Tag: Parables

Broken and Ground, yet Raised

Introduction

Jesus’s parables, spoken to a targeted audience of an ancient society, are meant to interrupt those who are listening. The imagery intwined with the story line, the twists and bends, the upheavals and reversals, create a verbal encounter for the hearer. As mentioned before, the goal Jesus’s parables are to bring the hearer to a conclusion that they would not have come to on their own. The parable is an encounter with God in the event of faith; the one who is addressed by the parable (slowly) begins to realize that the reign of God and this man called Jesus are different. In uttering a parable, Jesus is bringing the kingdom of humanity into conflict and crisis as it collides (head on) with the reign of God; in loosening a parable into the world, Jesus is bringing those who hear—their common sense and ideologies—into conflict and crisis with himself (the word of God). In other words, if one really does have the ears to hear they will hear what Jesus is saying; in hearing, they will be forever altered and changed precisely because they have heard and, by the power of the Spirit, have understood. And we all know that once that happens there’s no going back; bc #iykyk.

The issue for us; we have history in the way. So, when we read the parables of Jesus either we have enough Sunday School to apply the right conclusion, or we have the events of Christ’s life past tense providing the right framework through which to come to the right conclusion. And, we have access to the times where Jesus speaks a parable and then, gazing upon his confused band of disciples, proceeds to explain; therein, for us, is lost the power of the parable to sit and linger, festering images and words creating an infection in our spirit of divine proportions, something only the great celestial Medic could heal by their Spirit. So, are the parable of Jesus the Christ lost on and for us, today?

No, I don’t think so. Like the first audience, there is plenty in the parables to challenge us, to bring us into a head-on collision with God in Jesus Christ and the reign of God in the world, to bring us to their conclusion even if we know how it makes sense and what happens. All we need to do is allow our curiosity a front seat as we listen and hear as if this story is being told to us (because it is). Rather than being lookers-on, let us be addressed…

Jamie reads the gospel

“‘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]

Matthew 21:33-46

In this portion of Matthew, Jesus is sharing parable upon parable to describe the reign of God and of heaven. Jesus must use parables because there is nothing on earth controlled by the kingdom of humanity that is like God’s reign. (God’s reign being interruptive and disruptive to the kingdom of humanity.) Thus, Jesus speaks in story and narrative to communicate the radical and otherworldliness of God’s reign.

Jesus begins, writes Matthew, telling the chief priests and the elders of the people (21:23) to listen to another parable (21:33a). This parable is the second of three parables meant to bring his audience to the conclusion that the chief priests and elders of the people refuse to come to when Jesus asks them, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (21:25a).

There was a person, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, and leased it to vinedressers; he then went abroad. Now, when the time of the fruit came near, he sent forth his slaves to the vinedressers to receive his fruit. And after the vinedressers received his slaves, they thrashed one, they killed one, and they stoned one (vv33b-35).

Jesus begins this second of three parables speaking telling of rebellious vinedressers against the land/vineyard owner. In a desperate event of violence, the vinedressers—the ones under contract to care for and harvest the fruit during the (familiar and common[ii]) absence of the vineyard owner—reject the slaves and the authority invested in them to retrieve the owner’s portion of the harvest. Considering the details of the story so far, we can assume that the vineyard owner is wealthy:[iii] 1. He builds and plants a vineyard, 2. It takes a few years to produce financially productive crops, 3. He can hire vinedressers to care for the land and crops for years before they can earn their portion of profit from the fruit, and 4. He can live abroad without needing a harvest to satisfy his economic needs.

Something must be up when the landowner never receives his slaves (and the harvest). So, he sends another but bigger group of slaves, and, according to Matthew’s Jesus, the vinedressers did to them in like manner (v36). Again, this group does not return; no slaves and no harvest. Curious. Now, the landowner decides to take serious measures[iv] to secure his portion of the harvest from the vinedressers. Jesus tells the crowd of religious leaders,[v]

Now, finally, he sent to them his son saying, “They will give respect to my son.” But after seeing the son, the vinedressers said to themselves, “This one is the heir, come! Let us kill him! Let us have his inheritance!” And after receiving him they threw him outside the vineyard and killed him (vv37-39).

