Maybe you remember this old line: A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
Our notions of justice usually cannot help but be influenced by our own circumstances and by our opinions about what we and others deserve. We insist justice has to do with equality, but a lot of the time it's a word we toss around to keep people and things we don't like at bay.
And then along comes Jesus, eager to mess even more with our regular attitudes about what's right or fair.
It's A Story About Generosity
Maybe no other words attributed to Jesus cause as much offense to ethical calculations as his Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). He likens "the kingdom of heaven," or the way things are when God sets the standards, to a situation in which hardworking, reliable people get shafted. Or do they?
The story goes like this: Early in the morning, a landowner (who seems to represent God in this parable) hires people to work in his vineyard for the standard daily wage. He hires additional people at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and again at 5 p.m., telling each of these groups that he will give them "whatever is right." When the hot workday ends, he first pays the folks who labored only a single hour the standard daily wage, the same amount he pledged to those who worked nearly sunup to sundown. When the members of that full-day crew get to the front of the line, they receive the same amount, exactly what they were promised.
The full-day workers are understandably resentful. We aren't told how the one-hour shift responds. Maybe they had hustled back to their homes thinking the landowner might have a change of heart.
Meanwhile, dismayed accountants back in the vineyard probably start updating their resumes.
The actions of the landowner are all kinds of crazy. They make no sense, at least from an economic perspective. Yet that's the point. Jesus' parables often include absurd behavior to deliver their message, which in this case is a characterization of what it means to call God "righteous" or "just." When the landowner promises to pay "whatever is right," his words mean "whatever is just."
It's A Parable About God's Graciousness
So excessive is God's propensity to give and care, it violates our instincts about fairness. Such justice looks rash. It almost makes God out as inattentive to the kinds of people who, just by going about their usual business, easily exceed humanity's lowest common denominators for effort, morality and piety.
But, then again, the landowner does give the complaining workers exactly what he promised them.
It's A Story About People In Need
We learn more about God when we travel deeper into the world the parable imagines and consider its other characters.
We have to ask about who receives extravagance from the landowner. Some readers spiritualize the parable by saying that working in the fields is an allegory for serving God or toiling away in the ministries of the church. But those who are hired at 5 p.m. suggest to me types of people other than those who sleep in on Sunday mornings.
After all, this parable draws all its force and illustrative potential from the dynamics of economic life. Whom, then, should we think the landowner encounters when he's looking for workers late in the afternoon? What kind of people are the last to find jobs, added to the rolls only when there's no more labor available? Nothing suggests that those characters in the parable are irresponsible or lazy. More likely, they are unwanted.
Who spends the whole day waiting to be hired but doesn't find success until the end of the day? In Jesus' time, these would be the weak, infirm, and disabled. Maybe the elderly, too. And other targets of discrimination, such as criminals or anyone with a bad reputation.
A God who is "just," then, is inclined to show special generosity to the poor and outcast. No wonder the respectable people get anxious.
Don't stop there. If we're composing a list of "people who have to wait all day long to get hired" in our current setting, we need to expand it. Add the unemployed and underemployed to the list. At a time when the total unemployment rate in America exceeds 16 percent, suddenly those who cannot get hired until 5 p.m. aren't necessarily just people wearing rags or talking gibberish to themselves. Many are college graduates, highly skilled manufacturers, loyal, capable.
Undocumented immigrants also belong on the list, for who hires them these days? The parable's landowner might be at risk of prosecution in Alabama, depending on the outcome of a battle over that state's new immigration law. It's a severe law allegedly spurred by the national unemployment crisis, but one legitimately wonders how the law's rough justice squares with a Bible that repeatedly commends hospitality and compassion toward refugees, strangers and other aliens.
WATCH The Immigration Debate: Alabama Bishops Unite to Fight Tough New Law:
The parable doesn't dissolve these intractable issues that plague us. Nor does it promise that tomorrow the landowner might send all the laborers home to new mansions and in perfect health. We're not looking at that kind of generosity.
But the parable does make us pause to consider questions about what kinds of people are in need of "whatever is right." Who needs benevolence the most? How might a society that promises "justice for all" stop vilifying, shaming and neglecting the precise kinds of people to whom God most desires to express unusual generosity?
It's A Story About Value
In the end, it's not about unfair payments. At the parable's conclusion, the full-day workers don't moan that they have been cheated. They complain instead to the landowner, "You have made them [the one-hour workers] equal to us."
It's not the generosity or the extravagance that makes them angry. Rather, the issue is this: By dealing generously with a group of people that no other manager in town considered worth the trouble of hiring, the landowner has made a clear declaration about their value, their worth.
The landowner's undue kindness thus denies the full-day laborers the bonus they think they can claim: a sense of privilege or superiority.
You don't have to read much of the Bible before you notice that it is God's preference to show uncommon compassion to those who don't have it so good, who have been denied a dignified place in the system. We get that. What chafes me about it, especially in response to this parable, isn't that I want extra doses of compassion for myself. Rather, I wish that God's modus operandi didn't make me and countless others look so cheap in comparison, through our own sad inability to allow benefits to go to the people who need them the most.
Editor's Note: ON Scripture is a series of Christian scripture commentaries produced in collaboration with Odyssey Networks. Each week pastors from around the country will approach the lectionary text of the week through the lens of current events, providing a religious voice that is both pastoral and prophetic.
Matthew L. Skinner: Matthew 14:22-33: Faith within the Chaos
Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard - Wikipedia, the free ...
