Labor Unrest in the Vineyard based on Matthew 20: 1 - 15

"Labor Unrest in the Vineyard"
(a sermon based on Matthew 20: 1 - 15)
by
Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California  90815

September 5, 2010

    The story that Jesus tells (that we read a moment ago) is called: the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.  I believe a better title would be something like "the Unusual Hiring Policies of one Vineyard Owner" since most of the action revolves around his character...  It’s the owner’s decisions, hiring practices, & pattern of paying that constitutes the plot.

    In olden days, there were no labor unions... no contracts, binding arbitration, nor employee strikes. Remember five or six years ago when we in So. Calif. went three or four months without shopping at Ralphs, Vons, or Albertsons, because of the checkers’ strike?  In solidarity to those workers, we didn’t want to cross their picket lines. (For many of us, that’s when we discovered Smart & Final and Trader Joe’s as alternative grocery stores.) Those grocery workers settled for a better wage, but I’m sure they lost much income during the strike, and came away with reduced health insurance, and drastically reduced job security.  Earlier this year, some of us had to endure the BOEING worker’s strike.  (That action delayed John Wincehster’s retirement by a couple months.) 

In an economy like ours, with such high joblessness (over 9% nation-ally, 12% here locally!), any walk-out, strike, or work stoppage is risky business.  Employers seem to hold all the cards, in a day of down-sizing & benefits reduction.  Because today is Labor Day, I am tempted to focus on the vineyard workers plight, but the Parable (as Jesus tells it) looks at the owner.

    It is the owner (householder) who is seen going into town early one morning to hire a team to pick his grapes, and then he goes back and forth at least twice more, hiring more workers later in the day.  It is the owner who commands the steward to pay the workers in a certain order -- a reverse order (that is, the last ones first and the first ones last).  And it is he who is given the last word, justifying his behavior when questioned.

    The vineyard owner holds the central role in the plot, to be sure.  But the tension, the conflict (which is how "the plot thickens") involves the workers and the rewards they receive for having labored for this Master. 

    If we assume (as Jesus says at the outset) that the Kingdom of God is like the Vineyard Owner, it suggests to me that the workers are the disciples, followers of Jesus (which includes you and me, I suppose).  It seems that Jesus' first followers imagined that God's Realm -- that is, the blessings God bestows in this world… as well as the rewards of eternal life -- would be parceled out using the same standards to which they were accustomed in their society. Unevenly distributed based on merit, or seniority, or favoritism.

    I suspect some of us -- present day disciples -- are apt to think the same way as they...  That blessings are rewards, earned over time, and parceled out in greater and lesser amounts contingent upon how well you & I have worked for the Master.  It's natural to assume such when we are so accustomed to a competitive “free-market” economy, where we are told we must "strive" if we want to "succeed."  The early-bird gets the worm, you know.  Gotta make hay while the sun shines!  "Lazy Mary, will you get up…?"  Get up, get out, get on with it!  Opportunity knocks, but only once.  Gotta grab the brass ring!  “You reap what you sow.”  "It takes money to make money! "  It’s those who work harder, and smarter, that will get ahead.  (You’ve hear all that before!)

    Those early disciples (like many of us) simply assumed that God's gifts & blessings would be UNEVENLY bestowed, according to a strict system of DESERVING (or earning... merit).  Since that was the social norm in their economic system, they assumed it was God's order & design as well!  Some will get more… and some will get less…; you see it every day all around us. The idea that everyone gets the same thing (in equal measure) made no sense, when you considered how differently-abled people were – some of us are advantaged, many of us are disadvantaged.  We don’t expect to be equal.

    In that regard, as I said, not much has changed. 


Many of us still believe there is nothing unfair about an economic system that awards generous profits (even luxuries!) to some on the one hand, as well as bare subsistence wages and rudimentary raw necessities, to others on the other hand.  We see the goods and services of our own economy divided UNEVENLY according to our notions of "deserving."       If folks ain't got something, it's because they didn't earn it. 

    Much of the "welfare reform"  -- of the Clinton-era (nationally) and the Pete Wilson governorship (locally) -- was fueled by the idea that poor people are "undeserving."  The fact that 40% of America's poor are too young to hold a job legally, and another 10% of the American "unemployed" are over 65, leaves only about half of our population actually physically and legally able to work for our pay!  And of them (the half of our population that could be in the workforce at any given time), many are lives in transition: moving or divorced, a great number of jobless workers have been "down-sized" out...

