“Are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15b) Why ever would we human beings be envious because anyone is generous to other human beings? What would prompt Jesus to tell a parable where the main character even has to ask this question, especially if the person’s generosity to others did not take away from the justice and rights given to us? Most of us have heard the story behind this proclamation of generosity. The parable is Jesus’ story of the “Workers in the Vineyard” found in Matthew 20:1-16. As the story is related in Matthew, the land owner goes out at 6:00 A.M., the beginning of the work day, to find the necessary laborers to carry out the work that needs to be done, promising them the usually daily wage. As the day went on the land owner apparently decided that more workers were necessary to accomplish the day’s task and went out at 9:00 A.M. to recruit more workers, promising them “whatever is right.” He did this again at noon, at 3:00 and finally at 5:00 P.M., an hour before quitting time.
At the end of the day, the land owner told his manager to call the workers and give them their pay, beginning with the last hired. When the manager gave the last hired their days wages, the others, especially those who had put in a twelve hour day in the hot sun, just knew they would make much more for their labor. When they were paid what had been promised, they were angry and complained to the owner that they had been treated unfairly. His reply, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:13-13)
In Jesus mind and teaching, “the last will be first and the first last” never takes away from the first, it simply gives to the last what the master deems fair. Jesus, just as the Hebrew Prophets before him, always equates justice and mercy: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?
We all come into the world, as well as the work place, at different times. It’s as if we enter a room where a conversation is going on and we enter into that conversation as it continues. When we leave the room, when we pass from life through death to life in the nearer presence of our Lord, that conversation continues without our presence but with our having added to and taken from it, hopefully making the world a better place for God’s people.
Today, in the twenty-first century, it is important for us to again hear Jesus’ message of justice and mercy: to learn or remember that “unless all people are free, no one is free;” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), that giving the rights I already possess to those who do not does not take away my rights. The voting rights act that gave black Americans the right to vote did not take away my right to vote; the 19th Amendment 100 years ago that gave women the right to vote did not take away my right to vote. Allowing Buddhists and Jews and Muslims and others to practice their religion does not take away from my right to practice my Christianity.
One of my favorite prayers in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer is the “Prayer for the Whole Human Family.” I leave you with this sign of hope as we continue to “Seek and Serve God in all persons, loving or neighbor as ourselves.”
“O God, you made
us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with
compassion on the whole human
family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate
us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and
confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth;
that, in your good time, all nations
and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne. Amen.”
