“It’s Not Always About What’s Fair”
Matthew 20:1-16
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 21 September, 2008
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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 I have never been very good at sports. When I was growing up I hated playing competitive games in gym class, because I was always one of the last ones picked to be on a team. In addition to my awkwardness on the ball field, I was not one of the popular kids, so those classmates who were higher on the social ladder were even less likely to pick me. They knew I wouldn’t increase their chances of winning the game and I was a nerd, so I didn’t have much going for me.
Because of these painful experiences in gym class, I will never forget the actions of one of my classmates sophomore or junior year of high school. We were playing softball or something similar, and I didn’t get picked for the team much earlier than I usually did. However, once I was on a team and was up to bat one of my classmates -- one of the popular boys who was good at sports, no less -- began encouraging me. “Keep your eye on the ball,” he instructed kindly. Because of the kindness in his voice, I did, and I actually hit the ball. He continued to encourage me as I ran the bases. I do not remember if I made it “home” and I don’t even remember the boy’s name now. What I do remember is my self-esteem going up a little that day. Here was a guy who knew I was not going to be a great asset to the team, but he treated me like I had something to offer. What an act of grace!
In this morning’s Gospel lesson we hear a similar example of the grace of God. After gathering workers several times throughout the day, a vineyard owner goes out one more time and discovers still more workers standing around waiting to be hired by someone. Like an ungainly high school nerd they were the last to be picked for the team.
We are not told why they were not hired earlier. Scholar Craig Kocher suggests that they might not have had the necessary skills for vineyard work or been familiar with the language. Maybe they weren’t able to get to the location earlier in the day because of an emergency -- a sick family member, a personal injury. Whatever the case, it was an hour before the day’s work would be done and they were still waiting, having gone an entire day without earning a wage. This would be a huge problem for day-laborers in a subsistence society. It may well mean that they would have no food to put on the table for their families. If they went more than one day without working their very survival may be at stake.
Even if some landowner needed last-minute work and hired them at the end of the day, we would expect them to be paid for the amount of time they worked -- i.e., not very much. I don’t know exactly how payment worked in first century Middle Eastern agricultural society, but in modern America we usually speak of being paid by the hour. Minimum wage is based on hourly wages, and it is expected that people will be paid for the amount of time that they have worked. Even salaried positions usually have an expected number of hours that the employee is to work during the week -- it is understood that 40 hours per week is full time for most jobs, but these days an employee may be expected to work more than that. Either way, the more time a person works the more they get paid.
Clearly, that is what the workers first to be hired in this morning’s scripture story were expecting. They were told that they would receive the usual daily wage, sure, but when the workers who had been hired later in the day got paid that wage, the first ones to be there expected more. When they didn’t get it, they were understandably upset. Those of us who have worked very hard for an hourly wage are probably upset right along with them. “It isn’t fair!” we want to whine to that mathematically-impaired vineyard owner.
Well, to use one of my least favorite parental phrases, “Life isn’t always fair.” This story is about God, remember, and God isn’t always fair. On the other hand, God is almost always right, and this is one of those times. The vineyard owner may not have acted in a way that made sense to the workers or that makes much sense to us, but he did the right thing. The workers who were first to arrive received the usual daily wage, as promised. This wasn’t a lot -- they lived, as I said, a subsistence lifestyle, which meant that they survived from day to day but would never be able to save anything. With the usual daily wage, they would, however, probably be able to put food on the table for their families that night, to get enough nutrition to get them through the next hard day’s work.
If hired by a less compassionate landowner, those hired later in the day would go home hungry. If they were unable to afford food, they would be unable to gain strength enough to continue working. They would get picked later and later in the day until they were forced to beg or simply starve to death because they no longer had the physical ability to do hard labor in the fields.
Instead of suffering this dire predicament they were given another chance by a vineyard owner who cared about their survival. They would be able to eat that night, and thus they would be able to work another day. While probably never able to escape the poverty that day-laborers faced in first-century Palestine (and continue to face today in our country), they would be able to escape starvation for another day.
I can clearly hear the voice of some modern American radio commentator complaining that these latecomers were just “given handouts.” They were clearly lazy bums who would begin to expect such handouts and sit on their lazy behinds eating out of other people’s pockets.
The closest analogy to the day-laborers of our Gospel is probably migrant workers who come up from Mexico or other nations South of the border to work in the American heartland. I have heard people immediately label all of these workers “illegals” (even if they entered the United States legally) and complain that all they’re doing here is trying to get rich off of “our” tax dollars. I have also seen the hard work that immigrant day-laborers do for very, very little pay.
Another easy correlation to this morning’s scripture is anyone who benefits from the welfare system. There are welfare recipients who work several minimum wage jobs but are still unable to pay their meager bills. There are others who are disabled and truly unable to work. Others struggle to find affordable childcare. When they are unable to do so they either choose not to work, knowing that this may mean they will be unable to feed their children, or they leave their children home alone and are promptly labeled “evil child neglecters” by people who do not know their situation. Others have simply made mistakes or faced misfortunes in life -- legal troubles, addictions, broken homes, bad financial decisions, etc. -- and are struggling to get back on their feet. Regardless of the circumstances, they are labeled “lazy,” told to “get a job” (even if they already have one), and people complain that all “these people” are doing is stealing the taxes of “good Americans who actually work.” I do not often hear the viewpoint of the grace-filled vineyard owner on our airwaves.
Our God is not like that. The God we worship believes that each and every one of us, regardless of our contribution to the workforce, is worthy of grace. One could argue, in the vein of our Gospel lesson, that our God also believes every human being deserves a living wage and the ability to put food on the table. Every person, from the star of the high school football team to the illegal immigrant, to the selfless missionary, to the person facing life without parole was created in the image of God. In turn, every one of us is worthy of God’s grace.
Let us find comfort in this. Let us try to emulate it. And let us pray.
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