In the passage above from Matthew, Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the importance of fairness and says unto them, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went our early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard." When the householder finds some men for hire in the marketplace, they agree to work for one penny a day. Three hours later, he goes back to the marketplace and finds more men standing idle, and he offers them work in his vineyard for one penny a day also. In the sixth hour he went out and did likewise and in the 11th hour, he found more men and asked them, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" And they respond, "Because no man hath hired us." And so he offered the same amount of pay that he had offered the first, the second and the third group of laborers, which was one penny by saying, "Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive." Now when the day had come to an end, and he summoned the laborers to receive their pay, he ordered his steward to give payment beginning from the last unto the first of the labourers. When those that were hired in the eleventh hour came, they all received a penny as they were promised. Now, the first hour's group came and they observed that the eleventh hour men had received the same wage that they were promised, yet they worked many hours more and they supposed that they should receive more in return, yet they received every man a penny. The first group murmured against the good man of the house and when the landowner heard them he said, "Didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."
A second story to consider before we understand the parable and its significance...
Often times at retreats for clergy members - lay people (not members of the clergy) come to present witness talks - and there came up a man, and plopped a pair of old, worn out looking boots upon the podium. And he began to tell the story about how he grew up in a working middle class family, and after his dad Jim came back from World War 2, he found work at a meat packing plant. Money was always tight, but his father worked hard to provide for his family an also an education for his son. His father later lost his job meat packing, and went bouncing from one job to the next. The son (the man speaking) eventually finished his college and received a job offer from a large multinational conglomerate. He soon began to look down on his father, realizing what he has achieved, and what his father had not, and that he didn't measure up to what his life should be. When his father passed away, the family held a wake for him. At the wake, he noticed the President and CEO of the company he was working for come walking through the door. And when the son came up to the man, the man asked him if he was related to Jim, the man that died, and he said yes, to which the man exclaimed, "Your his son?" The CEO then began to tell the son the story of he and Jim were both marines together in WW2, and they were in a battle that got so bad, that his father (Jim) ran out into the battle and saved his life. And later, after we had both came home after the war, he asked me, "Can you get my son a job?" To which the CEO told the son that, "Your dad got you that job." At which point he became sad, and pointed to the boots and said,"I thought I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, and I forgot who gave me those boots."
We sometimes stand on the merits of many people, and the man in the parable thought that because he worked all day, that he should get more, that he deserved more yet he got the same wage. The landowner was generous, yet he was upset that landowner gave the rest of the men the same wage. The man thought that he should celebrate that he was better than the rest of them, like the son thought he was better than his father Jim. When we become self-possessed that our success in life is by our own doing, when all along so many people have contributed to our lives, we begin to look down on others and compare ourselves to them and say they are less - that they in some way deserve little respect, and its important to shun this attitude - the attitude of self-satisfaction or sense of lack of respect for people who have less, or in some ways are not counted as much as we are in the sense of the world. When we are tempted to think that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we need to consider that someone probably bought us those boots.
To better understand, consider the following,
Isaiah Chapter 55:8-9
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," saith the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Many passages throughout the bible don't fit, or our contrary to our human thinking and understanding. They seem to fly in the face of fairness and make us uneasy because they are contrary to the way we think and the way we teach our children to behave. Which is why it is important to clarify to one another, that it is hard to describe God's labour policies as"fair." God's words breaks into the "salary" of workers not for seniority nor outputs, but for justice directed towards generosity. His justice has nothing to do with hard work or labor negotiations, which is what is happening around the country right now with regards to Labor Unions and those lobbying for pay raises. Most of us think of ourselves as the laborers of the vineyard, who work hard all day, and believe we are the faithful long suffering who agreed to a wage before we knew our output had nothing to do with God's generosity. None of us want to receive something for nothing, or that which was rightfully earned. The parable is intended to make us realize that we are all recipients of God's generosity, we are the ones called in the last hour, those labourers who were called at dusk, to receive the gifts not because we deserve them, but because God is generous. It is not about what we earned, but what God has given to all of us out of his superior generosity. We all work diligently, long hours throughout the day striving to be dependent, but again the parable is not about what we do, but what God does generously for us all. If we had to explain this to our children, we have to declare that God's justice is always generous, and we have all been beneficiaries well beyond our merits of hard work.