In a parable about laborers in the vineyard, Jesus shows us that to see the Kingdom, we have to look differently.
showing us fairness is about equality
Proper 20A | Matthew 20:1-16
There are TV show that really try to make you squirm your seat. I don’t mean the gross ones or documentaries. I’m talking about sitcoms like The Office or Seinfeld. Shows in which you can see the problem a mile away, but they’re heading straight for it.
And sometimes they make me squirm so much I can’t rewatch them. They’re too cringey. I get up and leave the room because I can’t handle it.
Imagine being in that writers’ room pitching these ideas and all the funny people at the table are like how can we make this worse for him? Everyone’s trying to figure out how to make us cringe on a Thursday night at 9 pm.
The Secret of Cringe
One of the brilliant things about The Office was that Michael Scott was obviously a terrible manager. But by the end, you realize the subversive truth about the show was constantly revealing how good he actually was. Because you see how loyal, industrious, and capable his employees were. The cringe makes it possible to see past the obvious.
Jesus gives us a cringey parable designed to mess with us and cause us to see things in a new way. This parable aligns just as perfectly with our expectations as the original hearers. Jesus doesn’t need a writer’s room; he’s got us pegged two thousand years out.
Then, of course, he flips it. We were thinking about the kingdom and fairness and now we’re thinking the kingdom isn’t fair. We actually have someone in the parable bringing this up! And Jesus has the landowner confront the fairness issue and be like I’m not allowed to be generous?
And we’re squirming.
The reason this works on us is the same reason it works in these sitcoms. It gets us thinking in a predictable way. We’re going to read the situation and think fairness is based on merit or contribution alone.
We make the same assumption the laborers do; which is to think the terms aren’t as good if everyone gets the same. Giving more means you get more. But the landowner points out that was never part of the bargain. They agreed to “the usual day’s wage” which is actually a living wage.
This is a story of abundance.
So Jesus plays off of our convictions for fairness to show how far those convictions are from God’s vision of fairness. He wants us squirming so we realize that our sense of fairness is fundamentally unfair. Because our expectations for relative fairness which stratifies and distorts relationships is not fair.
There are a few pieces we should keep in mind. And for the first one, let’s jump to the Exodus reading.
Grumbling in the Desert.
This takes place shortly after the Exodus. The people are wandering around the desert looking for the land that God promised them. And they’re like We’re thirsty! And Moses goes to God and says that the people are grumbling. So God gives them water. Then they grumble that they’re hungry. So Moses goes to God, says the people are hungry, and God gives them food. Then the people grumble again and are now threatening Moses’s life because heaven forbid they ever be thirsty. So Moses goes to God and is like they’re bullying me, God! And God gives them more water.
We can sort of see where the people are coming from, because, you know, they got lured into the desert with promises of free land and now they think they’re going to starve to death.
But this also makes zero sense because God promised to take care of them. And they are assuming God isn’t. And threatening Moses over it.
So they’ve got some messed up expectations. But in the midst of this, God gives them food. Enough for everyone everyday. Not equal-sized or one-size-fits-all portions. Not a little bit divided into a thousand slices. Enough for everyone to eat their fill. Every. Single. Day. This is manna, bread. The daily bread is enough to fill them.
The Lord’s Prayer
Same thing. Give us today our daily bread.
This is not
Give me some bread every day because I’ve been good.
Or
Give me more bread because I’ve been better.
Or
Give bread to only the people who deserve it.
Everybody gets bread. Every day. Enough. To fill them up.
The Landowner is giving them their daily bread.
This is the picture of the kingdom Jesus is drawing. Enough for everyone so that everyone has enough.
And this gets us. Because that last question is devious:
“Or are you envious because I am generous?”
How often we claim the poor are envious of wealth! No, the poor are asking for our daily bread. Often the wealthy are envious of generosity. We’re often the ones asking for more from Jesus.
Consider the older brother in the Parable of the Lost Sons. The one who had his inheritance. Who had his father’s presence. He had all the wealth and influence any man could want. And yet 1) he felt like a slave and 2) he was jealous of his poor brother’s freedom, and 3) he was angry that his father was generous.
Standing Idle All Day
But I’ve saved the best part of this story for last. It’s right in the middle and easy to overlook.
“And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’”
It would be easy to think this is a critique of the workers. Like the landowner is complaining about their being lazy. Never mind that this seems to run entirely against the landowners actions at the end and with our own distorted expectations of fairness.
Now that we know that the landowner desires to be generous, we can see these moments in a new light. He keeps going into the town square, hiring all the laborers he finds and putting them to work. Then when he comes back, he finds more. All day long. People looking for work. And nobody else is providing it.
This isn’t about the laborers’ work ethic. Jesus is questioning the ethical character of all the employers who are allowing so many people to starve in this one community.
This is really why we squirm.
Jesus shares a vision of the kingdom that is fair by being equal, full of generosity to ensure that equality, and defies our expectations of wealth, power, and relative success.
And he tells this parable right after a young man comes to him looking to inherit eternal life by checking all the personal piety boxes. But of course, runs away when he’s told to give away his stuff and follow Jesus.
This is Jesus saying: Here’s what the Kin-dom is like. Generous and equal. And it runs counter to your expectations.
But to see that, we have to bust up those expectations. To see why they don’t serve God’s purpose for us. That’s what we need. So we can truly see what fairness looks like. Regardless of who we are and what we own. We’re invited to look at the Kin-dom all around us and see if everyone has their daily bread. And if not? We get to make it happen.