    And there are significant numbers of disabled, health-challenged, or mentally ill folks who are simply unhireable by anyone.  The homeless men who will be served in these coming weeks by the St. Lukes Episcopal Church -- offering them free showers, and who will receive from our “Undie Sunday” drive, clean boxer-shorts, white socks, and underwear – are just a small slice of the 12% of unemployed families in Long Beach. 

And that’s in addition to people like Emma (& her 5 kids) who are becoming homeless because they have no money for rent, and who asked for food assistance from our Los Altos UCC this week; or Sandra (with her 6 kids) who’ve been receiving help since March; or Carol (& her daughter Annalisa) who we sheltered and fed from Mother’s Day through June, or J. Carter Williams (and Elaine Garlich) who we put up in a hotel for a night.  These newly needy families have simply joined the ranks of those more habitual homeless persons like Robert & Robin, who had been living on our church property, washing themselves with our hose, eating cookies & coffee from our AA groups, until they abused the privilege and had to be evicted.  That’s the every-week reality our church encounters in, what many would consider, a more affluent (or at least economically comfortable) part of town.

    And yet we continue to believe that economic success is measured when we have "full" employment. 

We endorse, without thinking, the uneven distribution of assets. Billie Holliday used to sing: "Them that's got, get more... Them that's not, shall lose... so the Bible says, but it still makes news." (Mama may have, and Papa may have; but God bless the child that’s got her own! ... got his own.)

    I'm tempted to stop at this point and ask you to consider other examples of uneven distribution of assets that we see… and yet blatantly  justify in our American economy -- such as...

    ...HMO & insurance company executives' multi-million dollar salary increases while the doctors they employ take a cut in pay, and the patients they serve are denied hospitalization (or delayed for so long the case worsens).  They are "saving money" (protecting their profits) instead of saving lives!     
    ...Or Fortune 500 CEO's making huge profits (drawing salaries and "bonuses" of tens of millions of dollars!) by closing their factories and selling off the land and assets, & shutting down customer services here (laying off their American workers) and contracting production from over-seas (and doing their banking offshore, to bypass American taxes)... 

I'm tempted to go into such relevant examples in detail, but I won’t because it would sound "too political" to some of you in an election year!  So let's return to our Bible story...

    Those early disciples not only assumed that the distribution of God's blessings would be UNEVEN, they also expected the rewards of heaven to come first and  foremost to THEM, as the ones who had followed Jesus the longest and who had sacrificed the most.  In fact (as the Zebedee brothers – James & John – proved in the very next story that follows this Parable!), they went so far as to dispute among themselves as to who among them was most deserving of special honors!  Clearly, they imagined heaven as a "merit" system!  (And they felt that they had put in the time -- time in grade, time in service -- they had seniority, you know!) They were deserving.
    Again, I am tempted to have us stop and think of how often we are just like that...  Quick to insist upon OUR merits relative to someone else's shortcomings.  Quick to claim our "just due" reward -- to claim our "rightful advantage" -- even though to do so may work to another's DISadvantage. 

    Our assumption that resources will be unevenly distributed (in fact, should be unevenly distributed) is bone deep in the American psyche.  For some to win; others will necessarily have to lose.  We take for granted that assets/blessings will be unequally distributed ’cause that’s the way things ARE!

    As much as I’d like to focus on that basic assumption of the market economy, I will not give in to that temptation.  First, because to enter into that dialog will take a lot of time; and second, it'll be perceived by some to be "political" (not spiritual enough for church).  Let me just say that it seems to me that we 21st Century disciples have not gotten much further than Peter and the Zebedee boys.  Their “common sense” assumptions are ours as well.  Even after 2,000 years of hearing Jesus’ stories, we have never felt forced to reconsider the standard economic norms that we presume are God’s ways.

    I believe the uncomfortable feelings that we middle-class American taxpayers (employers, retirees, & wage-earners alike) come away with when we hear this parable is because we imagine ourselves as among the vineyard workers -- specifically, we imagine ourselves among the first-chosen, hardest-working, all-day “pluggin' away” labor crew.  In so doing, we fall prey to their perspective and agree with their grumbling words: "After all I've done for you, you owe me!  I've done all this work for you, for so long & so well... & then you make THEM (lazy-bones late-comers) equal to ME!?"

        "Friend," says the owner to the faithful long-term workers,
"I am doing you no wrong.  Did you not agree with me for
a denarius?  (Have I not paid in full the reward you asked of
me?)  I am doing you no wrong.  I shall do you no wrong!"

    To those who are feeling "unfairly" treated (those who demand a better measure of "justice" for themselves, while resenting their neighbors' unexpected good fortune), the master points out he is scrupulously living up to their demands... to the letter of the law! 
Those who demand justice, get justice...  Where agreements were made, they were fulfilled! The covenant they struck at the outset, when they agreed to go work in the vineyard, is held viable and valid to the end. 

