Stories Jesus Still Tells:

The Parables of Jesus

The Parable of Vineyard Owner and his Workers (Matthew 20:1-16)

Matthew 20:1-16

1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire

laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a silver piece a day, he sent them

into his vineyard.3 And going out about 9 o’clock he saw others standing idle in the

marketplace, 4 and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will

give you.’ 5 So they went. Going out again about noon and 3 o’clock, he did the

same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing. And he said to them,

‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said

to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’8 And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard

said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to

the first.’ 9 And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a

denarius. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of

them also received a denarius. 11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the

house, 12 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.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘

”Friend,” I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what

belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed

to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first last.”

Reflection

“But it’s not fair!” “He got the same as us.”

If you are a parent, no doubt you you’ve heard these words, or something very close to them

from your children. The particular circumstance that provoked this charge from my kids this past

weekend was the divvying up of items they had found in the “magical treasure chest” I had

hidden in the woods behind our house. They had tried unsuccessfully to find the treasure four

times before. My son Brendan had given up early on, but was with the other three for the final

discovery. So when the chest was found (with my help), the three girls objected to his having an

equal share of cheap trinkets, since he hadn’t been with them on all of the previous expeditions.

“It’s not fair.”

It seems that from a very early age, we are keenly aware of fairness, and offended by its absence,

especially if we perceive that that injustice is against us. Evolutionary psychologists tell us that

this goes back to our most primitive societies, where members of the tribe had to work together

and cooperate just to survive, and anyone who shirked their duties or claimed more of the

resources than others put the whole tribe in danger. Today, fairness is still very important in our

society, as evidenced by our political debates, where we disagree about what fairness looks like:

for one side, fairness often implies equality, while for the other it means proportionality—people

should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal

outcomes.

We as a society have a strong belief that workers deserve “equal pay for equal work.” We have

inscribed in it our laws. So when we read Jesus’ parable about a vineyard owner who seemingly

flouts this understanding, we are set to scratching our heads.

The setting of the parable was quite familiar to first-century Palestinians. It was the harvest

season for the grape crop. The owner of the vineyard got up before dawn and went to the center

of the village where day-laborers congregated, hoping to find laborers for the twelve-hour

workday. These were the folks who did not have regular jobs or own any property. They were

much like the migrant workers of our day. The vineyard owner finds some laborers in the early

morning and hires them for the usual daily wage (a denarius). Then a few hours later, he goes out

and finds some more laborers and promises to pay them what is right, and sets them to work. He

goes out three more times that day, at noon, three and five, and hires still more workers each

time. Then, at the end of the day, the landowner has his foreman pay them all, beginning with the

newest hires and ending with the earliest crew. To everyone’s surprise, he gives them all a

denarius, regardless of when they started. When the early morning crew objects, the owner will

have nothing of their bellyaching:

"Look, Pal," he says, "Don't give me any grief. You agreed to the usual wage of a denarius, and

you got a denarius. Take it and get out of here before I call the cops. If I want to pay the others

the same, so what? You're telling me I can't do what I want with my own money? All I did was

have a fun idea. I decided to put the last first and the first last to show you there are no insiders

or outsiders here: when I'm happy, everybody's happy, no matter what they did or didn't do. I'm

not asking you to like me, Buster; I'm telling you to enjoy me. If you want to mope, that's your

business. But since the only thing it'll get you is an ulcer, why don't you just shut up and go into

the tasting room and have yourself a free glass of Chardonnay? The choice is up to you, Friend:

drink up, or get out; compliments of the house, or go to hell. Take your pick.”

That seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? Because, I’m sure, if you were in the same position as the

early morning crew, you wouldn’t like it much either, right? I mean, how can one possibly

contend that these people who worked only an hour should receive the same wages as those who

put in a whole day, including the brutal heat of midday? This is no way to run a business!

Now, of course, this parable isn’t about running a business. It’s not a description of how

employers should treat workers, either. Nor was Jesus giving us a system of economics. He was

trying to instruct his disciples—and you and me—about what God and heaven are like. He

introduces his story with the words, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner… ” His

point is that eternal life, the favor of God, and heavenly reward are not things that God measures

out to his servants based on their years or order of service, the trials they have borne, or, in fact,

anything that they have done for that matter. With God, grace is sovereign.

Now, that may sound heartwarming at first, let’s be honest, there’s still a part of us that resists

this “economy of grace.” For what shall we say about a God who promises the same heaven to a

self-centered scoundrel, saved on his deathbed, as He does to a Mother Teresa, who has spent a

lifetime in the pursuit of holiness and in service to others? What does it say about a God who

accepts the last-minute plea of the tyrant who spent their whole life enjoying the finest things of

life while exploiting others, welcoming him the same way He welcomes those hurt by him? It’s

not fair! Or let’s not even worry about extreme examples like those. Let’s talk about regular

Christians like us. We resist the urge not to show up or to sleep in on our Sunday morning to

worship God. We spend our hard-earned money and resources to support the work and ministry

of our congregation. We spend time in prayer and the study of Scripture when we could be

golfing or some recreation. It doesn’t seem fair to us that others get God’s grace when they don’t

even show up or participate. We are the ones, after all, who’ve done most of the work, we tell

ourselves. It’s not fair! It’s not right!

