“The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard”

    ¹"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. ²He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

    ³"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' ⁵So they went.

   "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. ⁶About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

    ⁷" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
      "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

    ⁸"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'

    ⁹"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

    ¹³"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

    ¹⁶"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

¹Classes at Columbia have begun and I have two classes in addition to my internship here at Norcross Presbyterian Church - Church History on Tuesday and Thursday from 7pm to 9pm and Hebrew Tuesday through Friday. I don’t know much more than my Hebrew alphabet at this time, but I can tell you that Rashomon isn’t Hebrew for grace. Rashomon sounds like a Hebrew word. After all rachmanut is Hebrew for ‘mercy’ and Rosh HaShanah is Hebrew for ‘New Year.’ But Rashomon isn’t even a Hebrew word, it is Japanese.

Rashomon is an amazing film starring Toshiro Mifune and directed by Akira Kurosawa. In Rashomon the same event is told from 4 different perspectives. With each retelling, we are challenged to unravel truth from fiction. Not only must we take into consideration the motivation of the characters, but we must also integrate each vignette into a comprehensive whole. The wife, the samurai, the thief all tell their story, but ultimately it is the woodcutter, whose witness is without bias, who relates the events as they truly happened.

Today’s reading from Matthew presents us with a similar challenge. We have the story of laborers, hired at 5 different times during the same day. All of them are hired to work in the vineyard. They all bring their perspective to play as the story unfolds. They all have a different story to tell and different motivations for telling it, but in the end it is the landowner who is without prejudice, who reveals to us the truth as it really is. Let me now share with you the Parable of Workers in the Vineyard, Rashomon Style.

Scene One

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage he sent them into his vineyard.

The dawn is breaking in a large village. The day laborers are gathered in the market square to hire out their services. In those times servants of a household were cared for by the head of the house. These laborers are not members of a household, with a head of house to watch over them. The money that they earned each day went to pay for food and shelter for their families for that day. If they missed a day’s work they risked going without food or shelter that night. This parable is nearly 2,000 years old, but we can see it played out every day in the cities of Atlanta - Norcross, Chamblee, and Doraville - where day laborers gather at convenience stores and gas stations hoping to pick up work.

The first group of laborers that the landowner hired is highly motivated. They were most definitely type “A” personalities. They began arriving at the market an hour before dawn. They knew where the landowner went to gather his laborers. They had worked for him in the past during the harvest. The night before, they had gotten together and decided that they would stand tough and stick together. They would settle for nothing less than a day’s wage for a day’s work. When the landowner arrived they began the tough negotiations that they had prepared.

“You will pay us all a day’s wage – one denarius. We will accept nothing less. We will do what you ask us, but you must pay us what we demand.”

The landowner agreed to their demands without protest.

And they went to work elated that they successfully negotiated and received what they wanted. They never bothered to listen to what the landowner might have offered, they knew what was fair. They demanded it and they got it without protest.

 Scene Two

   ³"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' ⁵So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.

The second group of workers was made up of good intentioned men who had all missed the landowner when he came by at 6am. They had remained in the village square because they needed the work and were hoping that a landowner might have need of labor. Some had been buying bread and missed the landowner when he came by earlier, others, who did not know that Joshua’s Lamp and Oil Shop was the usual place that the landowner went to pick up laborers, had been waiting at the Jeremiah’s Red Sea Scrolls and Coffee house on the other side of the village square. And there were a few that did not hear the cock crow three times and had slept in until 6:10. This group was made up of mostly type “B” personalities. They did not need assurances from the landlord that they would be treated fairly, after all they were not there when the landlord came by the first time, and so they accepted the landowner at his word when he said that he would pay them what was right. And they went off to work thankful that there was work to be had and that they might earn enough to provide some food for their family even if they had to go hungry.

Scene 3

⁶About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

    ⁷" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
      "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

The third group was made up of laborer’s that nobody else wanted. Some were not as strong as the workers that had been hired earlier in day. They were not able to carry baskets filled to overflowing with the harvest at hand. Some were not as smart as the workers who had been hired earlier in the day; they did not know that the landlord came to the village to hire laborers. And some of them had no intention of working at all. But when the landlord came and asked them “Why have you been standing idle here all day?” They were too embarrassed to admit their shortcomings and instead blamed the system for keeping them down. “No one would hire us”, they said. But the landlord said to them “Go to my vineyard, I will hire you.” And they went, with no promise that they would receive a fare wage or much of anything. Each was used according to his abilities, for those strong enough there was work storing the harvest in the barn, while others stacked the empty baskets and swept up in preparation for the work that would begin again the next day.

Scene 4

    ⁸"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'

    ⁹"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

    ¹³"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

    ¹⁶"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

Like the woodcutter in Rashomon, Jesus too carries a sharp axe. And in this parable Jesus cuts through the hardest heartwood. Jesus does not worry about the splinters that go flying, that pierce his skin, that cause him to bleed. All of that goes with the job. Remember that Jesus came to open up our hearts to new reality; one vastly different from the assumptions about the way that the world operated during his lifetime and ours.

Is this parable a warning to the disciples who thought of themselves as somehow more favored than later converts? There is ample evidence to support this claim. Could it be that this is a warning to the Jewish-Christians, who somehow felt that they were more loved and deserving of God’s favor than the Gentile converts who came to Christianity later? After all, the Gospel came first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, that would seem to establish a hierarchy for Jewish-Christians. This too seems like a plausible explanation. And while these might be very supportable claims for Matthean scholars, they are not very relevant for us today.

So what is it that Christ is trying to open our hearts to? I suggest it is a selfless spirit of service to God. If we come to God, like the first workers came, with expectation of rewards, then we will receive what is fair. But how much more will we be blessed by God if we come with a selfless spirit, with no thought of reward?

If we come trusting in God’s infinite compassion, then there is no shortage of work and we will all be given our daily bread. The parable never says that there was an immediate need to gather the harvest, something I had always assumed before reading this parable more carefully. The fact is that God gives us work to do not because it is important to God, but because it is important for us. The idea that everybody should have meaningful work and be paid a living wage is a radical idea today. I need only point to the fact that the minimum wage in the United States of America, the richest country in the world, is under six dollars an hour.

If we come trusting in God’s infinite grace then we are quick to realize that no amount of work that we do can ever earn us the rewards we seek. God gives grace to all who serve. It is not a reward, nor pay, but a gift from God, freely given out of God’s generosity towards us. So what is important then is that we understand that the whole point of service to God is the spirit in which it is given. If we serve out of fear of damnation or in anticipation of heavenly reward then our service denies the importance of God’s grace and compassion towards us. If we choose to serve selflessly however we are not only the beneficiaries of God’s infinite grace and compassion, but we are free to experience the joy and elation of serving God which is a reward in and of itself.