![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/310\/2011\/11\/Mathew-Skinner2-150x150.jpg\" "\\"Mathew")
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By Matthew L. Skinner<\/a><\/p>\n \nMaybe you remember this old line: A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.<\/p>\n Our notions of justice usually cannot help but be influenced by our own circumstances and by our opinions about what we and others deserve. We insist justice has to do with equality, but a lot of the time it\u2019s a word we toss around to keep people and things we don\u2019t like at bay.<\/p>\n And then along comes Jesus, eager to mess even more with our regular attitudes about what\u2019s right or fair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n It\u2019s A Story About Generosity<\/strong> The story goes like this: Early in the morning a landowner (who seems to represent God in this parable) hires people to work in his vineyard for the standard daily wage. He hires additional people at 9AM, noon, 3PM, and again at 5PM, telling each of these groups that he will give them \u201cwhatever is right.\u201d When the hot workday ends, he first pays the folks who labored only a single hour the standard daily wage, the same amount he pledged to those who worked nearly sunup to sundown. When the members of that full-day crew get to the front of the line, they receive the same amount, exactly what they were promised.<\/p>\n The full-day workers are understandably resentful. We aren\u2019t told how the one-hour shift responds. Maybe they had hustled back to their homes thinking the landowner might have a change of heart.<\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n Meanwhile, dismayed accountants back in the vineyard probably start updating their resumes.<\/em><\/p>\n The actions of the landowner are all kinds of crazy. They make no sense, at least from an economic perspective. Yet that\u2019s the point. Jesus\u2019 parables often include absurd behavior<\/a> to deliver their message, which in this case is a characterization of what it means to call God \u201crighteous\u201d or \u201cjust.\u201d When the landowner promises to pay \u201cwhatever is right,\u201d his words mean \u201cwhatever is just.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a parable about God\u2019s graciousness. So excessive is God\u2019s propensity to give and care, it violates our instincts about fairness. Such justice looks rash. It almost makes God out as inattentive to the kinds of people who, just by going about their usual business, easily exceed humanity\u2019s lowest common denominators for effort, morality, and piety.<\/p>\n But, then again, the landowner does give the complaining workers exactly what he promised them.<\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n It\u2019s A Story About People In Need<\/strong> We have to ask about who receives extravagance from the landowner. Some readers spiritualize the parable by saying that working in the fields is an allegory for serving God or toiling away in the ministries of the church. But those who are hired at 5PM suggest to me types of people other than those who sleep in on Sunday mornings.<\/p>\n After all, this parable draws all its force and illustrative potential from the dynamics of economic life. Whom, then, should we think the landowner encounters when he\u2019s looking for workers late in the afternoon? What kind of people are the last to find jobs, added to the rolls only when there\u2019s no more labor available? Nothing suggests that those characters in the parable are irresponsible or lazy. More likely, they are unwanted.<\/p>\n Who spends the whole day waiting to be hired but doesn\u2019t find success until the end of the day? In Jesus\u2019 time, these would be the weak, infirm, and disabled. Maybe the elderly, too. And other targets of discrimination, such as criminals or anyone with a bad reputation.<\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n A God who is \u201cjust,\u201d then, is inclined to show special generosity to the poor and outcast. No wonder the respectable people get anxious.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t stop there. If we\u2019re composing a list of \u201cpeople who have to wait all day long to get hired\u201d in our current setting, we need to expand it. Add the unemployed and underemployed to the list. At a time when the total unemployment rate in America exceeds 16 percent<\/a>, suddenly those who cannot get hired until 5PM aren\u2019t necessarily just people wearing rags or talking gibberish to themselves. Many are college graduates, highly skilled manufacturers, loyal, capable.<\/p>\n Undocumented immigrants also belong on the list, for who hires them these days? The parable\u2019s landowner might be at risk of prosecution in Alabama, depending on the outcome of a battle over that state\u2019s new immigration law<\/a>. It\u2019s a severe law allegedly spurred by the national unemployment crisis, but one legitimately wonders how the law\u2019s rough justice squares with a Bible that repeatedly commends hospitality and compassion toward refugees, strangers, and other aliens.<\/p>\n <\/br><\/p>\n Watch the ON Scripture Video: <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nMaybe no other words attributed to Jesus cause as much offense to ethical calculations as his Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16<\/a>). He likens \u201cthe kingdom of heaven,\u201d or the way things are when God sets the standards, to a situation in which hardworking, reliable people get shafted. Or do they?<\/p>\n
\nWe learn more about God when we travel deeper into the world the parable imagines and consider its other characters.<\/p>\n
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