What Does a “Christian” Economy Look Like?

We have probably all heard this parable before.

The owner of an estate goes out at dawn to hire workers for his vineyard.

He reaches an agreement with them for the usual daily wage and then sends them out to work.

At mid-morning, the landowner goes back and hires more workers.

At noon, he hires more workers.

And midafternoon, he hires even more.

Finally, late in the afternoon, he goes back one more time.

"Why have you been standing here idle all day?" he asks.

And they answer, "No one has hired us."

So, he hires them and sends them out to the vineyard too.

At the end of the day, the owner tells the overseer to call the workers in to give them their pay.

The people hired last, who worked the shortest amount of time, received a full day's pay.

The people who worked in the vineyard for longer hours all expected to receive greater compensation.

But even the people who were hired first, who worked all day, received the same pay.

And they were angry.

You have probably heard several different interpretations of this parable.

The typical interpretation in Lutheran contexts is about grace and how it cannot be earned.

Another interpretation is that it is a warning against covetousness and measuring personal worth through comparison to others.

Still another interpretation is that is a rejection of entitlement and a declaration that we are all equal in the Kin-dom.

Today, I am going to try to help us hear the parable as it would have been heard by a first-century Jewish audience.

The parable is about day laborers.

They don't have secure employment.

They don't have guaranteed income.

There are no benefits or social safety nets to protect them or their family.

They go to the marketplace hoping someone will hire them.

If they don't work, they don't get paid.

And if they don't get paid, their families may not eat.

So, when the last workers say, "No one has hired us", we should hear more than an explanation for why they arrived late.

We should hear vulnerability.

We should hear insecurity.

We should hear people who have spent the entire day wondering whether they will have enough to survive.

That’s what Jesus is asking us to see.

These are vulnerable people.

They’re not “resources” or statistics.

They’re not people who need to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

They’re human beings.

We live at a time when the wealth gap has widened dramatically.

In our country, we have people with extraordinary—dare I say obscene—wealth.

We have an economy in which some people can accumulate fortunes so vast that it becomes difficult even to imagine the scale of them.

There are almost 1,000 billionaires in the United States.

I don’t believe most of us grasp how much a billion dollars is.

If you made $5,000 a day, every day 365 days a year, it would take you 548 years to accumulate a billion dollars.

If you made minimum wage and worked a standard 40 hour work week, it would take you over 30,000 years.

The top 1% own a third of the wealth in this country.

The top 10% owns two-thirds.

The bottom 50% own a paltry 2.5% of our national wealth.

While the ultra wealthy continue to add to their fortunes, we have people who struggle to simply get by, sometimes working two or three jobs to pay rent.

Some people worry about investments.

Others worry about groceries.

Some people inherit wealth.

Others inherit debt.

Some people can absorb an unexpected $500 expense without thinking twice.

Others can be thrown into crisis by a car repair, medical bill, or missed paycheck.

Our economic system tells us that’s just the way that it is.

We are told that people get what they deserve.

The person who earns more must have worked harder.

The person who has less must not have worked hard enough.

The wealthy must have earned their wealth.

The poor must have earned their poverty.

In this parable, Jesus invites us to a different vision.

Because the workers don't all have the same opportunity.

Some are hired early.

Some are hired late.

No doubt, there were some that weren’t hired at all.

The parable doesn’t ask, "How hard did they work?"

It asks, "Who had the opportunity to work in the first place?"

We want to believe that we have earned what we have.

We want to believe that our success proves our worth.

We are culturally conditioned to believe that if someone has less than we do, it must somehow be their fault.

But, as Lutherans, we know differently.

Everything is gift.

Our lives, our abilities, our opportunities are all gifts.

Our families and our communities are gifts.

Even our faith is a gift.

And grace is certainly a gift.

There is nothing we can do to earn God's love.

Because we already have it.

Not because of anything we’ve done but because of who God is.

We cannot work enough hours in God's metaphorical vineyard to make ourselves more deserving than our neighbor.

God’s grace destroys the illusion that our worth can be measured by our productivity.

You are worth more than what you produce, my friends.