But the Vineyard Owner also points out to these disgruntled workers that he is free to do BETTER THAN strict justice... to do MORE THAN the minimum requirements of the Law. He can (if he so chooses) pay more than minimum wage! The owner has the right to be gracious and more generous.

    As I said to the youth, what our Bible calls “the usual daily wage” was a “denarius.”  The first-hired workers agreed to serve the vineyard owner for a fair wage -- a denarius a day was the norm.  The King James Version of the Bible translates it as "one penny" while the Living Bible calls it "twenty dollars."  (You can see how much inflation there has been since 1611!)  In fact, one denarius was what it cost to buy that day's evening meal.  Those are the economics involved in Our Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread."  It cost one denarius to buy a family’s supper.  It was a “living wage” but only at a subsistence-level.  Less than that meant someone went hungry.

        "Take, what belongs to you," the owner says to the workers,
who have received in full their agreed-upon wages, "and go.
I CHOOSE to give to these latter ones as I give to you.  (Am
I not free to be generous?  to do better than you?  to show mercy? 
to act with Grace that goes beyond the requirements of the Law?) 
Am I not allowed to do as I choose with what belongs to me?...
Or... do you begrudge my generosity!?"

    “If there is something "unjust" or wrong in what I have done,” suggests the Vineyard Owner in Jesus’ Parable, “it is only in how you are choosing to interpret my action in supporting these other workers.  I have bestowed upon these latecomers more than they could ever have expected... and yet you call my action "evil" instead of good! 

    I have brought more & more workers out into the vineyard to assist you throughout the day, and together we have accomplished much, and yet you complain!? 
While the town rejoices that  for once there has been full employment  (not 12% unemployed like Long Beach, not 9% out of work like the federal statistics, not even the natural unemployment that arises from lives in transition, seasonal adjustments, age, and part-time workers.  No: full employment!) -- for once, if only for today, no family has to go hungry to bed -- there you stand, out in the field, pouting, & refusing to join in the celebration!” (Doesn't this remind you of another hard-working older brother, who refused to join his father in welcoming his prodigal brother home?  Does one have to be a party-pooper in order to be considered responsible?)

    Since so many of us (almost automatically) see ourselves mirrored in the discomfort of these first-hired hard-workers, let's consider the case... to see if their resentment toward the other workers and toward the Master is justified.

    There was no surplus for most workers in Palestine; especially not for the unemployed worker. Not to be hired meant not to receive that day's denarius; no denarius meant no supper that night.  There were no unions or federal employment guidelines in Jesus' day, and landowners -- employers -- were not known to be generous. 

    At dawn, the workers, hopeful for a paying job, would make their labor  available for hire at the wage of one denarius.  Workers were not hired for a season; nor even for a week.  Payday was every day.  Jewish Law (Torah) specifically required payment to be made each day at sundown so that the poor (and these free-lance laborers were poor!) could buy their daily bread.

    Accustomed to that standard practice, Jesus begins his parable simply enough: "A householder went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard."  It happened every day.  No surprise there.  Nothing subver-sive yet...  "After agreeing with the workers for the usual day-wage, he sent them out into his vineyard."  Okay.  So what!?  They were hired.  Lucky for them!  This was a daily occurrence in Jesus’ world, especially at harvest time.

    But later in the day a "twist" enters Jesus' story...  The householder goes out and notices people standing about idle.  Apparently the economy, like ours, did not have enough jobs to keep everyone employed. 
Whether it was only 9% who were unemployed, or 12% like here in Long Beach, or like the Great Depression when joblessness reached 30%, in Jesus’ day there were not enough jobs to keep everyone employed.  Most peasants teetered between poverty and destitution.

    What had these “second string” people not been hired earlier in the day?  Perhaps these folks were handicapped, or they were women, or they were too young, or too old to work well.  But they still needed to work.   I asked the teenagers in a Confirmation Class once, who else they thought these not-hired left-overs might have been. 

"Wimpy people," they said.  "Minorities... Children... 
People with AIDS...  Sick people...  Fat people...
People we hate."  Think about it: who goes unhired in our day?

    The fact is, we don't know why these second-string grape-pickers had been passed over, but we know what the house-holder did.  He hired them.  He hired them anyway, even late in the day.  No contract negotiations.  It was simply: "You go into the vineyard, too. I'll pay you what's right." ("I'll treat you fairly. Trust me...")   

