“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The adage, God’s ways are not our ways, comes in handy when we are faced with hardship and tragedy. When things go awry, when that message comes, that phone rings, that letter arrives, that event happens, we try to make sense of it. And when we can’t, we resolve to comfort ourselves with a bit of spiritual and intellectual surrender as we reluctantly whisper, God’s ways are not our ways. This small and meager confession brings us some answer and comfort to our desperate whys (all of them). When we do not understand—in our grief and sorrow, our anger and frustration, our loss and suffering in the midst of emotional and physical chaos and tumult—considering that God might know and (somehow) still be in control provides us a relatively safe space to process and move through what we are experiencing and feeling.

Interestingly, I rarely hear this adage used when something good happens to us. When someone gets good news, accomplishes the daunting task, finds acceptance into this or that, receives promotion, not many of us would even think to say, God’s ways are not our ways. We may say Praise God! Or, What an answer to prayer! Or, You worked so hard for ________! But not, God’s ways are not our ways. Why? Because that little adage casts a big shadow of doubt over whether one really earned this or that good thing. And we, who live in the west and especially in America, really like thinking we’ve earned the good things that come our way. We like to think that this or that good thing is fair, because, well, I’m kind of a good person or I’ve been working really hard or and well my lack of good things means it was my time to get good things so I still earned it by not having anything good for a while…

Now, I’ve been a bit hyperbolic here. In the temporal realm and according to the ideological leanings of the kingdom of humanity and the way natural law works, surely, many good and bad things happen to us that actually are products of our effort. But there’s a point to be made, God’s ways really are not our ways. In what seems good or bad, in what feels fair or unfair, in what seems earned or not earned, God’s ways are not our ways. As our Matthew passage tells us, neither the ways of God nor the ways of the reign of God operate according to our ways.

Matthew 20:1-16

According to Matthew 19, Jesus is in the region of Judea beyond the Jordan (v1) where pharisees challenged him about divorcing one’s wife for “any cause” (vv3-12), he blessed little children (vv13-15), and aggrieved the rich young man with the truth about it takes to be “perfect” and store up treasure in heaven (vv16-22), adding the admonition that it is harder for a rich person to get into heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle—an answer that terrified the disciples (vv.23-26). Then, Peter (desperately?) asked for assurance of reward for leaving everything and following Christ; Jesus responds that they will have thrones and will receive a hundredfold and eternal life (vv27-29). But then Jesus adds (cryptically), But many will be last who are first and first who will be last (v30).[ii]  

V30 is the reason for “the Kingdom of Heaven is like” of chapter 20[iii] (a story found only here in Matthew[iv]). Matthew’s Jesus explains what he means by reordering first and last in the Reign of God[v] by telling the story of a wealthy vineyard owner and day-laborers. According to Matthew, Jesus began,

For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a person as master of the house who went out early in the morning [6am] to hire workers for his vineyard. Now, after agreeing with the workers for a denarius for the day’s work, he sent them into his vineyard (vv1-2).

(Obvs.) Everything seems on track at this point in the story. A “denarius”—a Roman Coin—was also the standard wage for a full day of labor. The vineyard was a common agriculture setting in Palestine (as well as within in FT imagery). But then Jesus goes on. The vineyard owner continues to go to the marketplace and fetch laborers for his vineyard. He goes out at the third hour (about 9am) and sees others standing unhired in the place of assembly and he said to them, You, you also go into the vineyard. And I will give you whatever is right (vv3-5a). And they go into the vineyard and work (for an unknown wage). (Coolcoolcool.) Then, the vineyard owner in like manner did it again three hours later at noon (the sixth hour) (mmmkay); and again, in another three hours at 3pm (the ninth hour) (huh…) (vv5b). While Jesus’s story became curious, it’s not all that wild considering the amount of work that might be needed in a vineyard. But then, Jesus continues; the man goes out again at the eleventh hour (5pm) and…

…found others standing there and he says to them, “why have you stood so here the whole day unhired? They say to him, “No one hired us.” He says to them, “You, you also go into the vineyard” (vv6-7).

