(taken from Hard Sayings of the Bible)
The Rate for the Job? (Mt 20:14-15)
One of the complaints that right-living and religious people made about Jesus arose from his treatment of the more disreputable members of society. They might have agreed that such persons should not be entirely excluded from the mercy of the all-loving God. Even for them there was hope, if they showed by practical repentance and unquestionable amendment of life that they were not beyond redemption. But not until such evidence had been given could they begin to be accepted as friends and neighbors. Jesus, however, accepted them immediately; he did not wait to see the outcome before he committed himself to them. This was disturbing; it was even more disturbing that he seemed to think more highly of them than of those who had never blotted their public copybook. He gave the impression that he actually preferred the company of the rejects of society; he not only made them feel at home in his company, so that they felt free to take liberties with him that they would never have thought of taking with an ordinary rabbi, but even accepted invitations to share a meal with them and appeared genuinely to enjoy such an occasion. When he was challenged for this unconventional behavior, his reply was that this was how God treated sinners; and he told several parables to reinforce this lesson.
One of these parables tells of the man who hired a number of casual laborers to gather the grapes in his vineyard when the appropriate time of year came round. It is a disconcerting parable on more levels than one because it seems to defend the unacceptable principle of equal pay for unequal work. There are certain seasons when a farmer or a vinegrower requires a large supply of labor for a short period. In the economic depression from which most of Palestine suffered in the time of Jesus, anyone who wanted such a short-term supply of labor was sure of finding it. The vinegrower in the parable had only to go to the village marketplace and there he would find a number of unemployed men hanging around in hope that someone would come and offer them a job.
At daybreak, then, this vinegrower went to the marketplace and hired several men to do a day’s work for him gathering grapes. The agreed rate for such a day’s work was a denarius, which was evidently sufficient to keep a laborer and family at subsistence level for a day. Apparently the vinegrower wanted the job completed within one day. As he considered the amount of work to be done and the speed at which the men were working, he decided that he would need more hands, so at three-hour intervals he went and hired more. He did not bargain with them for a denarius or part of a denarius: he promised to give them what was proper. Then, just an hour before sunset, in order to ensure that the work would not be left unfinished, he went back and found a few men still unemployed, so he sent them to join the others working in the vineyard.
An hour later the work was finished, and the workers lined up to receive their pay, the last-hired being at the front of the line. They had no idea what they would get for an hour’s work; in fact, each of them received a denarius. So did the men who had worked three hours, six hours and nine hours. At last came those who had been hired at daybreak and had done twelve hours’ work. What would they get? Each of them similarly got a denarius. They complained, “Why should these others get as much as we have done? Why should not we get more after a hard day’s work?” But the vinegrower told them that they had no cause for complaint. They had agreed to do a day’s work for a denarius, and he had kept his promise to give them that. It was no business of theirs what he gave to others who had entered into no agreement with him for a fixed sum. He might have said, “They and their families have to live.” But he did not; he simply said, “Can’t I do what I like with my own money?”
The law-abiding people whom Jesus knew tended to feel that they had made a bargain with God: if they kept his commandments, he would give them the blessings promised to those who did so. They would have no reason to complain if God treated them fairly and kept his promises. But what about those others who had broken his commandments, who had started to do his will late in the day after their encounter with Jesus and the way of the kingdom? They were in no position to strike a bargain with God; they could do nothing but cast themselves on his grace, like the tax collector in another parable who could only say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Lk 18:13). What could they expect? The lesson of the parable seems to be this: when people make a bargain with God, he will honor his promise and give them no cause for complaint; but there is no limit to what his grace will do for those who have no claim at all on him but trust entirely to his goodness. If it be said that this gives them an unfair advantage, let it be considered that they were terribly disadvantaged to begin with. If it be urged that their rehabilitation should involve some payment for their past misdeeds, the truth may be that they have paid enough already. Should those who have turned to God at the eleventh hour and given him only the last twelfth of life get as much of heaven as those who have given him a whole lifetime? If God is pleased to give them as much, who will tell him that he should not? If God did not delight in mercy, it would go hard with the best of us. Though justice by thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation.[Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, IV, i.] The first arrivals might not have complained if the last comers had been paid only a small fraction of what they themselves received. There was in fact, as T. W. Manson points out in his treatment of this parable, a coin worth one-twelfth of a denarius: “It was called a pondion. But there is no such thing as a twelfth part of the love of God.” [T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (reprint; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 220.]