Matthew 20:1-18
1 "For the kingdom of heaven
is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his
vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent
them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others
standing idle in the marketplace; 4 and he said to them, "You also go into
the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. 5 When he
went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6 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?' 7 They said to him,
"Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, "You also go into the
vineyard.' 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager,
"Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and
then going to the first.' 9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of
them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought
they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.
11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying,
"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.' 13 But he replied to
one of them, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me
for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give
to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose
with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' 16 So the
last will be first, and the first will be last."
I am no longer surprised when I
catch a glimpse of the gospel in an unexpected place, in an unexpected medium, in
the words of an unexpected prophet. One instance that comes to mind this
morning happened a little over three years ago, in June of 2011. The unexpected
prophet was a balding, red-haired, standup comic named Louis C.K. Now, I have
to tell you, I’ve always thought of comics like Chris Rock and George Carlin as
sort of “accidental prophets,” and Louis C.K. is right up there with them. He’s
extremely bright, calling the culture he sees out on its shallowness and
ridiculousness, but his comedy is a little too “blue” at times, so I can’t say
I’d recommend that you run home and look for his standup shows on YouTube (that
is to say, his comedy isn’t “family friendly”).
In June of 2011, however, the second
season premiere of Louis C.K.’s self-titled comedy Louie aired on the FX network. I’ve actually never seen an entire
episode of this show, but I remember seeing all kinds of posts about one
specific scene in this particular episode on social media, so I decided to
check it out. What I saw was a glimpse of gospel truth.
The scene involves Louie preparing a
meal in the kitchen (he’s a single dad raising two daughters in New York City).
While he’s over the stove cooking in the small, galley kitchen, his youngest
daughter is standing there with him and asks if she can have a mango
pop(sicle). He had given his oldest daughter one as a reward for finishing her
homework, so his youngest daughter naturally thought she should get one too.
Louie tells her there was only one, and you can probably guess what happened
next. His youngest daughter begins a repetitious protest of “that’s not fair,”
but her dad tries to explain to her that life isn’t fair and maybe next time
she’ll be the lucky one who gets the last of something. Her protest continues
on, until Louie gets down on his knees, down on her level, and he tries to
focus her attention on the words he’s trying to tell her: “The only time you
look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough. You don’t look
in their bowl to see if you have as much as them.” The depth of that statement
is lost on the little girl as she asks if she could just have a chocolate. The
truth is though I think the depth of that statement is lost on a lot of us as
well. It’s a truth that resonates in the parable of Jesus we’ve heard from
Matthew’s gospel this morning.
I have to say, at first reading,
this is a difficult parable to hear, especially if we bring it into the light
of our own context. God’s kingdom is like a contractor who went to the Lowe’s
parking lot early one morning to hire out some day laborers and after telling
them what he’ll pay, they jumped in the back of the truck and off to the
worksite they went. A couple of hours later, on another run to the hardware
store, he sees some more workers standing around, waiting to be hired, so he
tells them to hop in and he’ll pay them what’s right. The same thing happened
on his lunch break and on a mid-afternoon run to pick up some more supplies.
Then, right before quitting time, he went back and still saw a few workers
standing there, looking desperate. He asked them, “Why have y’all been standing
there with your teeth in your mouth all day?” “Because no one has hired us yet
even though we’ve been looking all day,” they replied. He tells them to climb
on in and they go to work for him the rest of the day. When it was time to
punch out (and since they were all day laborers, likely without any papers)
they all lined up to get their pay for their day’s work. The contractor told
his supervisor to start doling out the pay with the last ones hired and go
through the first ones hired early that morning. They all got paid the same
thing, so, as you can imagine, the ones who had been working since the early
morning hours complained that they got paid the same as those who didn’t even
work long enough to break a sweat. “That’s not fair!” they protested. They did,
however, get paid exactly what was agreed upon—one day’s wages, no more, no
less—and the others got paid what the contractor thought was right. After all,
he was the “job creator,” the one with the money.
That just doesn’t sit well with us,
the thought of paying someone who worked less the same as someone who worked
more (or was at least on the clock longer). It doesn’t jive with our
twenty-first century, American, Protestant-work-ethic-driven, sensibilities. It’s
not fair! What’s worse is that the last thing Jesus says in this parable is so
often repeated out of context that its actual meaning is lost on us: “So
the last will be first, and the first will be last." We jokingly
use this sentence when we’re getting in line a covered dish lunch (“Oh, I’ll go
to the end of the line, because you know, ‘the last will be first, and the
first will be last’”), or we use it as a sort of dismissive statement when our
team hasn’t won a game all season (“Well we might be in last place, but you
know ‘the last will be first, and the first will be last’”).
