By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D. '13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 24, 2023)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Oh God, our strength, our redeemer. Amen.
I should start by coming clean. I don't love this parable. It's for a few reasons. The first is just because when I listen through it, I find myself sort of on the side of the nine o'clock workers, but also because this parable has been interpreted in ways that have caused harm or also in ways that I just don't think make a lot of sense.
One of the traditional Christian interpretations of this parable is that the early workers are the people of Israel and the later workers, are Gentiles invited into God's covenant. And I think we, Christians, should be wary of any interpretations which find fault with the people of Israel. The tradition of Christian antisemitism is too long and too violent for us to rest too heavily upon those sorts of interpretations, especially when at the time this was spoken and written, there was no distinction between Christians and Jews. And so, to interpret it that way is to bring it into a tradition of violence, and exclusion. So I don't like that.
More recently, some scholars have turned away from the traditional interpretation of the landowner as God and posited other readings where maybe the landowner's the bad guy here. And I think they do this out of the same spirit with which I began this sermon, because we're sort of on the side of the nine o'clockers. But working in the vineyard and God as the vineyard owner or the landowner, this is a trope and a figure that recurs again and again in scripture. I think it's difficult to follow that interpretation very far.
And so, I don't love this parable, but I know it's important. I know we have to wrestle with it for a couple of reasons. First, because it begins with Jesus saying the kingdom of heaven is like this, this is what it's like. And if we are meant to build the kingdom of heaven, then we'd better pay attention. And the other reason is because when the landowner brings in the 12 o'clock workers and everybody from there on, he says to them, "Come work for me. I'll pay you what is right." And the Greek word translated as right there is díkaios which is the word for just. "I will pay you what is just." This passage is about the kingdom of heaven and it's also about what justice looks like in the kingdom of heaven.
And if we who are meant to build the kingdom of heaven here see around us a world of injustice, then this parable is suggesting that it models justice. It models God's justice for us. And so, we have to pay attention. If we're confused, maybe it's because God's justice doesn't look like ours.
So let me try to situate this teaching within the Gospel of Matthew. So, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, he's going to Jerusalem, and when he arrives at Jerusalem, he's going to meet his death. And what's just happened in the passage just before this teaching, a rich young man has come to him and he said, "Jesus, I follow all the laws. What must I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven?" And Jesus says, "Sell everything you own and give it to the poor, then follow me." And the man becomes sad and turns away. And then Jesus becomes sad. And then the disciples turn to Jesus and they say, "Look, Jesus, we've left everything and we're following you, so we're good, right? We will inherit the kingdom of heaven." And then Jesus says, "The kingdom of heaven is like this."
And then immediately after this parable, Jesus turns to these people, his disciples, and he says to them, "I am going to Jerusalem and I am going to die." And he tells them this. He reminds them of this. This is the third time he does so in the gospel. And after he's done speaking, the mother of two of his disciples, James and John, she comes to Jesus and says, "Jesus, when you come into your kingdom, please put my sons at your right and your left hand. I would like them to be cabinet secretaries in your new administration."
And this makes all the other disciples mad. They start arguing with each other about who deserves what and who will sit at Jesus's right hand and what role they will play in the kingdom. The whole conversation is about what they deserve, what's fair, what they are owed for what they have given. And it's in the midst of this that this parable that I'm not very fond of is told. What's fair? How do we determine what we deserve?
I tell you, I've done a little bit of training in Christian ethics and none of that training prepared me for parenthood and adjudicating fairness among three children. So, one of the breakfasts that my kids like that I make is a Dutch baby. It's like a big pancake. We have a big cast iron pan, and every once in a while I'll make a Dutch baby, and it's a giant thing which can easily feed three children. But it's hard to cut a big, round thing into six exact slices, exactly identical slices, and there is always fighting about who gets which slices.
