Today's passage is Matthew 20:1-16.
Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a vinyard owner who hires men throughtout the day. To the first group he says he will pay a denarius.
To the next group he promises to pay whatever is right. To the following groups he doesn't say anything, just to go work.
At the end of the day, he pays the workings beginning with those who worked last and finishing with those who worked first. Everyone gets the same pay, which causes grumbling, which makes the owner say he can do what he wants with his money and chastises the complainers for being envious of his generosity.
Jesus finishes by saying the first will be last and the last first.
The parable of the workers in the vinyard is a "kingdom of heaven" parable, beginning the way those parables in Chapter 13 begin: "The kingdom of heaven is like..."
So how is this parable like the yeast, the pearl, the treasure in the field, the weeds among the wheat, and the fish in the net? How does it help me understand the kingdom of heaven better?
How does it better help me interpret my life in terms of the kingdom?
Once again Jesus shows me that my worldly and humanistic way of judging is not the same as his. The story of the vinyard workers is similar to Ezra's command to the returned exiles to divorce their pagan wives.
My first response to the mass divorce was that it wasn't fair. The workers who were first hired in today's passage say it isn't fair that they, who worked all day, should get the same wage as those who worked just one hour.
Everyday I hear cries of "It's not fair!" Usually it's from students but sometimes it's from teachers. What it really means is "I'm special.
" No one wants to be treated equally.
We all want special treatment because we're all selfish.
In teaching students a new skill, some students get it quickly, others take longer, sometimes months longer. When I explain that our goal as teachers is to give a grade of 100% to the students who master the skill, I always meet unmoveable resistance. They always say "It's not fair!" And always their argument is the same one as in today's passage: time.
Is someone who learns a language in a year a better communicator than someone who learns it in ten? No one can tell which speaker learned quickly and which learned slowly because they are both masters.
Is it fair that Paul, who killed Christians but then converted,
should go to heaven ahead of Peter?
When I first came to my school, I fired many teachers and, except for the teachers I fired, many people were happy. Then I began to change and started to work with teachers that many others wanted me to fire. I stopped firing teachers and expelling students.
Today I had the opportunity to explain this to a teacher.
I said that God sent mostly good teachers to my school but he also sent a few who weren't so good, which made some of the other teachers and some of the parents upset and want me to fire them.
I try to explain that these problem teachers are there to train us by helping us see our own deficiencies. Maybe we can help them be better teachers but more likely they will help us be better teachers and parents by teaching us more compassion, more tolerance, more acceptance. It's the same with problem students.
What I am learning so very slowly--time, again!--is to see life through God's eyes. Everyone is equal in a way that I struggle to accept.
I pay lip service to the idea of equality.
What I really want is the inequality of competition and false standards.
I don't want a level playing field. I want it tilted to my end. I want the inequality of money, gender, race, health, language, and power.
I want to be special. And if I'm not treated that way, I want to howl that "It's not fair!"
Today's passage convicts me of my humanism again.
And when I was explaining most of this to my teacher today I failed to mention the parable of today's passage. That parable was in my mind all day but when I talked to that teacher and confessed my failings with the examples I've already described I didn't point the teacher to that parable!
Lord, forgive me my desire to be special.
Forgive me for failing to see my true equality with everyone standing before you.
Give me your eyes and your spirit to serve those you have called to where I work.
