Matthew 20:1-16

There are parables of grace and parables of judgment. This is a parable of grace. And it’s a parable of judgment. As it turns out, at least in this story, grace and judgment are inseparable. This is its lesson for us: our response to God’s grace is our judgment. To paraphrase Jesus’ warning, "Be careful how you judge the grace of God, for the judgment you give it will be the judgment you get from it."

Implicit in the parable’s dialectic of grace and judgment is the question of fairness. When we first hear the story of the workers in the vineyard, fairness—rather than grace or judgment—may be the first thing to pop into our minds. Is the landowner being fair to all the workers? Aren't the first-hired workers right to protest? In other words, is God, in particular God’s grace, fair?

The first workers certainly feel that they've been cheated. Why? Well, obviously, because they worked longer than the last workers hired, and they all got the same pay. That’s not fair. More work, more pay: that’s fair. At least, that’s one way of judging what’s fair.

There’s another way of judging what’s fair. The landowner in the story chooses this way: if you make a contract and stick to it, then, you are being fair.

This way of being fair is what the Bible means by "righteousness." In the Bible, righteousness usually means being true to one's word, fulfilling a promise. Biblical righteousness is not primarily about conformity to an abstract set of moral values. It's mainly about relationships, promises, agreements and covenants. A person is righteous when he or she keeps his or her side of a covenant. Righteousness is "covenant faithfulness," as the Biblical scholars often put it. It's about being trustworthy within the parameters of a relationship.

Given this understanding of righteousness, the landowner clearly acted righteously. He paid the workers what he had promised to pay them, what they had agreed to. He was faithful to the covenant that he had made with them. In that sense, he was fair.

Now, if he chooses to make different agreements with different workers, isn’t that his prerogative? After all, it's his money. Can't he spend it as he chooses? If he chooses to give the last workers as much of his own money as he gave the first workers, isn't that his choice? What's unfair about that? As long as he’s faithful to his side of whatever agreement he makes, he is not being unfair.

That said; let’s consider this parable in an historical context. It was interpreted by the early church to be about Jews and Gentiles. Allegorically speaking, the Jews were the first workers, and the Gentiles the last. The payment that each gets is eternal life; God is the landowner.

The Jews, the first people of God, had endured generations of struggle in being faithful to God. They weren't always faithful, of course, but they had been in the fight for a long time before Jesus came. The early followers of Jesus—composed almost entirely of Jews—believed that through him God had opened the covenant to all people, including the Gentiles, the non-Jews. Jews and Gentiles were alike members of the new people of God, joined in a new covenant with God through Jesus. Within the context of that new covenant, all received the one and equal benefit of new and eternal life.

Now, we can imagine that the first people of God, the Jews, might be a little put out about that. They might say something like, "Sure, the Gentiles can have eternal life, but shouldn't we get more...more eternal life? After all, we've labored in God's vineyard for 'lo, these many years,' and these Gentiles just now come in and they get the same as we do. That's not fair."

In their complaint we can hear echoes of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. As you may remember, he comes to his father, who had just welcomed back the wayward brother, and complains, "Lo, these many years, I have served you, and now this son of yours comes home, having wasted his inheritance, and you give him a party! That's not fair."

But what is fair when it comes to eternal life? This is the question that the parable asks metaphorically: not what are fair labor practices, but what is fair with regard to eternal life? For once the import of eternal life strikes home, all reality gets redefined, including what fairness means.

Let me put it this way. Given the transcendent value of eternal life, nothing we can do will ever be enough to earn it for us. It can always and only be ours as a gift. Nothing but God’s generosity can make eternal life available to us.

The value of eternal life so exceeds the value of anyone's labor that it’s grossly misleading to call it a "payment." This so-called payment of eternal life can only be a gift.

So, the fairness in eternal life being given to all without distinction is that no one deserves it or can deserve it. Because no one deserves or can deserve it, no one is cheated when it comes to all as a gift. As a gift is the only way anyone can receive it, regardless of the effort one man have expended on its behalf.

Now, we may think we deserve eternal life more than Joe or Sally. And maybe in a relative sense we do. But, we’re not talking relativity here; we’re talking about the absolute value of eternal life, a life that we have, in our best moments, only tasted. The more we come to perceive the value of this gift, the more reluctant we will be to tie its reception to our labor.

Eternal life categorically transcends this life. Its morality transcends the always-ambiguous morals of creatures like us. To cling to one’s moral deserts in the light of that reality is delusional at best.

In the gospel, all are absolutely equal. The first are equal to the last, males and females, young and old. These distinctions are without a difference when it comes to the absolutely unmerited, and unmeritable, grace of God, in which we all stand as equally God’s children.

Now, having said that, while this absolute equality of the gospel is paramount, it does not mean that relative differences have no meaning and that we shouldn’t observe them. In the early church, the Jewish Christians, and the original disciples of Jesus, and his mother, for example, were given a relative honor above others. But this relative honor did not affect the absolute equality of all under the one grace of God in Christ. Or the pope, the bishop of Rome, as the supposed successor to Peter, has traditionally been afforded a relative honor as "the first among equals." But this is always a relative honor that does not touch the absolute equality of all under the gospel.

Closer to home, we periodically have people visit this church, and thankfully some choose to return and stay. How do we treat them? As equals with us in the one grace of God in Christ? I hope so. And if not, we need to work on that, because that is what they are. The first is equal to the last. But/and this absolute equality does erase the relative differences that exist among us. While equal in the gospel grace, newcomers—like me, for example—will not have the wisdom that comes with the experience of living in this community for some time, as others of you do. This relative difference, and others like it, needs to be respected, but never such that it occludes the one light of Christ shining equally on us all.

Like any other community, the church needs to repeatedly work to strike a balance between difference and equality. For us Christians, the differences do not, and cannot be allowed to, affect the equality. For our equality is grounded in the one grace of God given to all in Christ, the grace of new and eternal life in him. Indeed, it is this one gift of life given to us all without distinction that the relative differences among us are meant to serve.

Comments? Reflections? Questions? Please e-mail tpce@ipa.net