Love is not fair
Below is the gospel reading for this Sunday morning, The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, on which I want to comment briefly even though we may hear a sermon on it day after tomorrow. I just wanted to get this in. And yes, I see it's Friday, but if I change my mind and, doing a blogpost on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, decide to add Friday from Time to Time, so what?
The gospel reading begins "Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who ...".
Jesus doesn't say Life is like this, he says the kingdom of heaven is like this. If Life tried to be like this, the United Farm Workers union would earn our union dues negotiating and striking to make everything fair, and they would win. By every human standard, the parable describes unfairness. But God isn't bound by human standards; and the parable proves that God does not claim to be Fair. Evidently, fairness is not one of God's values. In fact, as Jesus presents God, God isn't even Just, God is Grace.
In the C S Lewis book "The Great Divorce" the narrator and other characters get on a bus in Hell and ride the overnight bus up to Heaven. As they get off the bus, each ghost is welcomed by a Greeter, a spirit acquaintance from their days in life on earth who is already in Heaven, whose mission as Greeter is to show that you may stay if you wish, and that everyone is here because of the Love of God not because of anything anyone has done to earn it: you are welcome, it's your choice, you can stay or you can get back on the bus and go to Hell.
One of the characters, the one who intrigues me the most of the ghosts from Hell, is an Anglican (that's us) Bishop (C S Lewis refers to him as the ghost in gaiters) who "generously" offers to stay if he is needed and can do some good. The spirit who greets him is taken aback, but explains that no one is here because they are "needed", that God has no "needs" and there are no "needs" in Heaven, that God is love and Heaven is open to everyone who wants to be there. In his pompous self-importance, the Bishop suddenly remembers ("Bless my soul, I just remembered, of course I can't stay") because next Tuesday evening he is to read an important paper that he has written, to a little study group he is leading, and so he gets back on the bus to go back to Hell.
The important paper is the Bishop's examination of the question to show how much more good Jesus could have done had he not been so impetuous as to make everybody angry and get himself killed, but instead had used sound judgment and matured to a good old age. The Bishop, incidentally, is amused by his greeter's assurance, which the Bishop considers most naive, that if he stays on in Heaven he will eventually meet God himself. The Bishop scoffs that God is simply "a beautiful idea".
Stretch if you will, there's a relationship between C S Lewis' Bishop and Matthew's vineyard workers who think that because they worked longer they are entitled to be paid more. They also can go to Hell, eh?!
There's a book that we read in seminary, or maybe I bought and read it later, by Lutheran pastor and professor Ronald M Hals, in which he asserts that God's one characteristic is Grace, which is unconditional love, a theology that ties in to this gospel reading: it isn't how hard you work or how long you work that admits you to the kingdom, it's that God loves you no matter what. If that's so, I'm going to suggest that in Jesus' parable, any laborers back at the marketplace who were too lazy or too drunk to answer even the landowner's five o'clock invitation, who didn't come out to the vineyard at all, will get paid the same wage as everyone else if they bother to come get in the manager's pay line. That's outrageous, but it would be the unconditional love that the Grace of God is said to be.
There were a couple of stories that I'm not going to bother researching this morning, and I don't recall particulars, and may have them wrong, but that I recall one professor or other telling us at seminary. One was about the emperor Constantine, the other about Augustine of Hippo. In both stories, the men were strongly under the influence of their mothers. In both stories the men were devoted to sin and sinning. In both stories the sin of choice was concupiscence, sexual lust. In both stories the men delayed being baptized as long they could so that they could keep on enjoying sinning. The idea was that once baptized you had to give up sin, so enjoy sin as long as possible, then at the latest possible moment accept baptism and the salvation it imparts and you will be saved. As saved as the early workers. As saved as the workers who came out at five o'clock in the afternoon. As saved as my drunk and lazy workers who didn't bother to do any work at all, but just came and got in the pay line. The parable shows the outrageousness of God.
If every parable has a point, what's the point of this one? Well, in the Matthew text, Jesus says "the kingdom of heaven (the other evangelists call it the kingdom of God) is like this". So the point must be that God who loves everyone welcomes into the kingdom of heaven everyone who accepts God's invitation. Come on in. You don't have to earn it, it's free. It isn't about you anyway, as C S Lewis' ghost in gaiters thought it was about him, it's about God! If it were about you, Jesus would begin "The kingdom of heaven is like vineyard workers ... " but he doesn't say that, he begins "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner ... ".
There's another thing. "The last will be first and the first will be last" is played out in that the workers who came out at five o'clock get paid first and the workers who came out early get paid last. What's the point of that unless it's to rub the early workers' noses in it that fairness isn't an issue here and like it or lump it? I mean, even if everyone was going to get paid the same, discreet personnel management might dictate that the early workers get paid first and go their way content instead of knowingly riling them up. But no, an idea of the parable is to create a scene in which the early workers will think they are more deserving and challenge God's values so they can be put in their place with the wisdom that they're not to worry about what anyone else gets, and they're not to worry that God loves the worst of them as much as God loves the best of them.
Salvation is salvation, I see your U S Navy Retired hat with the scrambled eggs on the bill, Thank You for your Service, but there are no ranks here. There are no admirals in the kingdom of heaven, everyone is a seaman apprentice.
Here's that gospel reading. See what you think!
The Gospel
Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus said, “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. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 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?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
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.’ 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. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 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.’
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? 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?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
T+
Art, Vincent Van Gogh "Workers in the red vineyard"
Other art, Goodsalt.com pinched online.