And I had this brilliant idea, I'm a professor of Christian ethics, I should be able to figure this stuff out. I had a brilliant idea where you pick one slice and then everybody else gets to pick one, and then whoever went last gets to pick first. The first shall be last. And that doesn't help because it never works out equal. It's never all the same. And whoever gets the, on aggregate, two smallest pieces is lamenting at the injustice of this system. First and last, last first doesn't work with Dutch babies. And yet, this parable promises to give us a vision of justice.
––
––
Speaking of vision, there's this line in the reading that we had today where the landowner says to the workers, "Are you envious because I am generous?" That is a distinctly unpoetic translation of the original Greek. In Greek it says, "Is your eye evil because I am good? Is your eye evil because I am good?"
I spoke about vision. The landowner is telling them, "Something's wrong. You're not seeing things correctly. Something is wrong in your sight." So what does the landowner see? Or better, what does God see? What is the vision that they, that we do not have?
Let's look at these laborers. It says they're standing idle. That word idle connotes to us laziness. Standing around, idlers. That translation is actually a holdover from the King James version. The original Greek says that they were standing around not working, just not working. And we know why they're not working, because the landowner asked them. They say, "We want to work. No one has hired us." It's dangerous to moralize their lack of work in this parable because that's not why they're not working. They're not working because no one has given them work to do.
The passage also says that they agreed to the daily wage. The Greek says more specifically a denarius. And a denarius would feed a day laborer's family for about three or four days. These are day laborers. Then, as now, to be a day laborer is a precarious life.
By definition, it is unstable. You do not have a guaranteed income every day. What you make today feeds you and your family tomorrow. And if you do not make money today, you do not feed yourself and your family tomorrow.
These men want work. They can't find it. They want to feed themselves and their family. They can't. What do they deserve, to find meaningful work and to feed their families, or not? "Is your eye evil because I am good?" What does God see? Not idlers who have failed to do enough, but children for whom God longs to do more.
This is central. This is the persistent, pervasive message of the Christian gospel, that God's giving depends not on what we have done, but on God's eagerness to give. It's not about just deserts, it's just dignity. Our human dignity, the fact that we are created in the image of God and God loves us, that is sufficient reason for God to want to do for us.
As God argues to Jonah about the people of Nineveh, "Why wouldn't I want to save these, my children?" It's not about whether we have earned it. It's just about whether God has found us.
These men long to work, to feed their families. And their reward arrives not because of anything they have done or failed to do, to borrow a phrase from our liturgy, but just because a loving God has found them.
The last will be first and the first will be last. One of the problems with that, one of the reasons it doesn't make any sense to us is like with my children or like with the disciples who are arguing with Jesus about who gets what and what gets given to whom when. Is that if you just flip the order and say the first will be last and the last will be first, then everybody wants to be last.
One of the commentators I was reading when I prepared for this sermon reminded me that in the Book of Revelation we are told that in fact Jesus is the first and the last, the alpha and the omega. Jesus, the sign of love that comes in the life and ministry of this man is what upends all this ordering, what upends all this hierarchy. Jesus is the sign that God's love is not about tabulating merits or parceling rewards. None of us really get what we deserve, as Elizabeth prayed. All of us are broken, break ourselves and break others often when we least want to. None of us get what we deserve. Or better, or rather, God's vision of what we deserve is not about what we have done or about who we have been. God's vision of what we deserve is about what God created us to do and about who God made us to be. It's about what God sees in us, what God sees in you and me, and what God sees is a beloved child.
And if God sees that and God is who made us, then that is what we most truly are. And what doesn't a beloved child deserve? What grace, what love, what goodness doesn't a beloved child deserve? God sees us. The problem is too often we fail to see each other. God sees us better than we see ourselves and one another.
What would our healthcare system in this country look like if we cared for people just because they had a body, just because they were living rather than because they had a job, because of what they had done or the work that they could do? What would our immigration system look like in this country if we welcome people into our community, not based upon what skilled labor they could offer, but because of the need they presented and the dignity they deserve? What would our justice system look like if we treated wrongdoers not based upon who they have been or what they have done, but upon who they could become and what they could grow to do? If we cannot imagine all these alternatives, perhaps it is because our eyes are too evil for God's goodness.