The “Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” – a parable unique to Matthew – has always fired the imagination of interpreters.  John Chrysostom, the 4th century theologian and preacher, puts it this way: “What then is to be understood from these words?   From other parables also it is possible to see the same point.  The son who was righteous is shown to have suffered from this same fault when he saw his prodigal brother enjoying great honor, even more than himself…. In the kingdom of heaven there is no one who justifies himself or blames others in this way; perish the thought!”  Another way to summarize this parable is to say that it is most concerned with overturning society’s notions of just rewards, that we get what we deserve.  In other words, it highlights God’s extravagant generosity, a sovereign “graciousness that is not based on what is earned” (Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 195).

 

 In Jesus’ day, it was not uncommon for day laborers to stand at the city gates and marketplaces, looking for a day’s work and a day’s wage.  Then, as now, sometimes unscrupulous employers would hire a laborer for a day and then refuse to pay him until later – an unfair practice that that threatened to send the “working poor” into debt and starvation.  In today’s parable, though, the unexpected “problem” does not arise because the employer disregarded

the teachings of the Torah (see Lev. 19:13, Deut. 24:14-15); rather, the employer went above and beyond what the law required – paying some of his workers a day’s wage for less than a day’s work.  It is the degree of the employer’s gen- erosity and extravagance that strikes Jesus’ audience as scandalous.  

 

The parable, which is masterfully told, has been strategically placed in Matthew so that no one would miss its significance.  In chapter 19, the “rich young ruler” asks Jesus what he must do to have eternal life.  And Jesus responds with an answer that should make every middle-class Christian shudder.  Of course, the young man goes away grieving, “for he had many possessions.”  It seems as though the young man had labored all day like some of the workers in Jesus’ parable, keeping the commands of Torah while at the same time amassing possessions and wealth.  He had done nothing wrong.  And yet he still missed the point, that God’s generosity surpasses that which we can earn.  It is precisely because of God’s generosity that such a person can be free to give up his or her worldly possessions.  

 

This incident is followed by a conversation between Jesus and his disciples.  Peter tries to one-up the young man, and says to Jesus: “Look, we have left everything and followed you.  What then will we have?”  Peter’s rash assertion belies that he too has missed the point, for apparently God is not in the business of keeping score!  Jesus tells his disciples that in this kingdom, in this economics, “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  It is in this context that he then relates the story of the workers in the vineyard.

 

You would think that the disciples would have gotten the point, but amazingly right after this parable, the mother of the sons of Zebedee asks Jesus for her two sons to sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom.  It’s another example of the all-too-human desire to somehow earn the gifts we seek from God.  Jesus, of course, will have none of it.  

 

Signs of God’s abundant, radically-reorienting generosity are scattered like seeds throughout Matthew.  The Sermon on the Mount (5-7), the Parable of the Sower (13:3-9), the Parable of the Unforgiving Slave (18:23-35), today’s passage, and many others all show how the kingdom of heaven is characterized by a different economics than our earthly societies, in which the rich get richer and in which “God” only helps those who help themselves.  The kingdom of heaven is not a rat-race; rather, it is Sabbath abundance.  

 

BY CHRIS LIU BEERS, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE,

NC COUNCIL OF CHURCHES