Disruptive Generosity
Matthew 20:1-16
Matthew 20:1-16 (NRSV):
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 denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 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?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 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.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 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 the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of heaven, he’s not answering the question “what will afterlife heaven be like?” but “How would you know if heaven were here? What would that look like?” “Well…” Jesus responds…“it would be kind of like…a landowner who went out early...to hire laborers for his vineyard.” He tells a story. Many stories, actually. And just as there are many parables and no one authoritative parable among them, it takes many stories, stories from or based on our lived experience in the world and of the Divine, to answer that question: “what would it be like?”
Parables are meant to be a little disruptive. If you’re not disrupted in some way by a parable, maybe your defenses are up, preventing the parable from doing its confrontational work, no matter how good you are or what good work you are doing. Many of us love the image of Jesus flipping over tables, as an act of holy disruption, calling into question a normal but unloving practice. A parable is like the verbal version of that, where the gift of a parable is that it pokes at our assumptions and practices.
With few exceptions, Jesus doesn’t explain his parables. Like with queries, here, the point is not to get the right answer, but to open up the possibilities of Love before us.
In that way, parables seem less about theological education and more about action.
A theological answer to this parable—“God is generous!” as one example—should not stop there but lead into the practical and personal: how is God’s generosity inspiring my own generosity? Assuming we’re all on the way, none of us arrived at the fullness of who we could be as creatures wired to Love, there’s probably a challenge for everyone, probably something here that might be disruptive, for you.
Maybe it’s what comes right before this, where Jesus tells a rich young ruler: “‘Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” (Mt 19:21-22). It must matter that this comes before. Why does it matter?
Maybe it’s “the kingdom of heaven” and you find that word “kingdom” or “heaven” disruptive, because you don’t like the word “kingdom” or “heaven,” or you do like the words but Jesus isn’t using them in the way you like them, and that’s disruptive!
Maybe it’s the possible religious implications, if you read the “landowner” as “God” and the full-day workers as members of God’s “favorite” religion—whoever might claim that title in a given context—where the assumption that only a few should get the best reward is disrupted by the idea that all share in the reward. I guess there’s an economic point in there too. But that might disrupt, for example, a Christian who believes non-Christians are hellbound, to imagine an afterlife heaven where literally everyone is there: Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, people of every faith and non-faith.
Now I don't know much about the afterlife—haven’t tried it yet—but the more earthy point is that if “heaven” is a place where everyone is welcomed and beloved—even them—then maybe the way forward here and now is a similarly generous circle of inclusion. Growing such inclusivity in our spaces, in our world, can be very disruptive.
Speaking of landowners, maybe what’s disruptive to you is the unquestioned assumption that people can “own land,” even if you…do. Maybe in the world you seek, people like the landowner don’t exist. Maybe you wonder how that land came to be owned, who cared for that land before this landowner. Those are disruptive questions.
Maybe the fact that the landowner needs laborers to do the work, and isn’t going to do it for them, is disruptive, especially if you read the landowner as God. To be a laborer is not to offload that work onto an authority, human or divine, but do that work yourself.
Maybe the fact that there are no freeloaders here, only people waiting to be hired, is disruptive, if you think people who aren’t working must just not want to work. Here, the desire to work is there, just not the opportunity. The landowner actively works to make sure that everybody they can find has a job and income. At face value, this landowner cares about people more than profit, which might be a disruptive thought.
And maybe what’s disruptive is that this story has a degree of realism, and maybe you live in abstraction. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if the landowner just—boom!—snapped their fingers, and everyone was hired at once, at the beginning? Sure! But life is lived in real time, and the fact that the landowner didn’t find some of these people until 5pm, eleven hours into the workday, is not necessarily an indictment of the landowner. Justice is not a thought experiment, it’s something that is grown as we move through time, and make right what isn’t right. To call the landowner “unfair” might be…unfair.
“The last will be first and first will be last.” Whatever that proverb means to us, it might be the closest Jesus ever comes to saying: “everything you think you know is wrong.” Centering “the last” might feel disruptive, in an economic world where unregulated competition and “being best” are often valued more than making sure everyone has enough. How is our call to love our neighbor clarified by “the last will be first, and the first will be last?” How is my call to love myself, clarified by this proverb?
This parable could disrupt our notions and practices in many ways, and I invite you to notice where you might be experiencing that disruption. We might also consider our beliefs about the nature of justice, generosity, and how the two interact.
Justice. “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.” That’s one way of thinking of justice. This might be similar to how people who paid off their student loans or never had a student loan feel about loan forgiveness. Or how some feel about food stamps or welfare. Or how many feel about newcomers to our country.