The vinedressers have gone too far; the son is the representative according to law who can literally stand in for the father, the landowner. In an impulsive moment,[vi] the vinedressers decide to take matters into their own hand to seize the land from the landowner via insurrection;[vii] they decide to take over ownership of the vineyard and take the son’s inheritance as their own by killing the son. The owner of the vineyard will have to respond penally.[viii]

And like a spot light, this dark narrative is directed at the religious leaders of Israel, the ones who were covenanted to care for the people and the land for God and for the wellbeing of all the nations.[ix] The fruit of being a blessing to the nations and the work of righting wrongs has gone ignored by Israel’s religious leaders; Israel, the vineyard, has been hijacked by those who have decided to seize the blessings for themselves and redefine who gets the inheritance.[x] Jesus is pointedly telling them what they are going to do to him. But this targeted and dark address doesn’t stop here. Jesus goes on,

Then, whenever the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers? (v40).

We can imagine a pregnant pause, a contemplative silence, an oppressive quiet as those whom Jesus addressed consider their answer…carefully. Maybe after a moment of looking askance at each other they quietly discussed their answer and came to an agreed upon response,

They say to him, “He will utterly destroy those wretched, and he will lease the vineyard to other vinedressers, ones who will return to him the produce in the season of the fruit” (v41).

Let’s imagine another moment of pause, silence, and quiet as Jesus lets their answer sit in for a minute before going on with his comments. They have just pronounced their own verdict and sentence. Then Jesus intensifies it all and makes it crystal,

Have you never read in the scriptures, “The stone the ones who build rejected, this one has become the corner of the head; this has happened from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes”? Therefore, I say to you that the reign of God will be lifted up from you, and it will be given to a people producing its fruit. And the one who falls upon this stone will be broken to pieces; upon whom it might fall it will grind him to dust (vv42-44).

The chief priests and the elders have the moral of the story spelled out for them. If they didn’t get it before, they get it now and are ticked (v45): they are the ones who are the vinedressers and they are the ones who will kill the Son and be the ones who forfeit the reign of God.[xi] But Jesus’s Psalm quotation lets the audience know that there is vindication for the son in death just as there is vindication for the stone rejected by the builders:[xii] God wins over human sin, life wins over death.[xiii] God is coming, says Jesus, to take the vineyard (Israel[xiv]) away from the chief priests and elders and give it to another people,[xv] an entirely new entity (not the church but a people a varied people group lead by Christ) who will be grounded in God, do what God desires, and who will participate in the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation.[xvi]

Conclusion

We are left with a divine gift of self-reflection and awareness. While we know (and have known) this parable is about Jesus telling the chief priests and the elders of Israel what is going to happen, we have a moment to be self-aware in this space and currently and reflect. How much are we like the murderous vinedressers, rejecting the will and desires of the vineyard owner? It might be tempting to see how we, like Israel, are held captive by both the rulers and ideologies of the kingdom of humanity, forced into awkward and compromising positions of complicity. This is true, in part. It is also true that sometimes we blatantly and intentionally act in ways aligning us more with the wretched vinedressers. So, we, honestly and humbly, must ask that question and look long and hard in the mirror.

The good news is that Jesus is born, lived, died, raised, and ascended to the right hand of God. And, like the woman at the well, when we are thusly exposed as the vinedressers, we are received and not rejected. This is Jesus’s promise at the very end of this parable (as bad as those words sounded in our ears). Our exposure in the divine light of truth is a falling on and under the cornerstone (Jesus), and we are both broken to pieces and ground to dust in that exposure and encounter. Ye, because of Easter morning, we know that light triumphs over darkness, liberation collapses captivity, God’s grace and mercy over human sin, and life wins over death. We do not stay broken and ground, but rise in new life now and in the future because Jesus Christ is both risen today and tomorrow.

