How much are they worth?

Have you ever been to a cafe and winced then looking at cost of the items on the menu? How can they charge that much for a sandwich? You could buy a couple of loaves at that price!

OK back to the text which is Matthew 20: 1-16, the parable of the vineyard workers. First and foremost, it is a Jewish parable, so it isn’t so much a story but a metaphor for us to reconsider our lives. Don’t get drawn into the figures, the exactitude of the passage – stand back a bit, a take a gander with a new perspective. This is a parable ABOUT the Kingdom of God, not this is THE Kingdom of God.

So what’s happening?

The master of the Vineyard has agreed to pay the workers the normal daily wage. Don’t worry if this is a denarius, a Euro or a cabbage – it just doesn’t matter. There is no stipulation about the productivity of the worker. How much are they worth?

At 9 o’clock, the third hour of the day, he searches and finds workers in the market place. They accept his offer.

At noon, the 6th hour, and at 3pm, the 9th hour, he repeats this recruiting programme. You have to say that he was successful in his recruiting. The master is back in the market place at 5pm, to hire anymore he finds.

At nightfall, the lead worker in the field calls all of the workers together and they are each paid the wages for the full day, regardless of the time that they had worked. Some protested, demanding that they had worked hard and longer etc etc – “it’s not fair!’ The master tells the folk that they were recruited and they complied to that contract. No one has broken their contract. And he concludes that “the first will be last, and the last will be first“. I like that bit when entering running races…

Does that say that ‘All matter’?

What might it mean?

Do you employ anyone? If so, do you pay those workers fairly?

Moreover, what is a fair wage today?

Even if we don’t employ others, we might criticise those that pay excessive wages to some folks, but do we have the same level of clamour for those on excessively low wages? How much are they worth?Recall, that those people are in the significant majority, and if we did pay those people a decent realistic wage, our taxes might go up.

Can we tolerate that?

The master returns to the market place frequently. He may be aware that there is ‘need’ in that town, and they are crying out for income. We might see the signs of food banks, and acknowledge that they should even exist – but they do. The Government shouldn’t claim that they have done a great job (other words might be used) when it is down to many volunteers supporting their community. The food we donate isn’t sufficient to meet the current demand.

So how often might we visit the ‘market place’?

The master is not a governor of the area, he is a person within the community. But he sees the vulnerable, and seeks to meet that need.

How might we be that agent of transformation wherever we are?