It might be like how my own kid feels if there’s even a slight deficiency in the amount of ice cream I gave them, relative to their sibling. If they protest this, sometimes I say “you’re right, I gave your sibling a little more, but it all evens out in the end. You know, some days you’ll get more, some days they’ll get more, it’s all a wash.” None of my kids ever seem to love that response?
“Friend,” the landowner says to one disgruntled worker. What’s that all about? If this is like calling someone “bud” or “pal”—not my favorite, unless Jim Miller says it to me, then it’s fine—then it might be a little condescending. But more charitably, it could be the landowner saying “hey, I’m not really above you, just like you are not really above those who I helped finally find work, only an hour ago.” Sometimes focusing on fairness, means overlooking justice. It really depends, right? For example, appealing to fair practices could prevent the already privileged from gaming the system, but an appeal to fairness could also be an insincere way to deny an opportunity to a person who’s already at a disadvantage, through no fault of their own.
Justice gets people what they need, and that may be what the landowner is trying to do. It might not seem fair, but maybe things weren’t fair to begin with.
Generosity. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” a person might say. To which I might say, “well sure!” So what are you going to do with what belongs to you? As you look at the resources you have at your disposal, whether you earned them or they were gifted to you or, and the places in the world where work is being done that matters to you, or where needs are many, what will you choose to do?
And you know maybe the landowner’s actions are not just. Not to say they are unjust, but that they go beyond justice. One of my favorite pretentious-sounding words I learned while working on my dissertation was “supererogatory.” It means going beyond what is expected or required. Generosity is usually supererogatory. For example, not cutting in line is not generous, it’s…just. It’s expected. But letting someone go ahead of you in line, might be generous, because you don’t have to do it, but you might choose to do it for someone who seems more desperate or more in a time crunch than you.
If we assume those who worked all day got a just wage in a just agreement, and that those who came late, needed the same wage to be able to provide for their families, then I think some challenging questions arise. Is the landowner being just or working toward justice? Or is he being generous? Both? It may not matter what we call it, but it does illustrate the possibility, for me, that generosity might be the thing we need to get us to justice. If we want to live in a just world, it might require the generosity of many. What could we do, with more generosity in our lives and world? What needs would be met? What opportunities would open up?
Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of Christianity, and Judaism, argues that this parable is not about eschatology but economics. It’s not about “how we get into heaven” but “how we love our neighbor.” Levine writes: “To those who ask today, ‘are you saved?’ Jesus might well respond ‘the better question is, “Do your children have enough to eat?” or “Do you have shelter for the night?”’” (Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 215-216).
Maybe the early laborers should be happy for the compensation given to the latecomers. But they aren’t. Can we shift from “am I getting what I’m entitled to and are others not getting something I’ve decided they're not entitled to?” to “Are we making sure everyone’s okay?” That may be the disruptive message of the parable, challenging even to the most socially conscious and engaged people.
I think we can empathize with those who worked for twelve hours, as they watch the one-hour folks get equally compensated. Would I be upset, if I were them? Maybe! That doesn’t automatically mean that something unethical is happening here, even if you question whether this landowner is erratic and impulsive. But we can also empathize with those relieved and gratitude-filled latecomers.
I think we can assume the best about the landowner, but if you wanted to flip the parable, and be a little more critical, maybe you read the landowner as a billionaire boss, benefiting to an absurd degree at the expense of people barely scraping by. How might that disrupt what products you buy and what businesses you support?
Or maybe we question whether this parable reinforces gender discrimination, if we imagine, by analogy, women and non-binary folks laboring today for a certain salary while men working less hard get the same benefits. How can we continue to address this pay disparity?
Or, if those who started working at 6am were actually paid 1/12 of what is fair, and the landowner made a mistake but is being too proud to admit it, then that’s a different but relatable problem. How do we make it easier for people to say “my bad”?
Friends, there are so many possibilities here, and however you receive this parable today, I invite us to not let ourselves off the hook, reading this in a way that simply reinforces our current practices and perspectives, but to stay open. If you do push back on the parable, hopefully your critique is still disruptive to you in some way that leads to positive action. It might be worth saying that I don’t believe in a fragile God who will crash out if you criticize the Bible. A healthy skepticism can sometimes be fruitful.
Queries:
What is the invitation or challenge of this parable, to us?
What does this parable disrupt, for us, today?
What does this parable have to say to us about justice and generosity?
How will generosity help get us to where we need to be?