Try to put a table cloth on the ground for a picnic — it’s not easy. On a calm, windless day it’s just a matter of shaking it out so it spreads and settles down slowly. But if there’s a little wind, even just a breeze, it becomes near impossible: the fabric billows, the corners fly — you want the cloth to behave in a domesticated, dinner-table-trained manner, but it wants to be a banner, a kite, or a sail.
A good parable is like that. You expect somebody would know how to lay it out on the ground, nicely and orderly, but it just won’t lie still. It’s full of surprises; every time you hear it, new possibilities of interpretation rise up to challenge what you heard before.
Imagine you take this little gem of a story about a vineyard owner to the business round table downtown. Entrepreneurs, executives, managers, economists — they hear how this peculiar workday unfolds from first light to pay time, and they wonder what kind of business man the landowner is and how much he’d have to charge for a bottle of wine, or how long it would be before he’d have to sell that vineyard.
Or take the story to the union hall, if you can find one, and watch folks there trying to remain calm while they explain to you why you can’t pay some workers for one hour what others make, for the same job, in an entire day.
Now imagine you take this story to the corner of the parking lot at Home Depot where day laborers gather, waiting for someone to hire them. They smile as they listen because they know how hard it is to make a full day’s wage with low-paying, part-time labor. They know how hard it is to watch truck after truck drive by — and very few trucks come around after eight, let alone after noon.
When Jesus first told this parable, many farmers in Galilee had lost their land, and they had to make a living as day laborers. Mid-size and large farms, many of them owned by absentee landlords, were usually operated with day labor rather than slaves; it was much cheaper, and there was an abundance of landless peasants. Farmworkers in Galilee were poor, underemployed, and heavily taxed by the Roman authorities.
One denarius, a small Roman coin, appears to have been the going rate for a day of field labor, but a denarius wasn’t much. You could buy a dozen small loaves of pita bread for a denarius. For a lamb you had to pay 3-4 denarii; for a simple set of clothes, 30 denarii.[1]
The landowner in the story is a peculiar fellow. For starters, he goes out himself early in the morning to hire laborers, which was the usual time, but was the manager’s job. Then he comes back at 9 to hire more, and you say to yourself, “Well, he probably realized that he needed more hands to get the work done.” When he comes back at noon, you wonder if he knows what he’s doing or if he is one of those rich city slickers who bought himself a vineyard and a winery. Then he comes back in the middle of the afternoon, when everybody is dreaming about quitting time, and he keeps hiring — and you are running out of explanations that would make sense of his behavior. Perhaps he’s been in the sun too long? But that’s not the end of it. The shadows are long and the light is bathing the marketplace scene in hues of gold, when he returns again and hires every last worker he can find.
In Jesus’ story, the day begins in the familiar world of the tough Galilean rural economy, but it ends in a world that looks and feels very different.
Imagine you got up before dawn to go to the corner where they pick up day laborers. You know that if you get hired, you can get some bread on the way home and your family will eat dinner. But you don’t get picked in the first round. So you go to the other side, hoping to have better luck over there, but you don’t. The younger ones are hired first. The stronger ones are hired first. You cross the road again, hoping for better luck on that side of the intersection, but it’s noon already. You decide to go to one of the big farms just outside of town to see if perhaps they could us an extra pair of hands to finish a field or a vineyard, but no luck there. So you go back to the marketplace, and just when you decide to call it a day and go home, this landowner shows up and asks you, “Why are you standing here idle all day?”
It’s a tough economy, and you already feel like a left-over person, no longer needed, unnoticed, forgotten—and did this man just call you idle? He doesn’t know how long you have been on your feet. He doesn’t know how hard you have tried to find work. He doesn’t know how hungry you are and how much you dread coming home tonight with empty hands.
“We’re here because no one has hired us,” you and the others tell him. “You also go into the vineyard,” the landowner replies.
And you go; you don’t even ask how much he’s paying. You go because … who knows. Just so you don’t feel completely useless? Or perhaps you hope that the boss, having noticed what a good worker you are, would ask you to come back tomorrow. You go and work in the vineyard.
Soon the manager calls everybody to line up, starting with those hired last, starting with you. You barely got your hands dirty. How much could it be for an hour’s work? It doesn’t really matter. You know it won’t be enough to put bread on the table. It would be another dinner of foraged field greens for you and the family tonight.
Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a full day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people behind you, “Look, guys — a full day’s wage!”
The news travels fast to the end of the line, where the ones hired first are waiting to be paid. Imagine you’re one of them. You’ve worked twelve long hours. You are dirty, sweaty, your clothes are sticking to your skin and your back is aching. Talk about eating your bread by the sweat of your brow! But you’ve heard the word from the front of the line and you’re looking forward to a little bonus, and your back is already starting to feel better.
Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people around you, and they are just as upset as you are. “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.” You have wiped out our expectations of justice and fairness; you have wiped out differences that really matter to us. You have made them equal to us.
This story comes with more than just a breeze; the air is charged in this one, a thunderstorm is brewing. You expect somebody would know how to smooth it out on the ground, nice and square, but it just won’t lie still. This story will continue to confuse and challenge us, depending on how and where we enter it. It holds the pain and the hope of those in every generation who are treated like left-over people— be it in the economy where landownership and labor are negotiated, or in the economy where status and belonging are determined, where some are considered worthy of the full reward and others are not. In Jesus’ story, which is a story about the world where God’s vision of life is known and lived, everyone receives full recognition of their dignity and need as fellow workers, and every last one receives the full reward. All those in the company of sinners and tax collectors who are not pious enough to be considered righteous and worthy — Jesus welcomes them as citizens of the kingdom.
But this little story also holds the anger and resentment of those who worry that too much mercy for others will only breed further lack of effort on their part — they are the ones in the company of the upright who cannot imagine themselves as recipients of gifts they didn’t earn, but whom Jesus welcomes with equal compassion as he welcomes notorious sinners.
Whether we respond to this unruly story with joy or grumbling depends entirely on where we see ourselves at the end of its work day: Have I been working since the break of dawn in the vineyard of the Lord, that is, have I been about the things that really matter to God for as long as I can remember, or am I only just beginning to get my hands in the dirt? I like to think that I’ve been working for a very long time, but what if my busyness with all kinds of projects was only idleness in the eyes of the owner of this vineyard? What if, at age 60, I have barely begun the kind of work that really matters to God? This story just won’t lie still and square on the ground; it wants to be a banner, a kite, a sail — something to catch the movement of God’s Spirit and get me ready to move with it.
The God who meets us in Jesus is one who comes and seeks us, as if this day were not complete until each of us has done at least a little work in the vineyard. God comes and finds us, sometimes early, sometimes late, and will not cease to pursue us until each of us has contributed to the making of the wine that is grown here. And at the end of the day, at the end of our labors, the last are first and the first are last, and all receive what God so generously gives: fullness of life.
[1] Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (EKK 1/3), 146.