Are you envious because I’m generous?

 

I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?

So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Matthew 20: 14-16

Jesus shares a parable in Matthew’s gospel about a landowner who hires laborers at dawn to work in his vineyard. He then hires more workers during the day, including some at five o’clock in the afternoon who only work an hour before sundown. His manager then pays all of the workers the same wage, beginning with the last hired and ending with those who labored all day in the hot sun. As one might imagine, those who were hired first feel cheated. They complain that those who worked less were ‘made equal’ to them.

Here’s something for us to ponder. Why do we almost reflexively identify with the workers who worked all day and who now feel that the system has screwed them over? What is it about our own life experiences that we don’t see ourselves as the ones who only worked an hour, yet still got paid a full day’s wage?

Perhaps the only way for us to fully grasp what God’s kingdom is like is to step away from our own privilege, and approach the gospel story as migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, and the homeless hear it; in other words, those who are marginalized by the economic, political, and religious systems we create. For those who don’t know where their next meal will come from or where they will lay their head tonight, this story is read as liberating, empowering, and centered in justice.

This approach offers the clearest lens to see this parable through because it connects with the cultural and economic conditions Jesus frames it in. Many folks living in Galilee in Jesus’ day were day laborers because the land was largely owned by absentee landlords. Their economic reality was characterized by scarcity, poverty, and a sense that one could never claw one’s way to a better life. If we aren’t willing to explore this parable through the experience of those day laborers that are picked last, we can’t possibly grasp what Jesus is proclaiming about the nature of God’s kingdom.

‘Are you envious because I’m generous?’ That’s a tough question to answer because even as we’re answering it we can hear our own words betray us. For most of us, the answer is ‘You’re darn right I’m envious!’ Our answer defaults to the response of those guys who’ve been working in the field all day. We do this because we know how this world works. Time is money, we say, and fair is fair. Working one hour and getting paid the same as someone who’s done the same work all day just isn’t good economics. Those who take the biggest risks and who work the hardest and the longest and the most efficiently deserve to reap the greatest reward. It’s only fair.

I hesitate to be the one to burst the bubble here, but God is not fair, at least not in the way we’ve been taught to think about fairness. It turns out that God doesn’t proclaim that the best place to be is at the front of the line. God isn’t interested, as we are, in showing favor to those who’ve accumulated affluence and security. God isn’t obsessed with who deserves the most and who deserves the least. Karma, as I’ve said before, isn’t one of the ‘solas’ of Lutheran theology. It’s literally the opposite of grace.

I invite you to re-read this parable found in the 20th chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel in its fullness, but instead of imagining it from the perspective of those first workers, who are convinced that the system has cheated them, imagine it instead from the perspective of those who were hired at five in the afternoon. I promise that it’ll open a window into seeing yourself as God sees you.

God sees each and every one of us as those laborers who’ve waited all day for someone to come by and invite them in. God sees us this way because God is a God of grace, not karma. God sees us this way because God knows the brokenness that’s inside us; a brokenness that only God can heal. God sees us this way because if God didn’t, we’d never be invited into the vineyard.

The challenging truth of the gospel narrative is this: if God’s generosity offends us, it’s because we’re not seeing the hard truth of who we are in parables like this one. Is God’s sense of fairness just and righteous? The only way to discover the true answer is to step to the back of the line, where those who are always picked last are standing, so that we can experience God’s love for this world the way it really is.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.