings about our own priorities and opinions about others. It will mean we have hard work to do. It will cause us to push back. As O’Conner herself noted:
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful[6].
But if we can get past our resistance, if we can get past the grumbling, we might just discover a better response to grace – gratitude. For what God gives to others, and for what God gives to us as well. That is what the parable is driving us towards.
And then, we can truly proclaim those words of the Psalmist that we called ourselves to worship with this morning:
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
That’s not fair! May we have the faith for that cry to shift from envy to joy. Amen.
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
September 24, 2017
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[1] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 2, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
[2] Patrick J. Willson
[3] Based on work by Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religions Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 394, as quoted in Charles Campbell, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlet and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
[4] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, “Proper 20,’ Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
[5] Flannery O’Conner, “Revelation,” http://producer.csi.edu/cdraney/archive-courses/summer06/engl278/e-texts/oconner_revelation.pdf
[6] Flannery O’Conner, as quoted by Skip Johnson, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 2, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
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