Eyes of Grace and Justice
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Parables are prone to eisegesis.
Eisegesis is a kind of made-up jargon-y word. It means injecting our own meaning into scripture rather than trying to figure out what it says. It is inevitable that we do some of that, because reading scripture is like a conversation to which we bring our own concerns and hope to find in our reading understanding and guidance. But it is way too easy, just as in a real conversation, to not attend to what scripture is saying and instead to assume that we know all about it before we even hear it. Parables, which are purposely mysterious—fantastic, even—and open-ended, especially tempt us. Like the one we heard today.
This parable in Matthew has been interpreted variously, therefore, to mean that we are all made equal at the end of time; or, that the new gentile followers of Jesus were equal to the Jews of whom Jesus was one; or that the later followers of Jesus were equal to the early disciples. None of these things are actually mentioned in the text, so who is to say? Social activist Dorothy Day wrote that this parable is about the preference for a living wage over equal pay for equal work. I am in agreement that it supports her argument, but of course it does not exactly say that.
The parable is commonly called the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. But that title emphasizes the workers, when the focus in the text is more about the actions of the landowner. What we name the parable affects what we think its meaning is.
We might call it, for example, the Parable of the Generous Landowner, if you think the landowner is generous. Or call it the Parable of the Arbitrary Exercise of Power, if you think the landowner is capricious. Or maybe call it, as Dorothy Day might, the Parable of the Just Wage, or maybe the Parable of Enough for Everyone. Or perhaps the Parable of the Complaining People of Privilege, if you think the first group of workers are entitled whiners.
Or the Parable of Grace and Justice, which is what I want to call it today.
The landowner—who is better thought of as a householder or head of house in our terms—needs some work done and hires workers to do it. He agrees to pay them a denarius, or a normal day’s wage. A denarius is not a lot of money. Enough, perhaps, for one person to barely get by. Minimum wage, of sorts.
The owner in this story is wealthy and powerful. The workers are poor and powerless. As the hours pass, the owner hires more workers, agreeing each time to pay them whatever is right. The word Jesus uses here is “just.” To pay what is just.
When the day is done, the owner instructs the foreman to pay the workers. To the surprise of those hired at the beginning of the day, he pays everyone the same amount, one denarius. The first hired workers are dismayed and upset. We do not hear what the other workers thought. (We can guess).
The first group of workers had an idea of fairness. They thought they would receive more, it says, because they worked more. They deserved more. People are paid for effort, and they expended more effort. Yet their complaint is not that they were paid too little—after all, a deal is a deal, and a denarius is what they agreed to—but that the others were paid too much. Everyone got the same. “You have made them equal to us,” they say. They begrudge the owner’s generosity. “Are you envious,” asks the owner, “because I’m generous.” That’s how our Bible puts it, but the text uses an idiom. What he actually says is “Is your eye evil because I am good?” There is something wrong with the way they are seeing things.
The workers have one idea of what is right, and the landowner another. Where is the harm? says the landowner? What is it to you? The workers think that those who worked harder should get more. Not more than they expected but more than the people who worked less hard. For them the payments have nothing to do with the needs of the other workers; or the fact that the workers had no control over the order in which they were hired; or that they themselves could just have easily been passed over at first like the other workers. Or worse, like the workers who were never hired.
The landowner kept his promise to the first group to pay them a day’s wage. And he kept his promise to the rest to pay them what was just. And what was just was a day’s wage. That is, the same for all.
For the first workers, fairness was transactional. Equal pay for equal work means unequal pay for unequal work. It’s a formula. They deserved more because they worked more, the reasoning goes. So the others deserved less.
Yet justice is not about who deserves what. It is less like a spreadsheet and more like hospitality. The landowner is like a host. You do not treat your guests according to what they deserve. How you treat them has more to do with you than with them. Or rather, has not to do with what they deserve by their own merit but with what they need that you can provide. Or rather again, what would bless them. Hospitality is grace.
This story in Matthew is bounded on both sides by Jesus telling his listeners that the last will be first and the first will be last. This is not a prediction that those on the top will swap places with those on the bottom, thereby creating a new hierarchy of power and privilege to replace the old. It is a prediction that what now is higher and lower will instead be side by side, making equal what was unequal.
This is the workers’ complaint, but it is the landowner’s promise.
The kingdom of heaven is like the landowner, the story begins. What kind of God would bless all people whether they deserved it or not? A just God. Our God.
What are we to do with parables like this one? Is the parable simply for edification, teaching us some fact about God and the nature of things? About how God works, about a how a just God operates, about how the kingdom of heaven will be, in our time or later. Is it to comfort us, knowing that God blesses all of us, first workers or last ones, saints and sinners, without distinction.
Or is this parable for exhortation, commanding us to be just as the landlord is just, to act our part in bringing about the kingdom of heaven here. Are we in our daily lives, in work, as citizens, in the systems we set up, to act like gracious hosts, blessing all, deserving or not, without distinction.
And does it guide us to change what we see, and the way we see? Do we to continue to see as the first workers do, with evil eyes? Or are we called to see as the landowner does, to see as God sees, to see with eyes of justice and grace.
