Is God a land owner or a day laborer?

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The usual way Americans interpret Jesus' parables is surprisingly weird. Continuing our series "From Charity to Solidarity", Vince explains with a look at Jesus' Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard from Matthew 19-20. (Illustration by Lauren Rolwing for The Southeast Center For Cooperative Development)

SPEAKER NOTES

God of land owners or day laborers?

Story

• ::Picture:: of us in Niger
• In the summer of 2017, my wife Keziah and I and our boys visited my in-laws in Niger, West Africa, where my in-laws had spent many years of their lives working in a hospital (including some of Keziah’s childhood) ::picture OFF::
• It was wonderful for me to experience first hand the places and context and culture and people that had formed so much of my wife and her family, and that they had fallen in love with — not just to be told about all of that.
• BUT one of the days there was one of the more tiring and physically uncomfortable days of my life.
• It was the day the open air market was set up in town.
  • ::Picture:: of a Niger open air market
  • For any given town, at some regular interval of weeks or a month,
  • A market is set up, everything from clothes to meat.
  • By local producers,
  • Or by some producers who travel from town to town for each one’s market.
• An open air market in West Africa is culture shock for an urban American white person like me for a lot of reasons
  • Personal space expectations are different
  • The way people take turns is different
  • The way people line up is different
  • Bartering is more the norm than set prices
  • I don’t speak the language ::picture OFF::
• But even beyond culture shock, the open air market, just as a sensory experience, is overwhelming if you’ve never been to one before.
  • It is open air, and we are near the equator, so it is hot! Plus I’m wearing Wesley, who is nine months at the time, in a front pack.
  • The close compactness of all the seller stalls and buyers moving about means it’s loud and hard for me to even know what to listen to or where to put my attention.
  • Animals are being butchered and their meat is being prepared to cook over an open flame not 50 yards away from me, and that means very intense smells I am not used to.
• To my in-laws and wife, who had all experienced this before, this was just another part of our visit,
  • But to me, I was, admittedly, glad when we were ready to go back to the hospital campus, where we were staying.
• On the drive back, my mother in law Carol could, I think, notice on my face how overloaded my senses and mind had been,
  • She smiled and said, “The market is a lot, isn’t it?” She seemed to want to acknowledge me as a real trooper,
  • And then she said THE thing that has stayed with me more than anything else from our whole visit.
  • “But it’s so good to have that experience of how most of the people in the world get their basic necessities for the next week.”
• That felt like an Epiphany to me
  • What an important perspective to have! She was so right!
  • Not just about Galmi, Niger in West Africa —
    • but in South Asia and in the Middle East and in South America, and across the world
  • My grid for getting my necessities is going to the grocery store that’s open 24 hours a day.
  • Increasingly, my grid for getting my necessities is just ordering stuff on my phone to be delivered to me.
    • And in the euphoria of that ease, the line between necessity and indulgence blurs
  • But for most of the world, for most of history and still today, it is not the 24 hour grocery store or Amazon or DoorDash,
    • Life revolves around the open air market.
  • My experience is the weird one.

WEIRD

• And “weird" is actually precisely the word.
• Social Psychologist Joseph Henrich popularized using the word “WEIRD” to talk about the perspective I was coming from as an outsider to the “open air market” by turning it into an ::acronym::
  • Western
  • Educated
  • Industrialized
  • Rich
  • Democratic
• As someone who grew up in America — a Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic nation — that’s my perspective!
  • And, globally and historically, that’s a profoundly odd perspective!
  • It’s weird!
  • We don’t realize this. I default to thinking my perspective is the norm, because Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic cultures are dominant.
  • But dominant doesn’t mean normative.
  • I am weird.
  • If you grew up in America, you also are weird.
  • That doesn’t make us bad! Democracy and education are amazing things!
  • But globally and historically our perspective is not the norm.
  • So the acronym spelling WEIRD is brilliant. ::slide → acronym OFF::

Matthew 19-20

• So I thought of this epiphany about being WEIRD the other week when I was presented with an unexpected approach to the scripture we’re going to visit today: a parable Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew.
• I’ll tell you why in a minute. But ::let’s read it first.:: Jesus said…

19:29 “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

30 “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. 20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a [day’s wage] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a [day’s wage]. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a [day’s wage]. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a [day’s wage]? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” ::slide → scripture off::

