Jesus offers another parable today, a story that unfolds, sometimes unravels, curls in different directions, upends what we first think it means, provokes and prods us to look at something or someone in a new way. And then look again, in yet another way.
Today we consider a series of economic transactions: a landowner (or better translated, householder) takes direct action in hiring laborers to harvest his vineyard. Right away this is odd for the first hearers of the parable: it was usually a paid manager – middle management – who did this kind of hiring work. But the householder is not only taking over the hiring job, he’s finding time throughout his presumably busy day to return to the marketplace to hire more workers.
The workers, in turn, are not described differently except in one respect: they don’t all succeed in getting hired in the morning, when the best jobs are available and the chances are highest to earn a full day’s wage. The householder returns at nine, twelve, three, and five o’clock. Each time he finds more workers who hadn’t found work, and brings them onto his vineyard.
The workers aren’t described as failures, and in fact when we say in English that they stood “idle” all day, we’re once again translating in a sloppy way. It’s more accurate to say that Jesus imagines them standing in the spot at market where they could get hired, that’s all. Maybe it’s nearly a full-employment economy. In any case, they’re not better or worse than the all-day workers, they’re just less successful in attracting an employer, for some reason.
Things get interesting when it’s time to pay the workers. The householder directs that they line up, and be paid in the order of last hired to first hired. This is provocative: it ensures that the workers who toiled all day will see that everyone is receiving the same wage. What’s the householder doing? Trying to start a fight? But I think this is clever: only when everyone can see a new thing happening does the power of that new thing really sink in.
And the new thing is equity. Not equality, equity. As many of you surely know, these are different concepts. Equality means that everyone gets the same thing no matter what, and a casual glance at this parable might lead us to say that it’s a fable about equality, since after all, everyone gets the same coin. But of course not everyone worked the same amount. Not everyone was as lucky in finding work. Maybe one of the later workers had trouble getting to the marketplace because they were caring for an elder. Maybe one of the early workers had a home-field advantage as a longtime citizen of the town. Whatever happened at the marketplace, everybody got hired at the time they got hired, and everyone got the daily wage.
You’ll find in your bulletin a couple of images you may have already seen floating around the internet. The first image explains the difference between equality and equity, revealing that when equity is practiced, no matter your size or ability, you will receive a bicycle that works for you. In the second image, you see the same idea in the varying levels of assistance offered to those of different heights, ensuring that everyone can see the ball game, even the small child.
But look at the fourth frame of that image, the one titled “liberation”: rather than stacking crates to be sure everyone can see over the wall, we just remove the wall itself. And that, in my hearing, is where this parable is taking us. That is the Kingdom of Heaven; that is the Way of the Cross; that is the Good News proclaimed by Jesus. In a community of liberation, the householder is good, giving freely and working through the day to employ his neighbors in the job market; the workers all do their part, at varying levels of availability and ability; and at the end of the day, everyone receives enough. Everyone can buy groceries for their families for the next few days, and the vineyard has been fruitful for all.
What do you see, or hear, or wonder, as Jesus tells you this parable?
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Preached at the 5:00pm liturgy on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20A), September 24, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington. This was a short homily designed to prompt shared reflections from others in the assembly.
Exodus 16:2-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16