The Hurt That Heals
“I choose to give to the last as I give to you....Do you begrudge my being generous?”
October 25, 1981
Jesus said the way of God is like this. Once, on the Palestinian Ponderosa there was a plantation owner. Early one morning around six a.m., he made a deal with some workers to pick grapes in his fields that day. He promised to pay them a fair day's wage. Several hours later, the man drove into town and saw some men hanging around the post office. He offered them a job in his field, too. About noon, the landowner went back to town where he found still another bunch of men talking at a service station. He offered them work, and so they jumped in the back of his truck. After taking his latest recruits to the field, the agribusinessman headed back to town in the middle of the afternoon and rounded up some more pickers whom he promised to pay rightly at the end of the day. This must have been before the time of high priced gasoline because the farmer drove his El Camino back to town still one more time and found a few more stragglers with nothing better to do. The last group barely got to work an hour before quitting time at six p.m.
Meanwhile, back at the plantation, all day long, the workers who had started at daybreak could hardly wait to get that pay envelope. As best they could figure, they were due about forty dollars for 12 hours work. Finally, quitting time came. The boss's accountant arrived with the little brown packets. The workers were told to line up with those having worked the longest being in back with those who came later being in the front of the line. Those all day workers' eyes popped out when they saw each of those hour and three hour workers pulling two twenty dollar bills a piece from their pay envelopes. They were clapping their hands and licking their lips: "Wow, if the boss is paying those guys who worked only part of a day a full day's pay, then he must be going to really give us a bonus. we may get $70, $80, even a $100!"
Did their faces ever fall when they opened their pay packets, only to find the same amount the other workers received. "What a rotten deal! Call the labor relations board!” they gripped and grumbled. "Hold on just a grape picking minute," snapped the boss, "this is my field and my money. You got a fair day's pay. Why are you so hostile at my being generous with the latecomers?"
This story does not sit well with me. I find my head thinking? "This is Jesus talking so I want to get his point and agree with him. But in my gut, I find myself identifying with those birds who sweated and picked for twelve long hours. What's going on here?
I don't think Jesus was giving a lesson on labor-management disputes, although I think business and labor could agree together on not agreeing with his method. It's a parable. And parables are stories you tell to people who can't or won't take the truth straight out, so you have to sort of sneak it up on them. Bible scholars believe that Jesus first told this parable to angry pharisees and scribes. They jumped Jesus for being so chummy with the street people, the prostitutes, drunks, and other unacceptable dirty fingernail people. The pharisees spent their whole lives trying to be good and acceptable to God. Here comes Jesus who announces that the riffraff are just as precious to God as the super saints. Like the landowner said to the 12 hour workers, Jesus said to them, you haven't lost status with God because he includes others. Of course, what they realized they were losing was their claim on God, their hold on him because of their accumulated heavenly brownie points. Value and status with God, Jesus proclaimed, is a gift – not pay for services rendered.
Oh, how neat it would be if we could keep this story back with grumbling Palestinian pharisees and produce pickers. Alas, Jesus' story is a prickly parable that gets to you and me. This happens even though we have sugar coated Jesus' parables, as well as his other teachings, with sentimentality and familiarity. Yet they still get to us. Have you ever bit into some candy expecting a burst of sweetness and received a surge of pain instead because the bite revealed a cavity in your teeth (or maybe a sore under your dentures.) Maybe, you do what I do sometimes: in the middle of chewing my food, I chomp down on the inside of my mouth. The candy parables of Jesus are like that. We bite into what we think is all sweetness and wind up feeling the pain of biting into ourselves. How so with this parable?
THE HURT OF THE PARABLE
When we chomp into this story about grumbling all day workers and a generous boss, not tooth decay but another kind of decay is revealed in us: the decay of petty jealousy and resentment that is in us. I quickly sided with the guys who worked all day, who felt they had gotten a raw deal because they had only been paid for a day's wage for a day's work. Judging by the way they seem to have felt and the way we feel, you would think that the all day workers got nothing and the hour workers got the pay.
This parable makes us painfully aware that not only do we resent people who have more than we do but we even begrudge certain folks having what we have. Think about it. Half the fun of being "IN" a fraternity, sorority, club, country club, or other selective organization is that we can feel a distinction between those of us "IN" and the others who are "OUT". What big deal would it be if everybody had a classy car and snazzy clothes? Why does it obsess people like us that someone may be getting food stamps who does not totally deserve them when pounds per person we folks here probably weigh as much if not outweigh the average foodstamp recipient? Notice how the news of the prosperity of an old classmate, a brother or sister, or some other person in our life with whom we feel some rivalry - notice how hearing about their getting ahead - down deep makes us feel a bit threatened. Or turning it around, there is more than a little satisfaction felt when a rival has some reverses in their business or life. All that is in the all day workers and in you and or, and it hurts to admit it.