The first time I read this parable, I must admit it struck me as being rampantly unfair too. I found

myself saying, “But that is not just!” But then after some reflection, it dawned on me that I was

starting at the wrong place. If you and I had earned our way into this world or had received our

salvation as some sort of entitlement, then there might be validity to such a complaint. But the

center of this parable is grace, not entitlement. We were called out of nothing into being in an

astonishing act of generosity for which we can claim no right. As C.S. Lewis once observed, we

are not living in a luxury hotel with every right to demand great service but rather trapped in a

prison where every kindness is a grace, a gift.

Once that gift becomes our central focus, it changes how we interpret things. For if entitlement is

our vantage point, we evaluate the particulars of our lives from that perspective. On the other

hand, if grace is our starting place, everything begins to appear in a very different light.

Notice, for instance, that even the workers hired early in the morning, the ones who later

complain about the owner's fairness, had started the day un-employed. But the owner finds them

and gives them work. I imagine, when he found them, they were, no less than the nine o'clock

hires, “standing idle in the marketplace.” Whatever they were doing, it wasn't working. There

was no real livelihood prior to the owner seeking them out. But by the end of the day they seem

to have forgotten this. Or maybe they never really understood. What is clear is that, come

payment time, they are thinking only in terms of just reward. Pay must be commensurate with

the hours worked—as if the work itself was not the real "reward."

But Jesus' parable is not about a workers receiving their just “reward” so much as it is about the

graciousness, the generosity, of the landowner. The landowner is not fair or just, at least not by

our usual reckoning. Rather, he is more than just; he is gracious. And that is how God is.

In fact, if we put ourselves in the place of the laborers who started at sunrise or midmorning or

even early afternoon, we have missed the point of the parable. To begin with, we gentile

Christians, we non-Jewish Christens—it is important for us to remember—are the last-minute,

eleventh-hour hires. We are the late-comers, according to the Bible, and therefore have no room

to boast.

More to the point, though, it’s not us, but Jesus who is the one who works from sunup to

sundown. Jesus, the “landowner,” is the one who has borne the burden of the day and heat,

running back to forth to town, seeking out the idle and purposeless. Only Jesus has earned

salvation for us. It’s the fruit of his vine that we enjoy. The grace is that God still calls us to

Himself and gives us the “full wage,” the promise of salvation, not because we have worked hard

enough but because Jesus has done it for us. Just as the laborers in the vineyard all received a full

day’s pay regardless of the hours they worked., we have all been given salvation, irrespective of

what we’ve done, or the sins we’ve been under.

That’s how it is in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, when things are the way God intended

them to be. People don’t get what they deserve, what they’ve earned. But depending on where

you are in line, that can sound like powerful good news. Because if we don’t get what we

deserve, if God is not “fair,” then there is a chance we will get paid more than we are worth, that

we will get more than we deserve, that we will called up even though we are last in line.

As this parable suggests, God is good, and when we begrudge that goodness, God’s

graciousness, it is only because we have forgotten where we are in line. For, from where we

stand, at the end of the line, we can see the actions of the landowner for what they are—as a

reflection of his goodness, his graciousness, that extends not just to those like us at the end of the

line, but to all those before us, who though worthier than us, nevertheless did not deserve what

they received—a place in God’s kingdom, a seat at the table of the Vineyard Owner who wants

everyone to share in his joy and to enjoy the abundance of his goodness. No, God is not fair; but

God is good. Thanks be to God!

ART REFLECTIONS

Workers in the Vineyard from Codex Aureus of Echternach (1030-50, Nuremburg)

In the following works, the Parable of

the Vineyard Workers is depicted in

story-board form, like a comic book,

with discreet images depicting the

various actions of the story, or else the

actions taking place simultaneously in

different scenes on the same piece .

One may assume that, at least for the

earlier works, this was done so as to

identify the parable for an illiterate

audience. Similar depictions by more

recent artists likely continue this as a

custom, whether consciously or not.

Parable of Workers in the Vineyard from the lectionary of Henry III, c. 1050. by an unknown

German miniaturist

Gerard de Jode (Dutch, 1516/7-91) The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, 1585

Arsen Birch (21st century, Ukrainian), The Parable about Vineyard Workers

Nelly Bube (Kazakhstan, 1949-), The Workers in the Vineyard

Artist unknown, Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, from LDS YouTube video

Nelly Bube (Kazakhstan, 1949-), The Workers in the Vineyard

In the following pieces, the artists have chosen to depict only the final scene of the parable, the

“crisis point”, where the landowner pays all the workers the same daily wage, regardless of when

they started work. The artistic focus is on the expression of unwarranted indignation on the part

of the laborers who started in the morning. Also depicted are the delight and surprise (and

sometimes snickering) of those who began laboring late in the day

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, 1637

Patrick Paearz de Wet, Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard , mid-17th century

Peter Gorban (Russian, 1923-1995), Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, 1990 Note how the anger of the laborer is indicated by his angular stance, hunched shoulders, and arms pressed down on the desk. Note, too, that he is also alone, whereas the joy of the undeserved wages is shared among the laborers at the right.

