Let’s be clear upfront – in today’s reading Jesus isn’t recommending HR policy, or advising on labor relations! The Lectionary actually adds a preamble telling us this is a parable. That first sentence isn’t in the text of Matthew’s Gospel. Why? – well Mathew’s original readers wouldn’t have any difficulty recognizing it as a parable. For us? – maybe we have a tendency to go down the rabbit hole because this is a scenario we can relate to. Everyone has an opinion on fair wages. Sheep and shepherds, seeds and mulberry bushes, not so much – there isn’t much risk of us getting caught up in the “reality” of those stories, because that’s not a world that we connect with. What we should get paid – now you have my attention!
But if it’s not about how we pay people, what is the point of the parable? The Church also helpfully gives us a first reading from Isaiah, which spells out the literal meaning – and incidentally shows us, once again, how Jesus builds on the revelation of earlier prophets, notably Isaiah (or the many Isaiahs, since there is more than one prophet in the book with that name – those details for another time…): “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
This links closely to the last two weeks where we have been given instruction on justice – how we should treat those who do wrong. God’s idea of justice is not the same as ours. We were told that as followers of Jesus, participants in the Kingdom, we are expected to act as God does, to forgive without limit (as best we can).
This week Jesus tweaks us in a different way.
He doesn’t suggest we can act as God does (in general) – God is so far different from us that would be impossible. But he does note our instinctive tendency to call for fairness in the way people are treated – we have a really hard time accepting that God is fundamentally unfair. Not just when it comes to forgiving people, but in any way that assumes some people are more deserving than others.
Jesus puts it in the most down-to-earth terms possible – the landowner (God) asks: “are you jealous because I am generous”. I suspect for most of us the honest answer is yes, although sheepishly because he makes our instincts look ridiculous. Our instincts are what they are, we didn’t chose them, and I don’t believe Jesus is trying to make us feel bad about ourselves – but he does want to bring us up short and force us to recognize that God is different – unbearably, utterly different.
Faced with this challenge we can perhaps sympathize with Paul’s conclusion that it would all be so much easier if we could give up this struggle and just move on to the next life – where presumably we won’t have to deal with these challenges. I fear there may be a mistake in the assumption underlying this thought, the idea that somehow a next life will be a gentle laze on the clouds, sipping chai latte and humming holy songs, freed of all this challenge and our human instincts. I can’t help thinking that being up close with Jesus, which is what Paul is looking forward to, is not going to be comfortable in that way. Paul knew the terrifying power of getting close to God, we have yet to be tested in that way.
As Paul muses on this thought, knowing perfectly well it’s not his choice to make, to stay or to go, he also tells us what the reason is for being here. We support one another – not to the extent that Paul supported all those who were placed into his care. But whoever is in our care, we stay for their sakes, not for our own. If we live for others then we are getting as close to behaving as God does, as it is possible for us in our human life.