Do you remember the "All in the Family" television program episode in which Archie Bunker's next door neighbor Irene got a job at the same place Archie worked? He almost blew his stack when he found out that Irene, a woman, was being paid the same as him – a man who had been there 20 years. He howled? 'What's da' use of working all of your life if all you ever going to be is equal?"
WHY ARE WE THIS WAY?
Why do such nice, fine people like us have this cavity of petty petulance and decay of resentful jealousy in us? After all, we are not the kind who kick dogs or shove old ladies down escalators. The answer to this also hurts a bit. My feeling of being okay with myself, my sense of being a worthwhile human being, my security with myself as a competent and important person are such fragile, flimsy, fleeting things. Just a little criticism can do us in and, on some days, can take the cocky confidence out of us. Our need to feel loved and effective has to be propped up with so much outside stuff: money, houses, cars, clothes that say here is an important person. We need the props of titles, positions, power, and recognition. Sometimes we even have to put others down in our desperate attempts to put ourselves up. Even the “we are the only Christian" religious groups around” reveal people trying to be "IN" by feeling superior to those who are "OUT". Down deep inside even the biggest shot you know, along with you and me, is a little boy or little girl saying with their actions: "Do you love me? Hey! Mom... Dad...watch me do this!"
We are people who so desperately want to feel good about ourselves that we take it out on each other. So, why does Jesus rub our faces in the painful truth? We don't need anyone to make us feel worse. Most of us do a very adequate job of internally berating ourselves, that's why we are always on someone else's case trying to take the pressure and attention off ourselves, Jesus says to smarty pants Pharisees trying to save themselves with goodie-goodie brownie points and to people trying to find salvation through upward mobility: it won't work. That way dooms us to perpetual breaking of someone's record, even our own. Jesus makes us feel the pain so that we can respond to the healing he brings to our lives.
THE HEALING OF THE PARABLE: THE GOOD NEWS OF USELESSNESS
Pain is the first step in healing. Pain is our friend that tells us something is wrong and needs attention: whether it be pain in your body, your marriage, or in your relationship to God. Without pain of old ways no longer working, we would never leave our ruts of nonproductive ways of dealing with ourselves and others. Jesus' parable is a scalpel that makes an incision into our life and permits us to look in and see what we really are doing to ourselves and each other, We are so busy trying to feel good about ourselves by putting ourselves up and others down that little time or energy is left to feed the hungry, work for peace in an arming world, and spread the news of God's unconditional love: those activities alone which Jesus taught could make life worth living in the first place.
In the parable, the workers "sorta-kinda" stand for you and me, the landowner "sorta-kinda" symbolizes God, and the field and pay "sorta-kinda" represent the life and love God has given us. The equal pay to all somehow points to the equal love and value God has for all of us stinkers and saints alike. Jesus is saying that the love, affirmation, and importtance we all long for are ultimately not matters of merit system earning but matters of the gift system of God's unconditional love. Believe it or not, there are probably no time clocks or scoreboards in heaven. Jesus says to all of us hurting to feel loved and important that our value comes with the territory of being God's creation, and no one can ever take that status from you. We can stop competing and begin working together on enough food, decent places to live, and dignity for all humans.
Jesus brought what has been called "the good news of uselessness" (James and Evelyn Whitehead in Christian Life Patterns). The basic worth of human beings is not their "use" or market value. Each and every one has status as children of God, products of the lifegiving mysterious power that is the ground of all that is. This isn't good news only for the bums on skid row or the folks in the projects. It is good news for executives and achievers who down deep wonder if people really love us or just care about us for the check we bring home and the services we render. The "good news of uselessness" is more operative in our relationships than we might imagine. Talk to your family. Most days their love for you comes out in their putting up with you and standing you when you aren't all that deserving of it. And you, no doubt, do the same for others.
The parable today began with the words "the kingdom of heaven is like this". In the New Testament the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God refers not to some place over the rainbow but refers to the breaking in of God's way into this world that is staggering going on in its way. Bible scholars argue whether Jesus announced that God's kingdom, his way, has actually come into the world or whether the kingdom is some future event. The answer is both God's way is breaking into the world. But there is still much to come. People have the choice whether to live in the old way or God's way. Every time a person or group decides to live in the kingdom of God, then a bit more of God's way breaks into the world, a bit more solution enters a world stinking and sinking with problems. People who let Jesus medicine of the "good news of uselessness" into their living are freed strangely enough to actually be more useful in the world; they are freed from having to prove themselves, they are freed to save the necks of others by giving to them instead of always getting from them.
Who knows! Maybe the kingdom of God's way will break into and out of you and me...even today.