Matthew 20:1-16 (Jonah 3:10–4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30)
This is such an easy text to explain: it is such low-hanging fruit. Yet, the best fruit is sometimes higher up the tree, and requires a wee bit of effort to reach.
Daily workers are hired at an agreed upon rate of pay. And, given that this daily wage is subsistence-level pay, they are compensated at the end of each day, in accordance with Jewish law. (This truly is living hand-to-mouth.) Common at that time was for farmworkers to own their own small fields, which they would tend at the start of the day, and then look for additional work on other folks’ land later in the day. Other workers were overlooked entirely throughout the day for various reasons (age, infirmity, ethnicity, etc.) and might only be hired at the very end of the day, as darkness fell and as a final couple of hours of intense work were needed before the light was lost. One thing that seemed only right, proper and just, was that those who worked longest were paid more than the others; and that the others were compensated with diminishing amounts. When this proved not to be the case, the workers complained in a manner that one scholar describes simply as “fair and well-articulated.”
Now at this point we can simply reach for the low hanging fruit. Grace, we may state, is more important than justice. And, that our Jewish cousins are being joined in God’s vineyard (see Isaiah 5:1-7) by new workers (Christians) and are jealous of our relationship with God and the reward God gives us (a saving relationship) that they believe is rightly theirs. In other words, “who do these newcomers think they are?”
Yet, as the landowner seems to argue, it is his money, and he can do what he wants with it. How dare someone criticize someone in his position, when he seeks to be generous and benevolent. (Such were the prerogatives of someone of his standing within social order of the day.) And, the landowner adds, did he not pay that which was agreed upon? He is acting justly. Yet there is grace in this story right enough. For the other cohorts of workers struck no agreement with the landowner at all. The second round of workers were only promised “whatever is right [literally, just]” (vs. 4) and the third were given no promise at all. These two groups were extremely vulnerable, given the lateness of their hire, and had simply to rely on the beneficence of the landowner. (They were as surprised and delighted at the outcome, as the initial group was angry and bitter.)
So, on reflection, this text appears to argue that grace and justice stand in tension with each other. This tension is what is so “very displeasing to Jonah;” (Jonah 4:1). God’s justice demands that Nineveh be destroyed, yet it is a sign of grace that God “changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them” (Jonah 3:10). These two aspects of the character of God (justice and mercy) are in tension in a manner similar to the “now-not yet” of Paul’s writings; and the “both-and” of Luther’s writings (especially his slogan simul justus et peccator – saint and sinner at one and the same time).
Tension is uncomfortable – as all grey areas are. Black and white, with starkly delineated lines, is comfortingly familiar. Yet here, as so often in Scripture, we find a God who, unlike us, is “gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 145:8).
Pr. Ken Blyth
