My dear friends,
There’s a parable that Jesus told which we looked at the other week in
church (Matthew’s gospel, chapter 20). Casual workers are hired by the
owner of a vineyard to work for one day. He hires some at 6 in the
morning and agrees to pay them one denarius (an average day’s pay for
a Roman soldier and a little more than a casual worker could expect for
a full day’s wage). Three hours later he goes out and hires some more
workers and says he will see them right. Again at midday, at three in
the afternoon and then, at 5 o’clock, with just one hour of the working
day to go he returns to the market place and finds a final few forlorn
hopefuls. They had been waiting all day – they hadn’t been picked by
the vineyard owner – nor by any other hirer. They must have been the
worst of the worst – the weakest looking – the unluckiest, the most
incompetent or the least trustworthy – and what must they have felt
about themselves – waiting all day – every few hours another cart pulls
up: ‘I’ll take you, you and you. But not you!’ They watched and waited
while the other workers were hired. If they didn’t work, they didn’t eat.
Nor would their dependants. All day long they were passed over.
Who are your sympathies with at this point?
At the end of the working day the owner pays the workers and he starts
with those hired last. For their one hour’s work they received one
denarius. (Hang on – isn’t that the average day’s wage for a Roman
soldier and a little more than a casual worker could expect for a full
day’s wage?) Why yes, it is: glad you were listening. When those who
had worked all day saw this they obviously thought they would be in
for a windfall. When they each discovered they would be paid one
denarius also, they were a little miffed. Understandably.
Who are your sympathies with now?
So they take the owner to task. ‘How come you have made those who
were taken on for the shortest shift equal to us?’ ‘We’ve a good mind to
form a trade union and organize a strike,’ they might have thought. He
replies that they received exactly what they had asked for at the
beginning of the day. And if he happened to be a very generous man,
should they begrudge another man benefiting from his generosity?
I bet that most of us look at this parable first with narrowed eyes and
we say ‘This isn’t fair’ because we put ourselves in the shoes of the allday
workers ─ our first thought isn’t to put ourselves in the ragged torn
foot-coverings of the eleventh-hour drop-outs!
But we should.
You see, the parable’s principle purpose which is not easy if you can’t
say your Ps) is not an exposing of unequal pay scales (as current an
issue as any) but rather it tells us something of God’s grace – of his
mercy. In love he gives us what we don’t deserve.
Let me tell you a story about a man who is so extraordinarily generous
he gives what isn’t deserved to those who are undeserving out of sheer
grace and love. He’s so generous that even those of us who are standing
– unpicked at the eleventh hour thinking there is no hope – they are the
ones he will lift just as high. It may seem to others that he lifted these
people higher – but only because they started off at a lower place.
Should we be envious of them – or rejoice with them that no one is
beyond the saving grace of God if they look for him?
That is the question that the parable of the generous farmer asks.
Jonathan
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