Does Jesus want to undermine Capitalism?
Gospel Reading: Matthew 20:1-16
For Sunday, Sept. 18 , 2011: Year A—Ordinary 25
There are a lot of gaps in this text, blanks in the narrative that slyly invite the hearer to fill them in. In the end that is how Jesus trips us up, gets us to condemn ourselves.
The Set-Up
This is the set up: For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. He bargains with the up-and-at-'em workers and they agree on the usual daily wage. He sends them to his vineyard. The landowner goes out again at nine, noon, three and five o’clock, each time encountering idlers and inviting them to work in his vineyard. With these Johnny-come-lately, lolly-gagging, late-sleeping, sluggards who are desperate to earn a little something, he does not bargain, but tells them, go into my vineyard and I will pay you what is right.
The Gaps
First of all, why does the landowner need so many day laborers? Is it harvest time? If it is harvest time how could there be so many idlers? Wouldn’t every landowner need help?
Secondly, who are all these workers that didn’t get hired in the morning? Were they not there when the landowner first came in the morning? Surely he would have hired them if they were.
And then, why does this landowner seem so desperate to get laborers into his vineyard? He goes out four times! Does he really have that much work to do? You would think he could have planned better. The final gap and the one the causes all the trouble—how is “pay you what is right,” determined? What calculation is used?
The Calculation
At the end of the day when it comes time to pay up, the landowner pays the last ones hired first and works his way to the up-and-at-'em laborers. He pays the daily wage to those who worked for an hour, so the up-and-at-'ems are thinking: Man! Imagine what we are going to get.
As he pays everyone it turns out that they all get the same—the usual daily wage. The first-uppers are outraged. And this is where the hearer is right there with them. He said he bargained with the first guys to pay them the usual daily wage and then he told everyone else he would pay them what is right, what is fair. Well, you don’t need to be a first century Palestinian to do the math.
So, the first laborers worked eleven hours, they were paid one denarius. That means the laborers that started at nine, twelve, three and five should have received their rightful percentage of that one denarius. That is what is right. That is what is fair. That is just. But in my rooting around I found, of course, some debate on what the usual daily wage meant. While a denarius was the going rate, that would have barely provided a subsistence living for a family.
What’s Fair?
It seems, however, that fairness and justice are not a very good ways of calculating the ethos of the kingdom of heaven. Righteousness does not define the contours of the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is not fair. Jesus, in this parable, is subverting the hearer’s deeply rooted notion of fairness, of how or why the world works.
If people come to learn that the one is paid the same no matter how long one works, then won’t every one stay in bed past noon, wander out around till five, put in their hour and get paid? What would be the incentive to work a full day? How would any work get done? The vineyard would collapse in ruin! If this practice spread across the entire economy, society would crumble.
The Hardest Question
Perhaps society crumbling is part of the plan on the way to the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a hard thing to admit that people’s value is measured in economic terms. It is even harder to imagine any other way. Does Jesus want to undermine Capitalism as a means of ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
