Daily Lesson for October 29, 2020

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 20 verses 1 through 16:

“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 the usual daily wage, 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 the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 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 the usual daily wage? 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 I was in high school and college I often heard this story used to talk about grace and heaven and how the door to heaven is always open -- even unto the last hour.

That may all be true. But the interpretation tells you a lot more about the context I was hearing this story expounded upon in than it does about the meaning of the story itself.

Read through white, upper-middle class eyes, and you maybe see this as an unfair parable, but then say, "But heaven is not fair -- it's grace."

Ok.

But read it through the eyes of the unemployed. Read it through the eyes of the chronically dispossessed, and you probably have a very different reading on this text -- and I think a far more authentic one.

Then this story becomes one not so much about grace as about justice. It changes the terms from what is fair and equal to what is right and equitable. Read the story with those eyes and you see not only the workers working all day in the vineyard, but also those sitting in the marketplace, hoping and almost begging that somebody will hire them -- so much so that they, unlike the first hired, don't have the power to bargain for their wage.

Someone once said parables are "earthly stories with heavenly meanings". I imagine whoever said that never had to wait in line to get hired for a single day's wage. No. To me now, this is an earthly story with an earthly meaning. And its point is not an unjust heaven, but a more just earth.

So, how about you? How do you read this story? It says a lot.

NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow's Lesson will come from Luke 19.