• The read of this “parable of the workers” that most of us would be familiar with if we’ve spent time in American churches is:
  • God is generous, like the landowner
  • And if we have a generous God, then some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.
• And I like that message!
  • That’s great!
  • Generosity totally supports my image of a Loving God.
  • If the encouragement is, “do likewise; be generous like God,” then great!
• But the different approach to this parable I was presented with recently has me wondering if that message is a ::WEIRD:: read of this parable.
  • As WEIRD people, we tend to associate God with the most dominant figures in Jesus’ parables — God is the land owner, the master.
  • That feels right to us as people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic nations.
  • And so we tend to take at face value those dominant characters — if the story says the land owner is generous, then the land owner is generous. So let’s be generous.
• But it’s interesting: when Jesus wasn’t speaking in parables, he usually has his sternest words for the dominant of society — the rich, the masters, the land owners.
  • Right before this in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
  • And that comment is after his exchange with a rich young man, who, it is said, “walked away sad” because he had great wealth and Jesus told him “sell your possessions and give the money to the poor.”
• And so some Biblical scholars suggest that Jesus’ audience of 1st century Jewish masses wouldn’t have the same knee-jerk association of “the landowner = God” that we do — that’s our WEIRDness coming out. ::slide → WEIRD off::
  • The masses following Jesus were day laborers, fishermen, poor and working class folx.
  • When Jesus starts telling this story to that audience, what are they immediately thinking or feeling? Who in their daily lives are they imagining when they hear the different roles in the story? Who are they siding with? Who’s their hero?
  • They would more likely associate the wealthy land owners and masters in Jesus’ parables with the Roman Empire authorities oppressing them, not with God.
• And if that’s the case, this means a very different interpretation of the parable of the workers
  • Is this story about a generous landlord?
  • Or is Jesus provoking the crowd with a likely story that a wealthy landowner would tell about himself?
  • From this perspective, the details of the story pop in a different way.
  • Let’s take a look…
• Have you ever experienced or witnessed a day laborer situation?
  • I live right by the ::Home Depot:: at McCormick and Devon, and you sometimes have it there early in the morning.
  • A bunch of people in need of work go to a place where business owners are picking up supplies for the day, and they hope that they might get hired for a day.
  • As the morning pushes on into the afternoon, if you’re not yet hired, hope fades, so people start to disappear,
    • trying a different location,
    • or maybe resorting to begging.
    • It’s a harsh reality. ::Home Depot off::
  • If this landowner in Jesus’ parable is so generous, why doesn’t he hire everyone who's there early in the morning?
  • From the day laborer’s perspective, this is not a generous landowner, this is a landowner who is trying to hire as few workers as possible.
  • From the day laborer’s perspective, the question ::“why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?”:: is incredibly condescending!
    • It reminds me of propaganda today that blames the plight of the poor on laziness.
    • Doing nothing?! I’m trying to get work! I’m trying to feed my family!
    • But the landowner has work for you, so you grit your teeth and bear the condescension.
• And then there’s this curious bit about the landowner instructing the foreman to ::pay the workers beginning with the last hired::
  • Why such a specific instruction? What’s the point of that?
  • The point seems to be so the landowner can perform his generosity. So everyone sees it.
  • If he paid his workers in the order they were hired, no one sees how generous he’s being.
  • But with the appearance of generosity,
    • the landowner can pat himself on the back,
    • while the day laborers are pitted against each other about their pay.
  • And so the landowner’s system stays intact —
    • with day laborers locked in conflict with one another,
    • they are distracted from the true problem: the cruelty of a system that only benefits those on top.
  • Someone highlighted in our chat a couple weeks ago that we have a situation like this in the city of Chicago right now.
    • There are woefully limited resources for our city to help our unhoused neighbors,
    • But because our system is weighted in favor of those already on top, the natural consequence is
      • NOT that the richest 1% are required to pay a fairer share to help,
      • RATHER it’s that homeless new-arrivals from Latin America are being pitted against homeless long-time Chicagoans (who are majority black due to decades of disinvestment in historically black neighborhoods).
      • And all are distracted from fighting the system that oppresses them both.
• This alternative read of the parable of the workers makes us wonder:
  • For Matthew’s Gospel, maybe Jesus’ famous line (both preceding and following this parable) that ::“the last will be first and the first will be last”:: is a subversive statement
    • Like he’s saying that with a wink and a nod to his audience that text alone doesn’t quite capture.
    • “So these landowners want to perform generosity to pit us against each other by putting the last first and the first last… well, in the Kingdom of heaven, they’ll be the first who become last.”
    • That’s got a bite to it!
  • If, as the parable begins, “this is what the Kingdom of heaven is like…”,
    • then Jesus’ “Kingdom” is not a rule that papers over injustice with sunshine and roses,
    • it’s a rule where injustice is subversively exposed,
    • which inevitably comes with conflict and struggle and the need to make courageous choices and be countercultural.
  • That subversive-ness actually seems to match more with Jesus’ vibe in what we read right before he launches in to this parable —
    • honoring the courageous choices of leaving family or status in order to follow his way of “love of neighbor” rather than follow the “winner-take-all” way of the empires of the world.
    • The land owner’s “I can do whatever I want with my money” comment doesn’t fit that at all!
  • And subversive-ness matches with what scholars know about the art of teaching in parables, Jesus’ favorite kind of story
    • Parables aren’t the same as fables —
      • Fables are teachings with a moral lesson that is the same every time you hear it (the moral lesson of the tortoise and the hare is always "slow and steady wins the race”)
      • But parables are stories meant to provoke a response from the hearer… so the action they imply can change depending on the hearer
    • This alternative read, trying to take the perspective of the day laborer, certainly provokes a response, doesn’t it?
    • You can imagine Jesus doing a more straightforward “God is generous” teaching like what we default to hearing from the WEIRD perspective, and people being like, “yawn, heard that message before”
    • But I have to believe that, given the crowds that followed him, Jesus is delivering so much more than “yawn” messages. ::slide → last first OFF::