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

[ii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 808-809. “The story of an absentee landowner reflets a familiar economic situation at the time; some of the chief priests and elders to whom Jesus is speaking would probably have owned land away from Jerusalem.”

[iii] France, Matthew, 809. “The landowner must be a wealthy man in that a newly planted vineyard could not be expected to produce fruit for at least four years, during which he would have no return on his capital outlay. Once the vines began to produce fruit, there would be an agreed proportion of the crop due to the owner, leaving the tenants to derive their living from the rest.”

[iv] France, Matthew, 813. “Within the framework of the story the sending of the son is clearly a last resort, short of the owner returning himself (as he will eventually do in v. 40).”

[v] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 255. “Jesus’ ‘target’ is the religious leaders, not Isael as such. It is unlikely that Matthew of his (predominantly Jewish) community would have promoted this idea, setting Jew against Gentile in their shared community of faith.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 813. “As a bid for independence and an attempt to gain possession for themselves it was hardly likely to succeed in a society under the rule of law, and it reads more like a spontaneous and ill-conceived impulse than like a calculated policy.”

[vii] France, Matthew, 813. “When the son goes as this father’s messenger, he goes with all his father’s authority, and so deserves ‘respect’ and obedience. To reject the son’s demand is therefore the climax of rebellion. But to kill him is to add injury to insult.”

[viii] France, Matthew, 814. “To kill the son is an act of defiance to the father, and he cannot be expected to let them get away with it.”

[ix] France, Matthew, 809. “The fault of the tenants in withholding the due produce (and in the violence perpetrated on the slaves) is massively compounded by their decision to murder the owner’s son and so to attempt to take over the property. At this point the story has moved away from everyday reality…and…apparently invaded the story line: the murder of the son represents the forthcoming execution of Jesus.”

[x] France, Matthew, 812. v.33 “Israel’s Failure to produce the fruit God required in Isaiah’s day is now being repeated, but on a more disastrous level, as the parable will go on to explain.”

[xi] France, Matthew, 817. “Israel, they have assumed, is where God rules, but they have rejected his will and so will find themselves outside his domain, while he will rule over a reconstituted ‘Israel’ which acknowledges his sovereignty.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 811. “In that case the psalm quotation adds an element which is missing from the story: if the same stone which is rejected will become the cornerstone, then the son who is rejected may also be expected to be vindicated and to replace the present leadership.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 811. “There is thus inherent in this parable with its appended psalm quotation a bold Christology of rejection and vindication, of death and resurrection, and it is focused in the parable character of the owner’s son.”

[xiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 255. “There is much more reason to believe Matthew is associating Israel with the vineyard itself…It is a change in the leaders that is needed; replacing the unfaithful with faithful leaders. The landowner in the parable seeks more obedient sons and better tenant for the care of his beloved vineyard. He does not go seeking a new vineyard.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 808. “This last is the most significant of his adaptions: the mention of another ‘nation’ to replace ‘you’ in the tenancy of the vineyard takes us to the heart of the issue of the true Israel which underlies this whole section of the gospel, and in conjunction with the other two parables in the group it enables the reader to reach a more far-reaching understanding of what the vineyard parable implies than is possible from Mark and Luke when they record it alone.”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 811. “The addition of this quotation thus points us beyond the death of Jesus to his resurrection, which is the amazing thing which the Lord will do. In that case the new ‘nation’ of v. 43 may be understood as the people who follow the risen Jesu, just as the ‘something greater than the temple” in 12:6 appears to point beyond Jesus himself to a whole new regime focused in him.”

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God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

“‘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]

[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.”

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The Parable as the World Right-Side-Out: Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16

“‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’“ (Mt 20:12)

Do you know what this verse is the equivalent of in our vernacular?