I believe this last sentence is a
sort of lens through which to view this parable, but it’s a lens that’s a bit
difficult to focus because it’s smeared with the fingerprints of other, easy
interpretations. For example, it’s a bit easy to read that last sentence and
exhale a sigh of relief if we simply understand that this is a parable about
heaven, and the whole “last-shall-be-first/first-shall-be-last” thing is
actually about salvation. It frees us from the inherent difficulties and
discomforts of Jesus’ parable if we simply believe that what we’ve heard is a
metaphor for heaven and the “reward” that awaits all the “laborers” when they
get there. One way to look at it would be to say that it doesn’t matter if
you’ve been a Christian since you were seven or seventy-seven, every Christian
gets the same thing in the kingdom of heaven: no one gets a bigger mansion than
anyone else, no one gets to live closer to Jesus than anyone else, no one gets
first dibs when it comes to the best seat at the great heavenly banquet. One
way to understand this parable through the “last-is-first/first-is-last” lens
is to see it as a parable about heaven and how everybody is going to get the same
thing when they get there, everyone will be equal in their heavenly
possessions. That’s an easy way to look at it.
But to look at this parable as
simply an allegory about heaven, about “there and then” and not about “here and
now” ignores the reality of the parable, the reality of the present Kingdom of
God. It ignores what the gospel has to say about God and God’s relationship to
us in the present. Perhaps the more rebellious among us might hear Jesus’ words
about the last being first and the first being last as a clarion call to upset
the status quo, a call to stand up against injustice, a call for the 99% to
topple the 1% in order to make sure there’s enough for everyone to share in the
abundance of God’s creation, a call to make sure the laborers are all paid a
living wage and there’s plenty of work to go around. On the other hand, the
more cautious among us might take Jesus’ words as a warning not to think too
highly of ourselves, a cautionary parable about our relative worth in the
global market of existence. As for me, well, I prefer to wrestle with the words
of the text as they are: “the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
When I hear those words, when I read this parable through the lens of those
words, the one thing that continues to come back to the front of my mind are
the same words spoken by a little girl who doesn’t get the same thing her
sister got: “It’s not fair.”
Friends, the world in which live is
filled with unfairness; it often seems as if it’s the fuel that makes this
planet rotate on its axis and propel around the sun. A loving, able couple in
the doctor’s office hears the news that they are unable to have children of
their own, while in the clinic across town a couple gets the news they’ll have
another baby—another mouth they can’t feed, another “dependent,” another child
they don’t want, another “problem” to which they seem ignorant of a
solution. A high school senior works
hard to get good grades, spends all of her free time in community service, and
works at night to help with expenses at home, but she didn’t get the
scholarship for which she worked so hard because someone who was a friend of a
friend of a member of the board made sure his son got it. A hard working
employee is denied a promotion because the boss did a favor for someone else
and that person got the job. Millions of people go hungry while millions of
others waste more than they could ever eat…
Too many times it seems the world marches to the tune of “it’s not fair.”
But I want to tell you something that might shock you, might throw you off just
a bit. You see, it doesn’t take much for us to observe the world around us and
declare loudly “it’s not fair!” But I think that this parable from Jesus also
tells us that the Kingdom of God…well…it isn’t fair either! Because, if we get
past the notion that this is a parable about heaven, past the notion that it’s
about everybody getting the same, heavenly possessions on the other side of
eternity, if we get past that, what we realize is that the gospel is inherently
unfair—and thank God it is! That I should be included in that great cloud of
witnesses with the likes of Peter, Mary, Paul, Moses, Ruth, Francis of Assisi,
Clarence Jordan, Teresa of Calcutta, Thomas Merton, and the countless saints
whose lowest depths of piety far exceed my greatest heights, that is not fair!
That the same God who created the universe and everything in it, the same God
who dwelt in fire, smoke, and mystery became like us in every way that we might
know that God in a deeply intimate way—that’s not fair! That the same God who
holds the power to breathe life into dust, breathed his last on a cross so that
the world may know that in Christ the love of God is made real—that’s not fair!
While we could count all the ways in which the love of God in Christ is
not fair, while we could count all the ways we do not deserve such grace, such
love, and yet God freely gives it to us, it is just as real, just as crucial to
understand that God calls us to share that unfair love with the world! That the
unfairness of the gospel is one that does in fact call Christ’s Church to stand
up to injustice, it is a call to set the balances of this world right, to be
sure there is enough for everyone, for we cannot tell a hungry, dying world
that God loves them while hoarding the wealth, food, and health for ourselves.
This parable of unfair pay is not a parable about the unfair work of
those who work longer but don’t get as much. It isn’t a parable about the
unfair distribution of wealth. It is a parable about the unfair love of God!
May you come to know that unfair love today. May you hear the call of God to
share that unfair love with the world, a love that seeks to put things on earth
as it is in heaven, a love that seeks to make sure that all of God’s people are
loved and looked after. May you experience that unfair love, hear that call to
share it, and never be the same. Amen.
