This coming Sunday is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The landowner has “hired” (misthoomai) the workers (ergates), which implies an offer to pay (misthos) them for their work. In contrast, Mt 21:28 has a father telling his son, “Go and work (ergazomai) in the vineyard today,” which may not involve payment for work done. An agreement (symphoneo) is reached between the landowner and the first workers. “I will give you what is just.” (Mt 20:4)
A denarius for one day’s work does not indicate a generous landowner. It was the minimum wage a family in poverty could exist on. This agreement speaks against interpreting this parable primarily as an illustration of God’s generosity. The wages aren’t that great. The workers have barely enough to live on. They remain in poverty, but their needs for this day will be met. Thus it may be better to translate agathos in v. 15 as “good” than as “generous”. It was good for the landowner to give the workers a minimum wage that was enough to live on for the day. It was not a generous wage.
In contrast to the first hired workers where an agreement was made about their wages. The other hired workers are told (v. 4): “I will give you what is just (dikaios which can also be translated, “right” “fair” or “proper”). This parable raises questions like: “What is right?” “What is just?” “What is fair?” God’s answers are not always the same as ours – and we may not always like God’s answers.
Image credit: Laborers in the Vineyard, icon | Public Domain | found on Flickr Fr. Ted
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I have to say I’ve never truly understood this parable. It’s made me angry actually. I get that it’s about heaven being a true destination for all even the worst of us, but I don’t get why someone who has been loyal to God and has suffered immensely and been given a hard life of poverty and sacrifice is treated the same as someone who lived their life doing whatever they want and only basically repented at the end.
I have been wrestling with God lately about this, as I have had bad thing after bad thing happen to me and my family since about November last year.
everyone says to lean in, carry your cross, but the hardships are so difficult and have real consequences of homelessness and death. It is hard to have any hope anymore.
so easy to tell someone to persevere and pray when you yourself have a roof over your head, a clean bill of health and a job to pay your bills.
sometimes I start to feel like all of this is to psychologically make you believe things will get better when they never do.
you look around and see people who absolutely do not honor God, or care to follow the commandments, but put a rosary on their Mercedes and drive around rolling in cash. You wonder how these people have healthy families, successful careers, and are always happy when they don’t follow Jesus at all (even when they tick the box and pretend they do).
meanwhile if you pray with your family daily, attempt to only do Gods will, only read and absorb theological books or the lives of the saints and strive to look at everything through the eyes of Jesus, your life is one complete ball of tragedy.
I am right on the edge now of giving up completely and I no longer even attend mass. From someone who was attending mass daily, praying divine mercy chaplets daily, rosaries daily, doing daily readings and meditating on the word, doing holy hour once a week, confessing once every month or so, and trying to teach others about Jesus.
I think God chooses who he likes and who he doesn’t. I’m in the latter category no matter what I try and I’m starting to realise it now.
Thanks for leaving your comment and for being as candid as you were. You are facing one of those moments people can face in life: you’ve tried very hard to remain faithful to God while one terrible thing after another has happened. Now, you are exhausted from the trials and problems. Meanwhile the advice of pray, persevere, and carry your cross is wearing thin. And I think you are right about something: it is much easier to tell another person to carry a cross when you aren’t the one carrying it.
I hope you are having this discussion with your pastor, in person. All I can do here is to share some thoughts. I don’t want to tell you that everything is going to work out. I don’t know that, and neither does anyone else. At the same time, from my experience, hard times and tragedies you describe does not mean that God has decided that he likes other people and doesn’t like you. But I understand why, from where you are standing right now, it could feel exactly that way.
You are not alone. Your struggle has a very long history in Scripture. Job wrestles with precisely this. So does Jeremiah. Psalm 73 looks around at people who seem to have little regard for God and nevertheless prosper, while the person trying to live faithfully suffers. Scripture does not condemn people for asking that question. It gives them words with which to ask it.
There is one thing you wrote that I don’t want to pass over. You said, “I am right on the edge now of giving up completely.” I want to make sure I understand what you mean by that. Do you mean giving up on the Church and your faith, or are you at the point where you are thinking about hurting yourself or that you no longer want to live? I would much rather ask the question unnecessarily than fail to hear what you are trying to tell me.
As for the vineyard, there is one small detail I would leave you with, not as an answer to everything you are suffering, but perhaps as something to hold onto. When the landowner finds the last workers standing in the marketplace, he asks why they have been there all day. They answer, “Because no one has hired us.” In other words, the parable doesn’t actually tell us that these people spent the day doing whatever they pleased and then showed up at the last minute expecting the same reward. They are people who have been standing there all day and whom nobody chose. And the landowner goes back looking for them.
That strikes me because the deepest thing you said in your email may not have been about fairness at all. It may have been your final thought: “I think God chooses who he likes and who he doesn’t. I’m in the latter category.” I don’t believe that is true. And perhaps one thing this strange parable says is that God keeps walking back into the marketplace precisely in search of the person who thinks, “Nobody has chosen me.”
I don’t expect those words to make everything all right. They shouldn’t. What you are describing deserves more than a response to a comment left on a blog. But please don’t think you have to clean up your anger at God before speaking to Him or before speaking to your local pastor. If what you have for God right now is anger, disappointment, accusation, or even silence, then bring him that. The Bible is full of people who did.