“It’s not fair!” “Hey! That’s not fair!” These workers essentially whined and complained in an ancient language (now very dead) that is equivalent to my 3-year-old’s tantrum about nothing (absolutely nothing!) being “fair!” As a parent of three kids, I know all about the deep-seated human desire for fairness. Any parent here knows exactly what I’m talking about on a very visceral level. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the cry, “It’s not fair!!”, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be on a beach…that I owned. I’d be a wealthy, wealthy woman.

In the world of children, everything must be fair. But according to whom? “To me.” Each of my children is the arbiter of their own fairness. If they themselves are lacking, things aren’t fair. If Jack had the toy that Quinn wanted, and I took that toy from Jack and gave it to Quinn, you’d not here Quinn clamoring that things aren’t fair. He’d be just fine and content because he has what he wants and deemed to be rightfully his. The cry that things aren’t fair bursts forth from self-oriented hearts.

Good thing this is something we all outgrow, right?

If that were true, we’d not have this very passage in the gospel of Matthew (20:1-16). If the demand for retributive fairness weren’t a deep-seated human problem, this parable wouldn’t exist. But God knows humanity better than humanity knows its self. Even as mature, rational, intellectual adults we want what’s fair for us; we want to keep what we’ve rightly earned. We want what’s ours. And everything about that natural human disposition should be disturbed and rattled to the very core by this parable.

So let’s take a few minutes to look at it.

“‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.” (Mt 20:1-4)

Any time Jesus begins a story with, “The kingdom of heaven is like….” Sit down. Sit down because everything you know to be true is about to be radically and completely altered. Everything you hold in your heart and mind as true is about to be turned on its head. Following these introductory words by Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like, you can guarantee that whatever you knew to be true, that everything that you think should be, isn’t. In Matthew, when Jesus utters these words, everything is about to get real; and that realness isn’t what you, the hearer, are expecting or wanting.

In the utterance, is an intentional confrontation. The utterance, the parable itself (which it is), is an intentional confrontation with you because it’s a “speech event.” And as an event, it does not happen in a vacuum, but occurs in time and space and incorporates people. And unlike the event of a command that demands an answer, the parable is plea.[1]

A plea, in the form of this parable, is released into the air by the one who spoke the world into existence, the one who is the incarnated Word of God. The plea goes forth creating exactly what it intends to create: hearers seized by the word itself and brought to its right conclusion, those who have heard and have now believed, and those who have responded; the faithful.

In the parable as plea, as speech event, God’s word, Jesus’s word, renders to dust that which belongs to the dust—the things we’ve made, the things we hold true, the things we believe apart from an external reorienting event. And in the midst of the dust, the word recreates from nothing that which is pleasing to it: a new creation, a new people, a new way to life. The parable, and including this parable that we’re looking at, is the penetrative word that pierces our existence and our timeline (parting space and time) and brings forth by lexical labor and delivery the kingdom of God that it is speaking of.

The parable isn’t merely a story about a better place and a better time; it is that better place and time now. And we, who have ears to hear, are the recreated participants in this new place and new time, that better place and that better time.

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt 20:8-16).

As we go about our life thinking that we are living a life and living in a world that is right-side-out, the word event, the parable spoken by Jesus, grabs our lives and our life and our world and exposes it as actually wrong-side-out. In this parable, in this Word event there is an exposure; the parable exposes. And not only does it expose, but it alters, changes, and corrects; it is in the word event, in the parable, that the world is now right-side-out, now we are right-side-out.

And what’s this parable in Matthew 20 exposing and righting? Inequality. In the kingdom of God there is no hierarchy of persons. There is no claim on our own to our rights, to what’s ours. Just as we do not incur any punishments for our misdeeds and we are all equalized, so, too, in the reception of grace without merit or the promise of reward. According to Jesus, no person is better than another no matter what the earning potential.[2]

This parable offends us and utterly and completely reduces us to dust—we cannot comprehend it. The Judge, whom we encounter in this parable and whom is Jesus Christ[3] the vineyard owner, exposes our retributive default and posture toward fairness and “according to me” equality. When we come up against the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, we have no recourse to our rewards and merits. The Word of God levels us all. We bring nothing to the table. “We are [all],” to quote Martin Luther, “beggars.”

