TRANSLATION MATTHEW 20:1

For the Rule of heaven is like a landowner who went out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the workers for a denarius a day, he sent them into the vineyard. About nine in the morning he went out again, he saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace. He said to them, “You go into the vineyard too, and I’ll see you right.” He went out again at noon and at three in the afternoon, and did the same. Around five o’clock he went out and found others standing there. He said to them, “How come you’re standing here idle all the day?” “Nobody has hired us,” they told him. He said to them, “You go into the vineyard as well.”

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the workers and pay them their dues, starting with the last through till the first.” When they came, those who had worked from around five o’clock received one denarius. When those who had worked from daybreak came, they also received one denarius. But when they received it they began to whinge about the landowner, “These latecomers worked one hour, and you’ve made them equal to us who have lifted a day’s load and borne its heat! But he responded to one of them,”Friend, I’m not being unfair to you. Didn’t you settle with me for one denarius? So take what is yours and go. I want to give this last man the same as you., Am I breaking the law by doing what I like with my own money? Or do you have a bad eye because I have a good heart? In the same way, the last will be first and the first last.

I suppose this might be used today as an example of what the Tory government of the UK calls “levelling up.” The key to it is, that the landowner considers a fair wage as what a man needs to keep himself and family alive for a day, rather than a payment for hours worked. One guesses he might find not too many workers waiting at daybreak the following day.

One might say that in the Rule of heaven people are paid according to needs not deeds, and everyone has enough. “From each according to ability; to each according to need,” as that great bible scholar Karl Marx proposed.

This parable is a masterpiece. Jesus, living in a society of landowners and wage-labourers, would have heard many stories about workers and vineyard owners. There would already have been a popular form for such stories, involving an original agreement and how it was or was not kept, with typical speeches by both sides. Jesus uses this format to tell an outrageous story about a boss who only ever pays a full day’s wage. How can this be true? How can this madman and his business survive far less thrive?

It is a narrative that pushes the hearer to question the very nature of work, of possession, of generosity, of justice; and of God. The comfortable assumption of believers that because of the length of their commitment or importance of their work they will have pride of place in the Rule of God, may turn out to be wrong. Just think how many “pearly gates” jokes rest on this reversal: the priest complains that his heavenly transport is only a Ford whereas his former cleaning woman has a Lamborghini, but he is told how lucky he is by the Pope who arrives on a bicycle.

Sincere pupils of Jesus are delighted to think that God’s rule will be very different from that of the UK government. Jesus suggests that it may be more profoundly different than they imagine.