A fair wage?

Today’s Gospel is one of those pesky parables Christ came up with to make his disciples think.

Of workers and money

It is Matthew 20:1-16, and it tells the story of a landowner who hires day labourers to work in his vineyard. One group he hires first thing in the morning, agreeing to pay them a normal day’s wage. Then he finds some more men looking for work late morning, another group mid-afternoon and yet another just an hour before sunset. At the end of the day, the landowner has the groups of labourers who worked only part of a day paid a full day’s wage. Those who started at the beginning of the day are paid the same: a full day’s wage. This latter group grumbles. The landowner tells them off, saying they are receiving what they had agreed to, no more and no less, that they are therefore being treated fairly.

There’s something so very human and very modern about this parable, isn’t there? I can just see modern labour unions kicking up a stink about such a situation. And at a personal level, there are so many examples I can think of where I’ve worked harder than someone else but been paid the same: what I had agreed to. On the face of it, our Western culture would say that first group of hard workers should receive a better reward. What about a bonus?

There are things we’re not told about these groups of workers. How come the later groups weren’t out looking for work first thing? Was one worker out drinking and carousing the night before and completely incapacitated that morning? Was another worker unable to get to the marketplace early because he spent those early morning hours caring from his elderly paralysed father? What do you think about the difference between these two men, are they equally deserving?

It isn’t easy, is it, to make straightforward judgements about fairness when money is involved?

Of heaven

In fact I think the underlying premise of this parable is actually easier to deal with. It is talking about getting an entry pass into heaven (whatever we understand heaven to be). I think many of us have a kind of generous compassion about the big things when often the smaller ones rankle. To use a melodramatic example, which of us would deny heaven to someone who has led a sinful life but has a genuine deathbed experience of repentance? At the most basic level it is no skin off our noses, and in our common humanity we can rejoice with that person.

And yet that common humanity tends to go out of the window when we’re talking about money. The trigger for the parable is that earlier in this Gospel, which takes place on the road to Jerusalem, we hear about the man who was told by Christ that to be perfect, he should:

‘…go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me.’ When the young man heard this, he went away with a heavy heart, for he was a man of great wealth.

These themes about money, simplicity and fairness echo through the Gospels: the lilies of the field, the prodigal son, the planks of wood in our eyes while we worry about our brother’s splinter. It seems to me we are being invited to measure our lives by beauty and compassion, not by money.

Of stumbling along

When I was a child, my understanding was all about “gentle Jesus meek and mild”, which is right for a child. But this isn’t the case at all. This is a demanding, uncompromising, challenging, often irascible man. It’s a hell of a task, to follow him. Especially as I know I’d be one of those workers grumbling about not getting more money because I was there first thing in the morning.

How about you?

Image by francesco sgroi

Elsewhere:

Christine’s post Embodying Intention seems to me to reflect some of this Gospel, in talking about gifts other than money. And Marian’s My life in the slow lane does more of the same.