Trinity 16

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

24 September 2023

St Bene’t’s, Cambridge

The Reverend Andrew Hammond, Chaplain, St John’s College, Cambridge

The Labourers in the Vineyard

Once again Jesus tells a story, a parable, to make his point. His parables often have one main point, one overarching message. And that one point has some pretty vital consequences not only for how we think about God, but how we should act in response.

There’s a better title for the story, really, which tells us its main point: rather than ‘The Labourers in the Vineyard’, we should call it ‘The Good Owner’. It’s like Prodigal Son, which ought to be known as ‘The Generous and Patient Father’. There are other parallels with that story, as we’ll see.

To get a full understanding of the parable’s main point, we – not being 1st C Jewish people - do have to spot the features of the story which would have caught the ears and imagination of Jesus’ hearers more readily than they do ours. Often there’s divine in the detail.

For one thing, the vineyard was a powerful image for the Jewish people. This would have resonated as much for Matthew’s readers as for Jesus’ actual audience at the time he told the story, since his gospel was probably composed for a community of Jewish converts to Christianity.

The vineyard was a traditional Old Testament image for Israel itself, for God's chosen people. And Jesus repeatedly used it. He does so in two other parables not long after this one, known as the parables of the Two Sons and the Wicked Tenants. In all of these Jesus is using a very familiar image; but then turning it against the people for whom it should have been positive and fruitful.

This had its roots in OT prophecy, of course, amidst all those diatribes against the faithlessness and immorality of God’s people. Often these were giving the rationale for the misfortunes and calamities befalling them, pre-eminently the Babylonian exile.

A classic example is in the prophet Isaiah, in chapter 5. It’s a powerful song of Israel's special place in God's work, and how they ruin it. It begins

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

But it’s grapes have grown wild: so, God says.

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down.

I will make it a waste.

And for the avoidance of all doubt, Isaiah spells out what this is saying:

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts

is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah

are his pleasant planting;

he expected justice,

but saw bloodshed;

righteousness,

but heard a cry!

So Jesus’ hearers would have realised that he was talking about them. Talking about them as God’s favoured people, with that familiar image which was redolent of fruitfulness, cultivation and the source of something joyful (wine!) In the end, though, they found themselves having another Isaiah 5 experience. It’s as though he was saying, ‘I don’t like sour grapes’…

And as the story was progressing, they would have caught another suggestive level of meaning. In the story the workers are being hired right up to pretty much the end of the day. This would have been a recognisable phenomenon: something that happened at harvest time. And so the story has eschatological undertones: this is also about Judgment! It’s not just a story with a moral. It’s about their attitudes having moral consequences – and consequences, ultimately, for themselves

There is also an intimacy in the story, or smallness of scale, which gives it a crucial focus. It’s the vineyard owner who does the hiring; he goes and finds the labourers he wants. And so, we realise, this is about God's relationship with his people, his relationship with us, a relationship which is direct. Ultimately that relationship is not mediated, or delegated. And of course, not that they knew it then, Jesus’ hearers were getting that with him: God the Son, calling them to come, calling them to work, calling them to account.

I’ve said enough for us to realise that Jesus was not telling a story about how to run a business. The central message, the real point comes in that shaming line, in the climax of the story: are you envious because I am generous?

Such envy is mean-spirited. It’s bad enough in the context of an enterprise like the grape-harvest, if counter-intuitive (think how you’d feel if you’d been in the sun all day). But the real context is God’s relationship with his people (the vineyard). God is generous to all who come, however late they come - and we should not be envious of his generosity.

We should not be like the older brother of the Prodigal Son, jealous of their father’s extravagant, loving liberality. We should not be like Jonah, peevishly cross at God’s forgiveness of the penitent people of Nineveh. It’s as though he’s saying to God: ‘you’re so annoying; you’re such a pushover’.

It’s a hard lesson to stomach. We are all too ready to talk of fairness, which can get very small-minded. It reminds me of something I try out in school assemblies, often around Christmas time.

What do you say if someone gives you a present? I ask.

Thank you! they all chorus.

Quite right, yes! And when you give someone a present, should they say anything to you?

Thank you! they all shout again.

Oh and why should they do that?

I’m beginning to sow a certain amount of consternation at this point. Various remonstrations about fairness bubble up, especially when I start to press the point, when I finally ask So do you give someone a present because you want them to say thank you, or because you want to give them a present?

Aren’t I mean, and at Christmas time too!

But the message is right. Demandingly counter-intuitive – so I fail routinely too - but right. When it comes to gratitude: always offer it, never require it.

Jesus is being similarly demanding, and confounding, when he tells this story about God’s crazy generosity. We don’t work for God in order to be rewarded: that’s the stuff of pagan religion. We work for God because that's how we can show our love for his love of us: by loving him and loving each other in our every word and deed. And in any case, that’s never going to be enough on a work/reward basis, so we always need his generosity. It’s also a generosity we should never begrudge others, especially if we’re tempted to be judgmental: when we do that we’re being sanctimonious and hard-hearted, like the pharisee at prayer.

Hmm, that must all sound horribly finger-wagging. I’m sorry. I really struggle with it too. Let’s just struggle together. Let’s do our best to believe in that divine generosity and do our best to share it with absolutely everyone. Let’s make a vineyard which yields deliciously, and for everyone; and where sour grapes simply can’t grow.