(Wut.) Here, Jesus’s story flirts with the ridiculous. Who, in their right mind, hires anyone at the last hour of the workday let alone hires the ones no one else wanted[vi] to hire? But then, Jesus’s story jumps over ridiculous into wild.   

Now evening came and the lord of the vineyard says to his administrator, “Call the workers and return to them their wages beginning from the last ones until the first ones.” And they came, the ones [hired] about the eleventh hour received at the rate of a denarius. And when the first came they supposed that they will receive more; they each also received at the rate of a denarius (vv8-10).

All expectations are thrown out the window here. Jesus has not only turned the tables but has just flat out (metaphorically) flipped them. When Jesus goes on to say that they muttered against the house manager giving a list of burdens endured while working as long as they did and the injustice[vii] of making those who worked only one hour equal to they who worked twelve (vv11-12), both Jesus’s audience and Matthew’s side with them.[viii] The offense and frustration at this financial injustice is the point.[ix] The Reign of God, according to Jesus, is nothing like the kingdom of humanity. Those called into the vineyard, no matter how early or how late, cannot hold the lord of the vineyard hostage to what is considered, in human terms, fair; the lord of the vineyard is no one’s debtor. As Jesus tells his audience,

But the house manager answered one of them and said, “Friend, I do no act wickedly toward you. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go; and I wish to give to the last as I also give to you. Is it not permitted for me to do what I wish with what belongs to me? Or is your eye evil because I, I am good? In this way, the last will be first and the first last (vv13-16).

Rather than going out to the marketplace to find workers to give him what he pays for, the lord of the vineyard has gone out to find all the vulnerable—whose bodies, lives, and livelihood are dependent on precarious work conditions[x] and capricious employers[xi]—with the goal not to extract labor from them but to provide for each of them, whether they earned it or not.[xii] The lord of the vineyard is foolish and uncalculating; according to Matthew’s Jesus, so, too, is God (especially in comparison to human standards and systems of evaluation).[xiii] Where the kingdom of humanity operates (barely) within the metric of a meritocracy, God’s reign does not; “God rules by grace, not by desert.”[xiv]

Conclusion

The story Jesus tells is a story about God and not about humans. It is a parable, and it’s meant to bring the hearer to a conclusion about the reign of God; it’s not (solely) an object lesson on how to run vineyards or how to manage employees. This is a text neither about capitalism nor socialism—no union boss is going to, rightly, settle for such behavior between employer and employee. We should not reduce the power of this parable by making it into an action plan; we, in the temporal world, must keep an eye to what is fair and what isn’t, where provision is needed and where reward is earned, where exploitation and negligence is happening. To keep the power of the parable is to allow it to bring us to its conclusion, to expose us and our preconceived ideas and assumptions about God and God’s reign, and to remind us that we have more in common with those whom we deem unworthy than we do with God, our creator, the master of our house. And this is the point: God’s ways are not our ways. We definitely need Christ.

Jesus’s parable is about God (full stop). It tells us something about God and how God delights to give beyond what any human can imagine, beyond all human defined fairness, beyond human merit, and beyond human captivity to envy[xv] and ideals of deserving; [xvi] God delights to give not according to what is deserved but what is needed.[xvii] God is good and just and gives to all beyond expectation;[xviii] none are more deserving of the reign of God than others.[xix] This insight into God and God’s reign reminds us who we are (creatures) and keeps us humble, refusing the tendency to make God and God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love based on merit. God’s ways are not our ways.[xx]

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[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] πολλοὶ δὲ ἔσονται πρῶτοι ἔσχατοι καὶ ἔσχατοι πρῶτοι.

