WELCOME TO THE SUMMER SERIES WEDNESDAY!
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In addition to these Wednesday posts on the parables in A Beautiful Year, paid subscribers have access to weekly recorded conversations during Parables & Pentecost.
At the conclusion of this series, pastors, book group or Bible study leaders are welcome to use these posts as the basis for 6-week sermon series or with small groups. All you need to do is give credit to the Cottage and encourage people to read A Beautiful Year.
Today, we explore the story of the Laborers in the Vineyard in our summer series on Parables and Pentecost.
I invite you to read and reflect on this parable. How do you feel about this story? Where are you in the story? Does this parable challenge you — and us — at this moment in history?
Today’s excerpt is courtesy of my publisher from the audiobook version of A Beautiful Year, “The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.” If you are reading the book, it is found on pages 236-241; in the e-book, this parable is in the Pentecost section.
(You can order A Beautiful Year as an audiobook, an e-book, or in hardcover. Please click here for ordering and format options.)
Listen, read, and enjoy. Explore the suggestions below for further reflection and understanding — as you choose. This isn’t a homework assignment! This is an invitation and a guide. Think about all three topics or pick one. Leave comments and observations. Read the comments of others and learn from the community. Reply to each other. I’ll jump into the thread a few times during the day.
Ask questions, wonder together.
THE STORY
The parable itself is found only in Matthew 20:1-15:
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.
When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went.
When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 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?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.”
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.”
When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 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.”
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? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
WHAT IS THIS STORY ABOUT?
How would you explain this story to someone who had never heard it before? What’s the point? Is there more than one point to this parable?
Do you like the story? Do you not like it? Does it puzzle you? Anger you? Make you resentful? What emotions does it stir? Be honest!
What do you think a person who’d never heard this story before make of it?
Have you ever considered this parable in light of the story of Cain and Abel (as I link the two in the reading)? Does that switch up the story for you?
Do you think it is better described as a moral parable, an example parable, or a challenge parable? It is tempting to say “all three,” but which of these styles is most prominent?
THE STORY AND YOUR STORY
WHAT DOES THIS STORY MEAN TO YOU NOW?
When did you first hear this story? How many times do you think you’ve heard it? Have you heard it in other forms (film, novel, poetry, art, music) in addition to the biblical story?
Have you ever had an experience like this? Have you ever been on the short end of something you deem unfair? Or an unexpectedly generous gift you didn’t know was coming?
To which character do you most relate? Who garners your sympathy? Who is the hero of this story? The villain? Who do you like the most?
How has your understanding of this story changed over the years? What stands out for you differently today than at other times in your life? As you re-read it or listen to my reflections on it, what surprised you? Is there something you’ve never noticed before?
THE STORY AND OUR STORY
During the first week of this series, John Dominic Crossan joined with the paid subscriber community in an online conversation about the parables.
We focused on how the parables challenged empire, how they present an alternative to Christian nationalism, and how they widen our vision toward evolutionary — and revolutionary — possibilities for a sustainable, peaceable future for humankind.
In his book, The Power of Parable, Crossan interprets this parable somewhat differently than do I in A Beautiful Year. He presses us to consider the owner from an alternative perspective.
Here’s Professor Crossan’s view:
How is the parable of the Vineyard Workers to be interpreted? In other words, how do we imagine the oral audience of Jesus in the first-century Roman-controlled Jewish homeland would have responded to it?
I propose….that at least some, most, or all of Jesus’s audience would have raised questions not just about the owner’s generosity, but about the system’s perversity. How is it that at high harvest in the vineyards, when, with time pressing, labor should have been at an absolute premium and paying top denarius, there were so many day laborers still looking for work when it was almost sunset? Strange, is it not, how all that turned out for the owner’s and not the workers’ advantage?
The intention and purpose of that challenge parable were to raise the audience’s consciousness about the distinction between personal or individual justice and injustice (the master), on the one hand, and structural or systemic justice and injustice (the economy), on the other.
If everyone talked only about the owner and not the system, Jesus’s challenge would have failed.
HOW DOES THIS PARABLE CHALLENGE YOU — AND US — AT THIS SPECIFIC MOMENT IN HISTORY?
Look at the two images in this post — the Orthodox icon of the parable and the photograph of the migrant workers. Where is God in the first? In the second? What happens when you change the focus of the story?
Can the two interpretations of the parable both be “right”? Is that even the question to ask vis-a-vis parables?
The parable is more of an “challenge parable” than was last week’s Prodigal Son. What is most challenging for you? For your community? What’s the challenge for NOW socially, politically, or economically?
What does this parable say to the global rise of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism? To Elon Musk, who is now the first trillionaire in the entire history of the human race?
An example parable may be good, a challenge parable is a far more importantly subversive operation. Why? Because challenge parables humble our prejudicial absolutes, but without proposing counter-absolutes in their place. They are tiny pins dangerously close to big balloons. They push or pull us into pondering whatever is taken totally for granted in our world.
— John Dominic Crossan
INSPIRATION
These are immigrant times
And the lines are long,
The signs for jobs few,
The songs sadder, the air meaner.
Everyone is hungry.
Everyone is willing.
Jobs are not jobs but lives lived
Hard at the work of being human.
These are immigrant times,
And the lines are long again.
― Alberto Ríos, Immigrant Centuries
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Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.
They are children, women, and men who leave or who are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being, more.
— Pope Francis