Jacob Xavery (Dutch, 1736-1769), Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, 1768

Eugene Burnard (Swiss, 1850 - 1921), Parable of the Generous Landowner , 1908 Note how visually similar the landowner and the early laborer are depicted, all the more striking given how dissimilar they are in their attitudes towards wages.

Arthur A. Dixon, The Laborers in the Vineyard, illustration in The Work of God's

Children (1909)

Note the reactions of the three groups of laborers: anger, amazement, and joy

In some ways, the characters in Jesus’ parables are comical parodies of real people. Here in this cartoon, we get a sense of the ridiculousness of the grievance of the early morning laborers.

Bonus:

Michael Durst (21st century, South African), Harvest Time This is a scene of workers harvesting the grapes at the Hoopenburg Wine Estate near Stellenbosch about 40 minutes from Cape Town, South Africa. The artist sought to capture the playfulness as well as the back-breaking work, as the workers hand-pick the grapes.

The Vineyard of the Lord

Lucas Cranach the Younger (German, 1515-86), The Vineyard of the Lord, 1569

In 1569, the height of the Lutheran Reformation, Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586)

painted “The Vineyard of the Lord” (Der Weinberg des Herrn). Cranach, along with his father,

Lucas Cranach the Elder, is one of the most important German painters of the Reformation era.

He and his father were staunch supporters of the teachings of Martin Luther and the other

Reformers. The painting is hanging in Martin Luther’s parish church of St. Mary’s in

Wittenberg. Cranach created this painting in memory of the Reformer Paul Eber, who lectured

on theology in Wittenberg.

“The Vineyard of the Lord” depicts a vineyard divided by a fence. The vineyard is the biblical

metaphor for the Christian Church on earth. At the left of the vineyard are representatives of the

Roman Catholic Church, who are destroying it. At the right is Luther with a rake and other

Reformers taking care of the plants by watering them and pulling out the weeds.

Cranach is explaining the meaning of the Reformation by

portraying the Catholic clergy and the Lutheran reformers as

laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. It is a visual parody of a

statement that Pope Leo X had made in response to Luther’s

posting of his Ninety-five Theses. The pope excommunicated

Luther, tossing him out of the Church, exclaiming famously,

“The wild boar from the forest seeks to destroy the vineyard.”

The pope was claiming that Martin Luther was a “wild boar”

who had arisen to destroy God’s Church. Pope Leo said that it

was his duty to protect the vineyard of the Lord from the

ravishing of the wild boar. However, Cranach sets the record straight. He demonstrates who is

actually destroying the vineyard and who is taking care of it. He succinctly explains the entire

meaning of the Reformation in one image!

On the left side, the vineyard has withered from neglect and

mismanagement. The pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and

monks are hard at work: ripping out the vines and throwing

rocks into the well. They are destroying the Church with

their “false doctrines” of the worship of Mary and the saints,

purgatory, penance, indulgence, etc. They have ripped out

the true salvation story contained in the words and person of

Jesus Christ, who is the Vine to whom we are connected by

faith (John 15:5). They have thrown rocks down the well of

he who is the Water of life (John 4:13).

Is it propaganda? Absolutely. Which doesn't make it a necessarily wrong interpretation. Just an

advantageous one. Indeed, there is another, more important lesson promoted here before the

propaganda (literally, in front of the vineyard in the painting), one which hearkens back to Jesus’

Parable of the Vineyard Workers.

In this painting, the workers on the left (Pope, cardinals, priests, monks and nuns), are exhausting

the ground and proving to be poor caretakers of the vineyard. At the conclusion of their day, they

march out of the vineyard, following the Pope. In contrast, on the right, leaders of the Protestant

Reformation - including Martin Luther - provide

loving care for the vineyard. Below them, at bottom

right, is Paul Eber and his family (including thirteen

children, those who died as infants are dressed in

white). Eber was a theology professor, hymn writer,

and Bible translator.

At the left lower corner, the Lord of the vineyard pays

the wages to the workers. First paid are the Pope and

his workers. The Pope holds a coin in his hand and

appears to be asking for more. The Lord of the

vineyard holds up his hand, rejecting the demand for

additional wages. Martin Luther and the other Reformers are the ones who came late to work but

were given the same pay as those who worked a full day. They are portrayed as humble,

continuing to work rather than demanding their pay from the Lord.

What the painting may fail to convey, though, is that all

the workers were unworthy of their Lord's generosity.

Those who came late in the day were unworthy because

they really didn't earn their pay. Those who worked all day

are unworthy because they were dissatisfied with what

God gave them. At the heart of the story is the truth that

both sets of workers are dependent on the goodness and

generosity of the Lord.

The preeminence of God’s grace, over against human desserts, was at the center of Luther’s

teachings right to the end. In his last moments, Luther was asked by his friend Justus Jonas, “Do

you want to die standing firm on Christ and the doctrine you have taught?” He answered

emphatically, “Yes!” Luther’s last words were: “We are beggars. This is true.” And so we are!