Matthew 20:1-16: Our economy of works and God's economy of grace

There is something wonderful about the parables that Jesus used to teach those around him.  I think their effectiveness is rooted in our ability to relate to them in some way.  Whether we find ourselves identifying with the "hero" or the "villian", through that act of identification we learn something about ourselves.  Sometimes we learn that we too are desperately in need of mercy, while other times we learn that too often we fail to extend to others the very mercy that we ourselves have received. 
That is the situation I find myself in as I read the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.  When I am truly honest with myself, I find that this parable is a battleground between my own captalistic, free-market way of seeing the world around me, and God's economy of grace.  It's not that I have given up the ghost on free-market economies.  It's just that too often I think I try to apply the world's way of seeing things, to God's way of doing things.  This is one of those parables that causes me to rethink how I envision grace, and in the process to reconsider how I see others who like myself, are so dependent on its accessibility. 
I think the tendency to see this parable in economic terms is present because the context itself is one of labor micro-economics.  All of us have at some point in our lives probably held a job that paid by the hour, and so we know that the whole system that determines compensation is based on some combination of how long you work, and the skills you possess to complete the task at hand.  The parable starts out innoucuous enough, with the landowner of a vineyard hiring some day-laborers.  I should point out that the vineyard had a long iconic history as a way of describing Israel, particualarly in the book of Isaiah, so while as I mentioned the parable starts out innocent enough, we still imagine that when its all said and done there are going to be some deeper meanings that we can take away from this quanit little story about a picking grapes.
As we probably suspected would eventually happen, the story begins to get tense when the landowner makes several more trips throughout the day to pick up more workers.  The tension comes to a head when the end of the day arrives and the wages are distributed to the workers.  Imagine the surprise of the workers who had toiled all day, in the hot sun no less, when they received the same amount as those who had just started working a few hours ago!      
Our knee-jerk reaction, or at least my knee-jerk reaction, is to immediately sympathize with the laborers who put in a full day's work.  I mean, what kind of system is this?  How is it fair that a few hours of work merits the same pay as an entire day spent toiling in the heat?
The reason I have never been able to fully appreciate the message of this parable is summed up succintly by that word that I used in the previous sentence, merit.  You see, this isn't a story about merit, it's a story about the reversal of human expectations in the kingdom of God.  Lest we think that it is actually about merit, there are a few things that we should consider more closely:
- Those who worked the entire day received the exact wage that they had agreed to when they were first hired.  If there is any injustice here, it is not because these workers have received less than they deserved.  In fact, they received exactly what they were told they would receive, the standard wage for a day's work (in this context a denarius). 
- Those who are picked up later are available because of a lack of work elsewhere.  For some reason, I have always made the assumption that these men were lay-abouts, the bottom of the barrel sort of worker that the landowner basically presses into service.  Actually it is quite the opposite, as the landowner asks one of the men directly "why do you stand here idle all day?", to which the man replies "because no one has hired us."  (Matthew 20:6-7)  What we have here is not a lack of initiative, but rather a lack of opportunity.
- A lot has changed since 1st-century Palestine.  Today we have things like unemployment insurance, welfare, and social security to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens, and those at a disadvantage are taken care of.  In the context of this parable, there was no such thing.  Sure, the religious helped out when they could through charitible giving, but there was not a systematic safety net administered by the government.  To put it simply, if you didn't work you didn't eat, and you probably didn't have a roof over your head for very long either.  As we have learned through our nation's current economic struggles, the lack of employment is not always connected to laziness, but sometimes is a product of the lack of opportunity.  In Jesus' world, the lazy and the down-on-their-luck were in the same metaphorical boat.  Poverty, hunger, and homelessness were indiscriminate. 
Taking these things into consideration, it is easier to see that there is more at work here than originally meets the eye.  In going out multiple times in search of laborers, the landowner is actually showing a type of grace that manifests itself in the opportunity to earn a living.  Many commentators believe that he goes out not because the job is bigger than he originally thought, but because he is wanting to employ as many people as possible.  It sounds ludicrous at first, especially when considered in light of sound business principles, but then again how many business owners do you know that pay someone a full day's wage for a few hours of work?  If we truly want to understand what Jesus is trying to tell us, we have to lay aside our understanding of how the world works, and instead embrace Jesus words at the very beginning of the passage, "the kingdom of heaven is like..."  Jesus is not describing some business venture in the world of agriculture.  If he were, the problem of scarcity would surely come crashing down on a landowner who hired too many workers, and paid them too much.  The whole point of what Jesus is trying to say is that in the kingdom of heaven, the problem of scarcity does not exist.  Many of us have to compete for contracts or other types of business in our jobs.  We compete because there is only so much business to go around.  Similarly, we compete for jobs themselves because as we have learned all too well recently, there are not enough of them to go around.  However, we must diligently guard against allowing the way we view things in the workplace to slowly creep into the way we view things in our churches.  We must never compete for grace the way we compete for business or for jobs. 
I doubt that those laborers who worked all day would ever admit to trying to deny the other workers an opportunity to feed their families.  And yet, when you boil it down that's exactly what they were doing.  Because they viewed the other laborers as competition, they objected to the showing of grace to those men (and perhaps women, who knows).  The ironic thing about it is that they were the first to be shown grace, the moment that they were selected by the landowner to work in the vineyard.  "But they earned that money fair and square!" you may be thinking.  True enough, but only because they were given the opportunity to work. 
Theories abound as to who Jesus was "really talking to" when he taught using this parable.  Perhaps he was trying to send a message to the original twelve, the apostles who, on seeing so many other disciples begin to follow Jesus, were jockeying for position and favor.  Or, maybe Jesus was speaking to Jewish-Christians whom he knew would be more than a little unsettled by the future prospect of Gentiles joining their ranks.  It may even be that he was simply speaking to those "lifers" who looked suspiciously on anyone whose sudden, near-death conversion seemed to closely resemble the workers who put in little work, but received substantial wages nonetheless.  Whomever Jesus was trying to reach through this parable- and whether or not it was any or all of the aforementioned we can all certainly agree that on the most fundamental level he was speaking to all of us- His message resonates to this day.  You see, it's not really about the laborers.  It's about a God who continuously searches for more laborers to work in his vineyard.  It's about a God who gives us opportunities not because he has to, but because he wants to.  It's about a God who gives to us based on our need, not on what we have earned.  And most of all, it's about a God whose economy of grace has never been, and will never be subject to the laws of scarcity.