Squeezing the drops

Rob Jeffery labours in the vineyard

The parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16 is perhaps one of the least understood parables found in the New Testament canon.  While other parables, such as The Yeast and The Mustard Seed, are admittedly more cryptic in their telling, the Labourers in the Vineyard is often misunderstood to the point that Christian readers assume a meaning that the Gospel writer (or at least the Matthean community) did not intend for it.

Although there is no widespread exegetical consensus on this particular parable, by way of a concise scriptural analysis, it is perhaps possible to discern the Gospel writer’s true meaning of Jesus’ parable and to show how Jesus’ use of parabolic and metaphorical language connected with his first-century audience.  In order for this to happen, however, Christian readers must be willing to lay aside the parable’s traditional meaning and interpretation that has so often been preached from Christian pulpits.

The landowner who goes out to hire labourers for his vineyard is often seen as a treatise on free grace.  The landowner is God, or perhaps Christ as Judge, and the workers are Pharisees, the Children of Israel (in a broader sense), and Christians.  The fact that the landowner (God) gives an equal wage to the labourers who had been working from the start of the day and to the ones who only worked for one hour show that God’s grace is available to all no matter when they come to faith.  The workers labouring since the early morning are undoubtedly the Children of Israel as represented by the elite religious Pharisees, while the latecomers are the Christians - those who have been newly grafted onto the tree of the Jewish faith.

At least, this is the traditional interpretation of the parable. Compelling evidence suggests, however, that this interpretation is a purely allegorical reading and functions as a sort of apology for the church, rather than a description of life in the Kingdom of God.  And describing how the Kingdom of God operates (or the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew) is the primary purpose of Jesus’ parables.

New Testament commentator Bernard Scott gives four reasons why the traditional interpretation of the parable as an exposition on free grace is problematic.  Firstly, if the first hired are Pharisees and the hired last are Christians, “…the interpretation demands Christendom as an ideological support and assumes the Christian myth of Judaism as the elder son and Christianity as the younger son.  Only Christians as recipients of God’s grace see generosity in the story.”  As the most Semitic Gospel writer, it would not likely have been Matthew’s intention to exclude the children of Israel from being recipients of God’s grace.

Secondly and relative to the first point, the parable as a defence of free grace must be rejected because the command to the complaining workers to depart (v.14) does not indicate that the workers in any way lost their wages or were somehow unworthy of receiving them.

Thirdly, there are problems with the master’s generosity.  Although a denarius for an hour’s work is generous, a denarius for an entire day’s labour is not, for “…it represents the average peasant’s wage, no more.”  Indeed, this problem with the meagreness of the wage has become quite controversial in recent Biblical scholarship, almost to the point where some theologians are reconceptualising the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard as Christ’s critique of socio-economic oppression in first century Israel.

Theologian Obery Hendricks, for instance, does not see the landowner’s actions as benevolent and utterly rejects the explanation that he is God.  Hendricks cites some impressive “wordplay” involving the original Greek understanding of the word “householder” in the Revised Standard Version (from the Greek word oikodespotes, meaning “despot” - as opposed to the more benign title of “master”) as proof that the landowner is meant to be read as more of a sinister character rather than a kind and generous philanthropist.  The landowner characterizing the workers as idle (v.6) would have been demeaning to the peasant population who worked very hard to etch out a living.  An attitude that views the poor as lazy and thus deserving of their poverty is one typically held by the elite and privileged class.

The class-reversal motif that concludes the parable (”So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”) is similar to the one that precedes the parable in Matthew 19:30 and means, in Hendrick’s view, that “Jesus is likening the kingdom of God to a greater reality that will correct economic injustice and…exploitation. [Therefore], his immediate point is that God’s kingdom will free the beleaguered workers from their exploitation and oppression.”

While Hendrick’s view is admittedly sensational, even Bernard Scott is in agreement that the fourth reason why the traditional interpretation of the parable must be rejected because, in his words, it seems to antagonize the hearer with “…a strong impression of injustice.”  Before revealing the parable’s most likely meaning, it would be worthwhile to comment on Jesus’ use of parabolic and metaphorical methods in Matthew 20:1-16.