    This twist was unexpected... unheard of!  The Vineyard Owner is taking responsibility for people who didn't deserve it. People to whom he was not obligated!  He could have just ignored them, like we do the guys with the cardboard "will work for food" signs at our intersections.  This householder has done something very odd, and Jesus says it demonstrates something about God!  Then, perhaps to make the vineyard owner appear utterly extravagant, Jesus says the Owner hired workers as late as the eleventh hour -- just one hour before quitting time!

    That may have been all Jesus had to say, for the parable would have "gone off like a bomb" -- shaking the social norms, rocking the economic foundations of the traditional master/worker relationship.  No real employer was that concerned about the unemployed second-string!  No business deal had ever been built on simple "trust" -- “trust me to do what's right” kind of talk! "trust me"… Unbelievable.

    I would have liked to know what Jesus’ audience was thinking at this point in the story, but Matthew doesn’t tell us!  Instead, the story continues.  The paymaster (steward) calls the workers to receive their evening wages, and pays them all a full day's denarius. It’s very simple: if you showed up, you got blessed in the same measure as everyone else in line.  At that point, another bomb goes off -- and it's a bigger one than before! 

    The workers themsleves start to protest this one, for it challenges the implicit heirarchy among the Vineyard workers.  "These last ones worked for only one hour, and you have made them equal to us!" 

    "You have made them equal to us!"  God forbid!  "You have made them equal to us!"   What Jesus suggests in this story is radical egalitarian-ism, like the American rebels whose “Declaration of Independence” asserted to the King and the royals of Europe, and to the Lords & Ladies of London: “all men are created equal and have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights!”  The ideal of “equality” among people is radical!

    These first-hired workers (into whose number we presume ourselves to be) are not arguing for more money for themselves, but rather that THE OTHERS should receive LESS than a denarius. "It's not fair," they complain! The first-hired workers argue against the landowner's generosity, demanding (in the name of justice!) that the poor "last hired" laborers stay poor, settle for half-rations, and go hungry to bed!

    Do you notice how Jesus's story has "caught us" in a situation where the owner is proving merciful and generous toward the poor, while their coworkers (their peers!) resent them and argue for a mere pittance!?  In Jesus’ parable, the roles of normal society have been reversed! 

    Jesus has described a situation in which "fairness" (pure justice) would result in deprivation for the latter workers.  This is a subversive story, in the end, for it exposes the traditional economic social order as dehumanizing. 

    So, having heard his Parable, and running it alongside our own values, we realize that we have choices...  Shall we assume ourselves to be in the role of the workers -- the first-chosen, hard-working disciples, who hope (like Peter, and like James & John) to get what we "deserve"? 
Or shall we see the story through the eyes of the owner, who devises a way to bestow dignity & purpose on even the “left-outs” and “left-overs” of our society?  Instead of entrenching ourselves ever deeper in playing the part of the aggrieved, resentful,  first-hired, hard-working, most responsible worker, I think it would be more in keeping with Jesus' purpose in telling this story, if we would try to be more like the landowner – who is gracious and generous toward all persons, and especially toward those who are power- less within the prevailing system; the One who is looking to include, support, respect, & value, the "second string" – the last hired (usually the first fired).

    This parable shows how hard it is to strip off the layers of self-centered privilege, social customs, and human standards we presume to be universal (that is, we think “everyone is like that”) but that don't apply in the realm of God.  By definition, GRACE means an undeserved, unearned, good thing.  It's a gift... not a merit-system. God, as the owner, has the free right to be gracious and generous to anyone, no matter how heartless, self-centered, & resentful SOME of his workers prove to be in the face of God’s Grace.

    People who enjoy privilege within the implicit hierarchies of our so-called "fair" system, may resist those who advocate for the poor, who speak up for the voiceless; who stand with the alien in our midst, the immigrant worker with truncated civil rights, who fears the dominant society. 

People who enjoy privilege within our system, may resist those people who seek to address the needs of the invalid, the elderly, the children, the sick. (It's not by accident that such efforts are usually the domain of the "non-profits" in our day!  Nobody makes money standing in solidarity with the excluded and the poor.)  Our economic system does not reward the gracious among us, and the generous among us, and the compassionate among us, as well as it does the ruthless, the self-centered, and the miser. 

We still see Jesus’ example of the Vineyard Owner as odd behavior, and as bad business. (How many workers the next morning will decide to stay in bed longer, because they figure they might be hired late in the day and get the same pay, with a crazy Landlord like this guy!)  But that's the kind of God we serve.  That's who we are to emulate...   That's what we celebrate!  Now, if you can… if you would be like Jesus: let’s go & do likewise!         Amen.