In the parable, the estate owner asks the workers, "Are you envious because I am generous?"

It is a pointed question.

Because the workers who worked all day weren't cheated.

They received exactly what they were promised.

What makes them angry is that someone else received enough.

They look at their neighbor and say:

"Why should they get the same?"

It reminds me of the controversy about student loan forgiveness.

We have been culturally conditioned to be more comfortable with inequality than generosity.

We can tolerate people going without.

But when someone suggests that everyone should have enough, we suddenly become very concerned about fairness.

Notice what the workers receive.

The estate owner doesn't make them rich.

He gives them a day's wage.

Enough to live.

Enough to feed their families.

The parable is saying that the survival of the workers is more important than the estate owner’s accumulation of wealth.

The message for us is that an economy that is aligned with our Christian values cannot be about creating more wealth for those who already possess it.

That is why prosperity gospel is so harmful and so contrary to Jesus’ message.

A Christian economy would ensure that each person not only survives but thrives.

People need basic necessities to survive—food, shelter, and healthcare.

But to thrive, they also need education, meaningful work, and dignity.

So, I think we need to ask ourselves, “what does loving our neighbor require of us?”

The problem isn't wealth.

The parable does not portray the estate owner as evil.

The issue is what he does with what he possesses.

He sees people who have been excluded from work.

And instead of saying, "That's their problem," he creates an opportunity for them.

And when the day ends, he makes sure that they have enough.

Similarly, we need to ask ourselves, "What am I doing with what I have?"

“Am I using it solely to increase my own wealth?”

“Or am I using it to satisfy the needs of my neighbor—to help them not only survive but to thrive?”

As a church, we cannot be comfortable with a widening wealth gap.

As followers of Jesus, we must realize that widening inequality eventually becomes more than a difference in bank accounts.

It becomes a difference in opportunity.

A difference in health.

A difference in education.

A difference in political power.

And eventually it becomes a difference in whose lives society considers valuable.

That is what Jesus invites us to see.

The workers in the marketplace are not disposable.

They are not failures.

They are not simply labor to be exploited.

They are neighbors.

And when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, that love doesn’t have boundaries.

Love asks whether our neighbor can afford housing.

Love asks whether our neighbor can feed their children.

Love asks whether someone who works full time can live with dignity.

We are all beloved children of God.

God doesn't love the wealthy more than the poor.

God doesn't love the CEO more than the laborer.

God doesn't love the person with a college degree more than the high-school dropout.

God doesn't love the person who worked forty years for the same company more than the person who has struggled to find consistent work.

God's love isn't distributed according to our economic productivity.

God's love is abundant.

And because God's love is abundant, we are called to imagine a world where abundance is shared rather than hoarded.

But what about fairness?

Is it fair that someone who worked 1 hour got paid the same as someone who worked 8 hours?

The parable challenges us to ask what we mean by fairness.

The all-day workers received exactly what they were promised.

They were not cheated.

The problem wasn’t that they received too little.

The problem was that someone else received enough.

We need to let go of our obsession with comparing what we have with what others have.

Can’t we just rejoice that the family that has lived paycheck to paycheck finally has some security?

Can’t we just rejoice that the waitress receives a living wage?

Can’t we just rejoice when a poor child has the same opportunity to attend college as a wealthy child?

We have to stop thinking that someone else’s benefit somehow diminishes our own value?

Jesus is calling, my friends.

He saying, “Come into the vineyard”.

There is work to do.

There is love to share.

There is justice to pursue.

There are systems to challenge.

There are neighbors to serve.

There is good news to proclaim.

We are not called to work in the vineyard to earn God's love.

We work in the vineyard because we already have it.

We are not called to serve our neighbor so God will love us.

We serve our neighbor because God has already loved us.

We are not called to welcome the stranger so that we can become good Christians.

We welcome the stranger because we have already been welcomed.

So, stop keeping score.

There is enough room in the vineyard.

Enough work.

Enough bread.

Enough belonging.

Enough love.

Enough dignity.

Enough mercy.

Enough grace.

Thanks be to God.

May this meditation on God’s word keep our hearts and mind on Christ Jesus.