The Labourers in the Vineyard is a similitude parable: “For the kingdom of heaven is like [emphasis added] a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard (v.1).”  The image of day labourers seeking work in the fields would have been quite accessible to Jesus’ first century Palestinian audience.  To truly understand the story’s parabolic effect as Jesus would have told it, exegetes insist that modern readers refrain from allegorizing the text, which sees the landowner as God and the payment as the last judgement.  As the Biblical commentators state, “…such a reading has the effect of letting the reader identify in advance with God, whose judgment is always right.  Without this allegorical approach, the hearer tends to identify with those first hired, and the story can have its parabolic effect.”

While verses 14b-16 serve to allegorize the original parable and are therefore thought to be a Matthean addition, the parabolic effect of the Labourers in the Vineyard nonetheless survives Matthew’s redaction.  Where the people expect to hear a tale of justice (i.e. those who worked the longest got the bigger reward) they instead hear a story that challenges their notions of justice and fairness.  Whereas Matthew preserves the parable’s original integrity, he does so because it is important for his religious community to see Christ’s love for the outsider.  And while Jesus probably intended this parable to encompass elements of God’s love for the outsider, it is not likely that this was the parable’s sole meaning.

Bringing together the work of several key Biblical commentators, Scott aptly rediscovers the parable’s original intended meaning.  The parable as a demonstration of free grace (an important biblical construct) falls flat because the landowner is not particularly generous.  Jesus’ parable is similar to an ancient rabbinic one told by Rabbi Abba bar Kahana in which a king rewards his servants for harvesting the ground under several different trees.  The servant that did the work under the king’s most favoured tree was paid more than the other labourers, although the king does not tell his servants which tree will gather the most reward because he needs the ground harvested under all of them.  The point is clear: the king pays different wages for different work but conceals the scale from the workers.  In the Matthean parable, the wages for different work are the same. “Thus, [the] parable subverts the mytheme equating wages from worth.”  The parable therefore is not a tale of justice, because the workers got what was promised but not what was deserved.  The reward in the parable is not the wage the labourers received but the invitation to work in the landowner’s field.

If grace factors into this parable in any way, it is here, for as Scott notes, “It is not wages or hierarchy that counts but the call to go into the vineyard.  The householder’s generosity lies not in the wage but in the need.”  The parable makes a claim that invitation alone is the way of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom is not automatically granted to those as a reward for a just and good life.  In fact, when the servants demand justice from the landowner one thinks of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23-25) and how when the king acted in justice, chaos, judgment and death was the result.  But God, who is just, acts out of mercy; the invitation to labour in the field is extended in mercy.  And when the upset workers demand justice, “…in justice they must depart.”

(Sources: “Matthew 20:1-15: A Parable of Invidious Comparison and Evil Eye Accusation” by John H. Elliot; Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus by Bernard Brandon Scott; The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted by Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.; The New Interpreter’s Bible by M. Eugene Boring; )

Writer: Rob Jeffery is a Salvationist who hails from the east coast of Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia) where he spent several years in the Canadian Armed Forces. Rob has a deep interest in all things geo-political and how The Salvation Army is called to serve in a hurting world. Pursuing excellence in leadership and discipleship is another area of study that excites him. Along with his wife Hannah and son James, Rob lives in Winnipeg where he attends the College for Officer Training.

1 Comment to Squeezing the drops

1. Rob’s interesting read of the parable resonates with a story Frank O’Dea, founder of Second Cup, told last week at the Salvation Army’s Christmas kettle kick-off in Winnipeg. (For Rubicon readers who are not Canadian–”Second Cup” is a large Canadian chain of coffee shops, rather like Starbucks and of about the same vintage).

   O’Dea was literally living on the streets of Toronto in the early 1970s. He was to a large extent the victim of his own addictions and bad choices, but even when he thought about reforming, it was also hard for him to hold out hope for a better future. Who was going to hire him with his poor work record?

   George, the owner of a paint store in the neighborhood of O’Dea’s flophouse, struck a deal with him. O’Dea could work on a day by day basis stocking the shelves. He was told that if he worked for an hour, George would pay him $5. If he worked for the day, George would pay him $5. An odd deal, but O’Dea took it and says George “saved my life.”

   Clearly it wasn’t an arrangement George should strike with his regular employees, but O’Dea had to get his foot in the workworld door and re-learn work habits. It was the sheer fact that George took the risk of including him in the business that made it possible for O’Dea to come back from the brink.

   Whether that’s a modern example of Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard, I don’t know; but it’s a great story anyway.
Jim Read on November 25th, 2008

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