There is no boasting, no room for any boasting of our ourselves in Christ, in the realm of the vertical. And if there’s no room there for boasting in the vertical, then there’s no room for boasting in the kingdom of God, in the horizontal. As we are freed from the tiresome toil of earning, of seeking our merit and reward with God, we gain freedom from the same tiresome toil of earning and seeking our own merit and reward in our actual lives. While he’s writing about Genesis 11, I believe what Helmut Gollwitzer says is very applicable here,

“…we cannot by our own power break our fetters, cannot get rid of our intoxication…we need another great help. The Creator, who made the good beginning, must make a new beginning. He must come with new gifts, in order that the old gifts of our abilities and our work do not continue to be a curse to us. A new spirit must set us free from the errors of our old spirit. The whole Bible is a cry for help of this new Spirit from the creator, and the whole Bible is at the same time the euangelion, the glad news, that God does not only…confront the evil will of [humanity] with his judgment, but that he has opened his heart to us, and made possible a new way of good life, of fellowship, of avoidance of destruction. Into this new way he desires to lead us all by his Spirit.”[4]

The Word of God doesn’t just convict us; it creates (recreates) us. In Christ, by faith alone we are recreated by the Word of God, by the ever-recreating Word of God. Even now, by the word of God, I am brought to death, into the death and judgment of Adam and am brought to life in Christ (1 Cor 15:22). I can, with St. Paul, say, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil 1:21). In this dying that is gain, and living that is Christ, I no longer have to be out to get mine; and, even more than that, I can be about the business of making sure you get what you need. I am now very much able to see to the needs of my brothers and sisters over getting what I’m owed. I am now very much moved not only to merely accept that the last will be first and the first will be last, but I, being of the first group, can actively promote the wellbeing and meet the needs of those fellow humans who are in last group. I am now given a new way to see fairness: not as what is fair to me but to you. I can (and must!) use my language (and my actions) in a new way, to advocate for you, to cry out on your behalf, “This isn’t fair!”

To close I want to creatively quote from the 2nd letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Philippians,

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:16-18)…Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel (Phil 1:27)”

We have been recreated and ushered into the divine kingdom by the creative and apocalyptic word spoken by The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Let us and care for and love each other as we have been cared for and loved by God.

 

[1] Eberhard Jüngel. “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. “A plea makes a command without force. Unlike a command, it gives time. It accords freedom which the one to whom a plea has not been made never has. It leads to the differentiation of actuality by possibility. And so pleading ought to be the constitutive element of proclamation….In a plea, God’s love finds its most appropriate expression; and this love reconciles the world to God having made possible the possible and impossible the impossible, by reducing the latter to nothing and by creating the former anew from nothing.” 120.

[2] Rudolf Bultmann “Theology of the New Testament” vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner, 1951. “[Humanity] must become like a child, who, knowing no such thing as appeal to any rights or merits of his own, is willing simply to be given a gift (Mk. 10:15). (…) Jesus rejects all this counting up of merit and reward: The worker who went to work in the last hour of the day is rewarded just as much as the one who had worked all day long (Mt. 20:1-15). And Jesus also refuses to regard the misfortune that befalls individuals as punishment for the special sins, no man is better than another.” 14.

[3] Karl Barth CD III.1.40. p.37 “This is the right of the Creator with which we have to do when we encounter Jesus. It is by His right as Creator that according to the dominant conception of the New Testament God comes to be the Judge of men. He does not have to become or to make Himself the judge. He is it from the very outset. He is it as God the Creator, who as such can claim that the creature should be responsible to Him; who has the authority to decide whether it justifies its existence, i.e., whether it satisfies the right of the One to whom it owes its existence.”

[4] Helmut Gollwitzer “The Way to Life” p. 4 . He is speaking about Gen 11, but I believe the point holds here.

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