MMy Dear People,

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has several metaphors in regards to the kingdom of Heaven. Today is another example, whereby Jesus is describing what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. This parable brings another mystery of the kingdom of Heaven into focus. Interpreters differ about the main thrust of the parable. For some, it is a story about the final judgment, when the positions of the first and the last will be reversed (20:26). For others, it summarizes the history of salvation, in which Israel served the Lord for many generations, and the Gentiles came to faith only in the messianic age. Still others read the parable as a lesson about conversion at various stages of life. All these interpretations have something to offer. As we read it, Jesus primarily intends to recount the historical drama of salvation as it climaxes with Gentiles being placed on equal footing with Jews as fellow members of the people of God (20:12),

The setting of the parable alternates between a vineyard estate and a village marketplace. The image of a vineyard tended by a landowner is a traditional motif from the Old Testament that depicts the Lord's cultivation and care for his people. Here the owner of the estate heads out to the marketplace at dawn to hire teams of laborers. The time frame of the parable stretches across the traditional workaday from sunrise to sunset.

The landowner contracts with workers for the usual daily wage. The Greek text refers to a Roman silver coin called a denarius. This was the going rate in Palestine for a single day of manual labor. Wages had to be paid out on a daily basis because the Torah required that hired help be given their earnings by sundown at the end of each workday (Deut. 24:14-15).

The hiring of additional help continues throughout the day. Just about every three hours—at nine o’clock, noon, and again at three o’clock—the vineyard owner makes additional trips to the marketplace to acquire more field hands. Each time he finds men standing around idle, hoping to be employed for at least some part of the day. With minimal negotiations, all agree to work for what is just and head off to the vineyard.

Surprisingly, a last effort is made to find new hires at five o’clock, roughly an hour before quitting time. Even at this late hour there are still some able-bodied workers standing around in need of employment. The landowner approaches them and asks why they remain idle with so little daylight left. Because no one has hired us, they respond, implying they are still available for work. These too are hired to finish out the day.

Finally, evening arrives and work is wrapped up in the vineyard. The foreman in charge of the day’s activities is told to round up the employees for the payment. He is instructed to pay the labor teams beginning with the last and ending with the first.

The five o’clock group steps forward, expecting to receive only one-twelfth of the standard daily wage, but surprisingly they are given a full amount. Consequently, when those hired first reach the front of the line they expect to receive more than the standard rate, and yet they too receive the usual amount and no more. This leads them to grumble against the owner of the vineyard. It strikes them as unfair to give equal pay in exchange for unequal amounts of work, especially when these early hires bore the day’s burden and the heat. If one hour of work earns you a silver coin, shouldn’t twelve hours of work earn you twelve silver coins?

In the midst of this complaint, the landowner takes one of the disgruntled workers aside and explains his actions. My friend, I am not cheating you, he begins. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? With these words, the laborer is reminded of his contract with the owner. The wage he consented to work for was fair, and payment has now been duly rendered to him. It hardly counts as cheating to not give someone more than a day’s pay for a single day’s work.

The point in dispute, then, is not the making of an unfair contract or the failure to follow through on its terms. The demands of justice have been satisfied with those hired at dawn. The real issue is whether the landowner was unfair in paying a full day’s wage to those who were hired only an hour before dusk. Should they have gotten the same pay as the early arrivals? The employer was free to do this, but he was not obliged to do it. Justice requires that the eleventh-hour employees are owed wages commensurate with their work, which means they were owed only a small fraction of the usual payment. But justice is not violated if the landowner, having met his contractual obligation, chooses to be generous with some who are undeserving of more money than that. To put it in mathematical terms, eleven-twelfths of the silver coin they received was pure unearned gift.

This vineyard owner adds a cautionary question: Are you envious because I am generous? In Greek, this is literally “Or is your eye evil because I am good? The key expression here is the “evil eye,” which is a Semitic idiom that describes someone who is envious, grudging, or culpably lacking in generosity. Another modern translation captures the sense of this nicely: “Or do you begrudge my generosity?” (Matt. 20:15).

The final line of the parable says something about the lesson it conveys with a slight variation on the statement that ended the preceding episode in 19:30. There, it pointed to a future reversal of the rich and the poor. Here, the first and the last are not economic classes but tenures of service in the Lord’s vineyard. Those hired first are paid last, and those hired last are paid first.

[Gospel of Matthew by Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente