SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Almighty and eternal God, you show perpetual lovingkindness to us your servants. Because we cannot rely on our own abilities, grant us your merciful judgment, and train us to embody the generosity of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
As I write these lines, the United Auto Workers union is commencing an unprecedented strike against automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. This is one of many labor disputes leading to strikes throughout the country including those threatened or in progress against UPS, Hollywood producers, Hormel and Kaiser Permanente. The growing shortage of workers in nearly all sectors resulting from numerous demographic shifts has strengthened unions and the workers they represent, giving them an upper hand they have not experienced in decades. The tables appear to have turned. I see evidence of that in the “Help Wanted” signs hanging in the windows of businesses from my own little town of twenty-seven thousand to the large metropolitan centers like Boston. Gone are the days when employers sneered at their employees seeking a living wage and minimal benefits with the words, “Be glad you have a job!” “You can be replaced,” and “You’re a dime a dozen.” Workers and their labor, due largely to their current shortage, are finally gaining recognition for their true value that has been lacking for a very long time.
Such was not the case for the workers in Jesus’ parable found in Sunday’s gospel. Clearly, there was a labor surplus such that day workers filled the market place hoping to be hired early for a full day’s wage. Still, they were desperate enough to work wherever, for whoever and for as long as they had the opportunity for whatever they might get paid. They were in no position to strike. This is as it should be according to the American religion of capitalism. Value is measured strictly in monetary terms. The market determines the value of everything from apples to human beings. If you are too sick, too weak, too old or too crippled to do a day’s work in the vineyard, well, the market has spoken. You lack sufficient value to be kept alive. Doing so would not be cost effective-and that, after all, is what capitalism is all about. The moral perversity of all this is made painfully clear in a terse but poignant paragraph from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath:
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from the orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates-died of malnutrition-because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.”
The story Jesus tells follows what must have been a well understood and predictable pattern. The owner of the vineyard hires what must have been the best, strongest and most promising workers in the early hours of the day. Later, he comes back to hire others who are promised only that they will be paid “whatever is right.” That, of course, will be determined by the owner of the vineyard. Jesus’ audience likely uttered a collective groan at this point. Clearly, the owner is taking advantage of the workers’ desperation. He knows they need to work and that with each passing hour their anxiety is growing. He knows he can get their labor on the cheap. The last group of workers to be approached is asked, perhaps with a note of sarcasm and condescension, “why do you stand idle all day?” The only answer they can give is the same answer every unemployed person gives when asked why they are not at work. “No one has hired us.” These, too, are sent into the vineyard with the same seemingly vacuous promise.
But then, Jesus’ parable takes a remarkable turn. The owner of the vineyard not only pays first those who worked last and least. He pays them a full day’s wage. He breaks the cardinal rule of capitalism by paying his employees more than their labor is worth. Maybe he is just a poor businessman. Or perhaps he understands that the workers are more than the sum of their capacity for increasing profit. Perhaps the owner of the vineyard understands what we Americans, brainwashed as we are by the religion of capitalism, fail to comprehend. That a living wage is not a privilege. It is a human entitlement. Simply by being human one is entitled to eat, to be sheltered, to receive medical care, to be treated with dignity and respect. The United States Constitution may not say that. Jesus, however, makes clear in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel that the nations are to be judged, not by how economically efficient they have been, but by how well or poorly they treated the most vulnerable among them. At the court of final judgment, appeals to constitutional law will not avail. A higher law controls.
Understand that I am not advocating “socialism” over “capitalism” or “command economies” over “market economies.” Truth is, I distrust anything that has an “ist” or an “ism” at the end of it. I am not opposed to “markets” or “business” or “free enterprise” per se. What I do oppose, as does Jesus, Moses and the Hebrew prophets, is raising the “Market” to the level of a deity that can be trusted to produce a just society; business designed to produce profit at the expense of the public good, the environment and the most vulnerable among us; and unrestrained greed and accumulation of the earth’s good gifts in the hands of a few. What God demands of us is an economy that works for everyone. While I am glad to see the growing strength of the labor movement in our nation, I am grieved that workers must strike for what their employers ought to recognize is their just entitlement. I am grieved that employers’ hearts have grown so cold and hard that hitting them in the pocket book is the only way they can be moved. I am grieved that so many of us still harbor such mean spirited resentment and contempt for those unable earn a living wage who must depend upon our compassion and generosity to make ends meet.
The only material good for which Jesus ever taught his disciples to pray was for “this day’s bread.” That, along with clothing and shelter, should make us content. I Timothy 6:8. Our problem is that we crave a great deal more. We imagine that our efforts and accomplishments entitle us to more. We have bought into the American cultural lie that one has a right to accumulate as much as one is able to amass without breaking the law. Therefore, in a world where God’s will is done, where all are entitled to their daily bread-and no more, those of us who have become accustomed to “more” cry foul. We imagine that our “rights” are being violated by the loss of what we were never intended to have in the first place and the resulting equitable treatment of our neighbors. When it becomes clear that God would have all people enjoy daily bread, regardless their earning potential, degree of work or accomplishment, the daily bread God has freely given us looks paltry and poor in our hands. Rather than giving thanks, we grumble at the seeming unfairness of it all. The coming of God’s kingdom looks more like a threat to us than the wonderful promise and gift that it is.
Here is a poem that playfully explores the great wealth to be had in having everything while owning nothing.
Net Worth
I own the golden sunlight
breaking over the pines.
I own my neighbor’s pansies
growing neatly in spaced lines.
I own the orange harvest moon
that hangs above the hills.
I own the sparrows that come to feed
at the seed troughs on my sills.
I own the pathway through the woods
that leads down to the river.
I own the song the waters sing,
the pebbles they deliver
as on their journey to the sea
they run their endless course.
They haven’t time for worry,
nor the patience for remorse.
I own the nighttime sky
and every star on its dark vale.
I own the mighty ocean
where the ocean liners sail.
Someday I will be through
with checkbooks, funds and property.
I’m sure that once I’m broke
the world will have no use for me.
Creditors will seize my goods,
the tax man take my home.
And once they have these trifles,
then they’ll leave me on my own.
With all distractions gone
and not one penny in my plate,
at last I’ll have the leisure
to enjoy my vast estate!
Source: Anonymous
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 