Matthew 20:1-16 NIV - The Parable of the Workers in the - Bible ...
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard | Faith in the Workplace
I compared and contrasted the structure of poverty experienced by migrant day laborers in the Great Depression with what may be known of day laborer life (the expendables) in the 1st Century Eastern Mediterranean world. I then considered the corruption of the landowner in this parable and his efforts at impression management (Didn't the labors *agree* to their wage? But how can day laborers actually *agree* to anything?) that mask his contempt for those whose labor made him wealthy. Verse 16 is not a restatement of how the landowner paid the laborers. It is a declaration that the coming kingdom would fundamentally overturn the social structures that reinforced a world in which the lives of expendables were worth nothing.
This parable was no doubt understood by the elites of Jesus' day as a fundamental challenge to their privileged place. Little wonder that somebody had to figure a way to get this teacher killed.
In order to have it both ways, you have to engage in Spin (or to use the longer form: Theology).
Let me offer another perspective. This parable also displays Jesus' lack of value for justice between humans. No brag, just fact; (hear me out).
The acknowledged injustice of paying a full day's wages to a worker who merely worked one hour is briefly swept aside. This injustice should not be ignored, because it is so common in Christ's speeches.
What is so obvious is that Christ isn't speaking to affirm human values. He very seldom does; He doesn't affirm human psychology.
That persistent theme calls into question the very humanity of Christ (Christian theology declares Christ is both God and Man).
But a more troubling issue is that Jesus is on record about not being serious about the justice between humans. The lack of this value in Jesus' mindset may be the clue why injustices prevail in human history.
Let's stop making excuses for God's repeated failings, and begin to acknowledge a more realistic theology about God's grace-iousness to mankind.
The overall statements are very subjective, and problematic, with all due respect.
First, one has to either admit, or prove, that a Jesus really existed. Then even if he did, does the Bible relate exactly what he may have said and without other textes, outside the Bible we can't be conclusive. So speculating about Jesus' mindset ...?! And finally, 'realistic theology'... just no way!
However, an alternative view appears reasonably “suggestable”. I submit to you BlogSpotThinker post http://blogspotthinker.blogspot.com/2011/09/god-and-economics.html and welcome your thoughts.
The blog URL appears to be http://blogspotthinker.blogspot.com. If clicking the links does not launch the blog, copying and pasting the URLs into the browser address bar might. If the blog still does not load, trying at a later point might yield better results. In addition, text copied from HuffingtonPost.com comment posts appears to potentially contain additional hyphens that might cause “Page Not Found” errors if located in a URL. Comparing the copied URL to the original might reveal such errors.
Regarding supernatural "evidence" being assumed away ....
Let's try a little exercise. Take all of the supernatural "evidence" that the Scientologists have ... or the Mormons have ... or those practicing Santaria have ...
Do you assume it away or give it any kind of credibility?
Who needs what is right? Those who think they don't are in the worst trouble.
"The landowner's undue kindness thus denies the full-day laborers the bonus they think they can claim: a sense of privilege or superiority." I would consider the sense of privelege or superiority undue, not the kindness.
Why should those who bust their butts doing a good job and earning their pay not feel superior to those who hardly work? The parable makes no sense, and neither does your comment.
I humbly and respectfully submit to you http://blogspotthinker.blogspot.com/2011/09/god-and-economics.html. The blog’s URL appears to be http://blogspotthinker.blogspot.com. If clicking the links does not launch the blog, copying and pasting the URLs into the browser address bar might. If the blog still does not load, trying at a later point might yield better results. In addition, text copied from HuffingtonPost.com comment posts appears to potentially contain additional hyphens that might cause “Page Not Found” errors if located in a URL. Comparing the copied URL to the original might reveal such errors.
A Chinese Mandarin dies and his soul rises as a bright star to reside with the Father, our God. He finds himself, at one point, walking on a bright trail, through the woods. He soon comes to a fortress, with an armed guard at the huge doors. The trail leads to the door where the guard asks him his name. When he says his name, the guard checks a list and tells him that he must go further on to Heaven that awaits him. At which time he asks where he is and the guard says, 'Hell'. The Mandarin asks politely if he can just take a peek inside. He has always wondered what it might be like, and he will certainly not have another opportunity to see it.
The guard hesitates, and says 'OK, if you promise just to take a quick glimpse'. He then opens the huge door enough for a peek. He sees thousands of people (souls), seated at huge tables with delicious foods. However they are all skinny and starving because they are forced to eat with four foot long chop-sticks. He thanks the guard and goes on his way, on the illuminated path.
(to be continues).
The Mandarin soon comes, to his surprise, to another fortress, very much like the first, with a guard in front. He wonders if he has not walked in circles, but the guard says 'welcome, we've been expecting you'. The guard opens a huge door, and to his added surprise, he sees thousands of souls, seated at huge tables covered with delicious foods, forced to eat with four foot chop-sticks.
He hesitates and wonders, but soon he notices that everyone is happy, jovial and eating well because they are feeding the one in front of them.
If it has nothing to do with economics then it has nothing to do with buying salvation. Therefore, you should read the first paragraph of my opening post below where I show its meaning the soul of bodily.
Thank you for the distinction between Soul and Spirit. I wonder what the consequences are for the concept of Spirituality. The Mandarin story, however, is just that; a story. I posted it as an entertainment, please do not read anything special into it.
May the life-force be with you.