LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD Jesus spoke about the kingdom of Heaven in parables. The word parable’ comes from the two Greek words, para which means ‘alongside ‘and bole which means ‘to throw’, so a parable is an Illustration or symbol of a certain reality that is forcefully thrown down beside a known truth. It is more than just an approximate likeness of something because it mysteriously contains a higher truth and has the power when it is thrown beside a known truth to turn our thinking u...
LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD
Jesus spoke about the kingdom of Heaven in parables. The word parable’ comes from the two Greek words, para which means ‘alongside ‘and bole which means ‘to throw’, so a parable is an Illustration or symbol of a certain reality that is forcefully thrown down beside a known truth. It is more than just an approximate likeness of something because it mysteriously contains a higher truth and has the power when it is thrown beside a known truth to turn our thinking upside down and to make us rethink our perceptions of reality.
Matthew 20:1 The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”
This parable throws all of our perceptions of fair work policies into disarray, not just for trade unionists but for any fair-minded person. The Kingdom of God does not seem to obey our ideas of merit-based earning or reward. That is because the parable is about the grace of God, and our conventional way of thinking does not understand God’s gifts of love and grace and mercy. God’s gifts come without anyone earning them or deserving them.
The owner of the vineyard seems fair and just in the beginning of the story and then he seems incredibly generous towards the end of the story but then he seems unfair and unjust when those who came to work early compare themselves with those who came to work late, and they complained with a whole range of emotions common to all of us like anger, self-pity, or resentment or fear.
The owner of the vineyard for some reason had a compelling need for more and more workers to come and work in his vineyard and he went out time after time till very late in the working day to get as many people into his vineyard as he could. There must have been something special apart from wages that he thought that vineyard had to offer, and he contends with the workers for them to try and accept things the way they are, and to be satisfied with what he had to offer them.
When Jesus told this parable about everyone getting the same wages no matter what hours they were working he was teaching us to trust him and to be satisfied that, what he has to offer us is far greater than anything we think we can do to make life work the way we want it to.
Adam and Eve had everything they needed to fulfill their lives by having God’s loving care and protection and provision and presence, with them every moment of their lives.
But they were tempted to believe that they could be more satisfied if they went their own way, and to get something better for themselves than what God had to offer them.
They were told by the serpent that God was unfair and unjust, so they took on a mindset of separation from God’s will for themselves and they believed Satan’s lie of darkness for them.
Mankind ended up with a desperate sense of unfulfillment in the soul, but God already had a magnificent plan in place to redeem humanity and to bridge the gap of separation that their disobedience had caused and that had damaged their soul.
Father’s love responded to the desperate sense of unfulfillment in the soul of humanity by sending his Son to die on the cross and rise again for us and to plant his life in us through the holy Spirit. That inner life grows and grows according to our simple faith in believing in its power to meet that uttermost need in our life and not the self-fulfilling needs that we think are more important and that we work so hard for to achieve.
God created us for our lives to be fulfilled by responding to his desire to draw us closer to himself and to make our lives one with his life as a new creation by simply believing and receiving his grace and love. But our old creation humanity had designed its own self-help programs of working out how to be fulfilled in life in ways that vary from person to person. Those programs are hard work for us in our emotions and confuse our value systems and our mindset and they end up failing.
That is why repentance means being changed from the old mindset of separation from God into the new creation mindset of oneness with God. And God grants this as a gift of grace rather than through our well-intentioned self-effort.
You can erase your lifelong self-help programs and be reprogramed by God’s grace instead of your effort. You simply learn to recognise the upsetting emotion that you experience when you feel that you are in reaction to the adverse things that are happening or that threaten to happen in your life. It could be anger, self-pity, or resentment or fear just like the labourers in the vineyard.
You will recognise it by the words that come out of your mouth or that you say internally to yourself. There is usually a familiar commentary as in for Anger; ‘I’m going to let everybody know I’m just not putting up with this!’ or self-pity; ‘Not again, Why me? Its just not fair!’ or fear;’ Oh no what am I going to do now?’
If you try and erase a computer program you get a message on the screen ‘are you sure you want to erase this program?‘ and you say yes and put in your password.
With God you get the same message and you say yes and the password is ‘help me Lord I need to find grace to help’ – and even though the old program keeps wanting to restart you are now on the journey and God will complete what you asked him to.
Paul summed it up in Romans 4:4 If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay and we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God, his gift not your work.
When we look at how this parable speaks to us spiritually it reveals how God is continually extending his invitation of grace to all of us just as the owner of the vineyard wanted as many people as he could get into that special vineyard. God desires for everyone to receive his good news of love and grace because he sees the desperate need in every human soul to be fulfilled by the gift of his own life working within them.
Being satisfied with what God offers us is the perfect test of surrendered faith in our Father God through Jesus, especially in times of difficulty and adversity. When we surrender in faith to God’s goodness working for us in every situation, we will find his wisdom to make the right choices for a way through that situation. As well as letting God reprogram our self-fulfillment programs there is a simple prayer we can offer as often as we can remember to. It is ‘Thank you Lord for your desire to draw me closer to you and to make me one with you in everything that happens in my life.’
That prayer of faith becomes God’s work and our rest.