[iii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 245. “Although Jesus accommodates Peter’s ambition with a vision of reward ‘at the renewal of all things,’ he finishes with a caution that ‘the first will be last and the last first’ and proceeds to tell the parable of the generous employer by way of illustration. It is yet another instance of shocking reversals.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is found only in Matthew.”

[v] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 747-748. “It thus stands as a comment on the discussion of rewards for discipleship in 19:27-29 and on the saying about the last and the first which concluded that discussion and which is repeated after the parable in v.16. It is therefore about the reversal of human expectation in the kingdom of heaven—which, in various ways, has been the dominating theme of the whole of ch. 19.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 750. Maybe the later laborers came to the marketplace later and missed early morning hiring (not lazy).[vi] “They are victims rather than culprits…” and maybe (especially considering the very last group) “least desirable workers, passed over by other employers; they are thus the ‘last’ in more than a purely temporal sense. Which makes it the more surprising when they are eventually rewarded as well as any.”

[vii] France, Matthew, 748. “Why then do we still feel that there is something wrong? Because we cannot detach ourselves from the ruling convention that rewards should be commensurate to the services rendered. When one man is ‘rewarded’ far in excess of what has been earned while another receives only the bare sum agreed, we detect unfair discrimination.”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “When it’s time to pay up he pays the last ones to arrive first, and beyond all reasonable expectation, he pays everyone a full day’s wage—even those who only worked one hour! When those employed form the early morning receive a day’s wage, they grumble….This equalizing is unacceptable. The latecomers do not deserve so much. Readers may sympathize with the grumbling of the all-day workers.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “However the characters in the parable are understood, this is a story of reversals and unexpected equalization. It presents a generosity that goes beyond calculation to grace. Hearers today may make theological connections. Our ‘calculating’ ways are brought up short by God’s incalculable grace.”

[x] France, Matthew, 749. “The day laborer did not have even the minimal security which the slave had in belonging to one master. There was no social welfare program on which an unemployed man could fall back, and no trade unions to protect a worker’s rights. An employer could literally ‘do what he chose with what belonged to him’ (v.15). In such a setting no work meant no food for the family.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “In this ‘forgotten corner of the economy’ workers are very vulnerable. The work is often difficult, strenuous, and dangerous. One if vie reports being injured while working and having no medical care. Their biggest day -to-day worry is getting paid. Employers give them bad checks to hire them at one rate yet pay less when the works is done to vanish when it’s time to pay up.”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “The grumblers seem to begrudge the full day’s wage generously given to everyone—even to those who had not worked a full day to ‘earn’ it.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 749. The vineyard owner, “…he was acting compassionately to alleviate the hardship of the unemployed. It is unlikely that he needed the extra workers, and his excessive payment of them speaks for itself. Commercially, the man is a fool. And God is as uncalculating as that.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 748. “The God who lavishly clothes the flowers and feeds the birds (6:26-29) delights to give his servant far more than they could ever deserve from him. It is that principle, rather than the disappointment of the whole-day laborers, which is the main focus of the parable, but their very natural disappointment and sense of unfairness helps readers to reexamine how far their reactions are still governed by human ideals of deserving rather than by the uncalculating generosity of the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdom in which the first are last and the last first there is no room for envious comparisons.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 751. “By contrast, the calculating comparison of rewards is a mark of the ‘bad eye’ which is a biblical image for stinginess and jealously…”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 748.

[xvii] France, Matthew, 750. “The principle appears to be of payment according to need rather than desert.”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 751. “The God who is generous far beyond what could be expected is also never less than just. But to think in terms of contractual obligations is to miss the point of the kingdom of heaven. God’s ‘goodness’…is fair. More generous than that.”

[xix] France, Matthew, 751. “The blessing of eternal life is the same for all. Some are not more saved than others.”

[xx] France, Matthew, 752. “No one has a right to preeminence or to a higher reward in the kingdom of heaven. In the gloriously subversive words of the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’ It is all by grace.”