Charity → Solidarity

• I want to put this in the context of our theme for this spring as a church
  • ::Moving from a charity mindset to a solidarity mindset::
• As we’ve talked about, that is
  • Away from addressing economic injustice from outside or above the struggle (charity)
  • Toward addressing economic injustice recognizing how all working people are inside the struggle together (solidarity)
  • There is an urgent call for all of the 99% of people in the world who have to work for a living to come together in one-ness of purpose against an economy that
    • works great for the few at the top,
    • but exploits the poor and the planet,
    • and exhausts the middle class.
  • Economic injustice cannot be fully dismantled through charity from the top that trickles down,
  • We must build solidarity and power from the bottom up that changes the game.
• Bringing those terms to the parable of the workers,
  • What we see in the parable from our default WEIRD perspective today is a lesson in charity.
    • Which is fine! And can motivate some good.
  • But what we see in the parable from the perspective of the day laborer is a far more impactful lesson in solidarity.
    • If all those exploited and exhausted by this system that only benefits a few...
      • join together,
      • see our commonality,
      • refuse the tactics that pit us against each other,
      • and build the power necessary to demand change...
    • Such solidarity has the potential to change the world.

God

• I mentioned that just prior to what we read, Jesus has said “it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
• The disciples are shocked at Jesus’ strong words, and ask, “who then can enter the Kingdom of God?”
• And ::Jesus replies:: with another of his more famous lines:

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

• Feminist Theologian Catherine Keller says we often unthinkingly read this as “all things are probable,”
  • and so we over-spiritualize it to be an encouragement toward magical thinking to pray for some specific outcome we’re attached to, because maybe anything can be probable with God
  • But that’s not what Jesus says. This is not about magical thinking.
• Keller says the comfort of God in Jesus’ words here is not meant to limit us to pray for one specific outcome, but rather meant to expand our imaginations to see many possible outcomes for future good being presented to us by God.
  • God is the God of the possible.
• It feels to us
  • like a rich man will never become one who gives up their riches for the sake of others,
  • like our system will never be one that benefits all rather than just the few on top,
  • like I personally can’t ever change my path or chart a new way,
  • like everything is going to hell in a hand basket,
• But with God, the glib future we fear is NOT pre-written!
  • “With God, there are possibilities!”
• What a comfort! What a call!
  • To be a balm to our wounds from being exploited or exhausted
  • Because the way modern life is ordered by default I just feel overcome with cynicism
• But the God of the possible is always calling to us
  • To refuse reactivity and autopilot and the status quo,
  • When we stop to make room to listen to God, and believe that we can be guided by God personally and collectively, in prayer, in our intuitions toward love,
  • We can make courageous choices that feel impossible.
  • We can sway the direction of the world in ways that feel impossible.
  • Toward justice, toward healing, toward equity, toward a solidarity economy that works for all, not just for a few. ::slide → possible OFF::

Pitch group

• You may have heard me mention over the last month that the way our church is trying to make space to listen to God’s leading for us, for our part in this struggle, is convening a small group.
• You can get on the contact list with this ::QR code::, or just tell me after service
• It’s beginning as a discussion group, as we share our struggles and stories and discover our commonality,
• And eventually it will transition to a group that is going to lead this whole church in action.
• In an effort of solidarity, not just charity.
• We’ve had one meeting so far, but by no means is this group closed to more people joining us.
• The point of this is to build bottom up power, which is a strength in numbers game, so if you are at all compelled, PLEASE join us!
• Let me pray for us…