Sunday Readings: Isaiah 55.6-9; Philippians 1.20-24, 27; Matthew 20.1-16
Jesus told his disciples a parable about a householder who hired additional workers at nine, noon, three, and five o’clock. At the end of the day, the householder told the manager to pay the workers beginning with the last and then going to the first.
When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. When they received it, they grumbled against the householder. “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.”
The householder replied, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; 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?”
Jesus said, “So the last will be first and the first will be last” (Matthew 20.8-16).
When the householder pays the 11th-hour workers a full day’s wage, he reorients the parable. It is no longer about the wages workers deserve but about the householder’s generosity and a Christian social order.
The vineyard owner pays the full-day wage, the amount workers hope to make each day, even to those who don’t find work until the last hour. In effect, he shows a preferential option for the last, for the poorest. This is a basic principle in liberation theology.
The equal wages in this parable represent more than economic concern for the poorest. The workers all stand in the same relationship to the one householder, to God who owns the vineyard of all creation. The resources of creation are for all. The social order in this vineyard is like a circle, in which no one has a place of privilege.
How is the vineyard owner like your God?