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sophiaserpentiaFor a couple of weeks now, i've been thinking about the Parable of the Vineyard Workers. This is one of the more bizarre parables, and that's saying quite a lot as many of them are quite odd.
[Matthew 20:1] "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
[2] He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
[3] About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
[4] He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'
[5] So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.
[6] About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
[7] 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
[8] When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
[9] The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.
[10] So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.
[11] When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
[12] 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
[13] But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius?
[14] Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you.
[15] Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
[16] So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
Those who say the primary or sole focus of Jesus' message was "saving souls" say this teaches us about getting into heaven. If you are born again while young and do good your whole life, you'll get the same reward as someone who converts on their deathbed after a life of wickedness and iniquity. This is because God is "merciful." Don't forget that the twisted assumption behind this is that God doesn't care about how good we might or might not be, just whether or not we have "accepted Jesus" (whatever that actually means).
Let us say that the above interpretation is correct. Even if so, this parable is hardly a ringing endorsement of the doctrine, because in that case at least a third of the parable is given to considering that maybe it's not fair for someone to "toil" all their lives (as if living an ethical life is necessarily drudgery) and get the same heavenly reward as someone who comes along at the last minute and converts right before they die.
Essentially, we are supposed to accept that god tells do-gooders, "Suckers! Gotcha!"
But all of this strikes me as an excuse to overlook the parable for what it is on its face: an examination of the way wage labor works. What we see here is that the person who pays the wage has the opportunity to set the terms, to give favor or not as they see fit; and that those who are forced to work for wages have very little input into the way they are paid -- creating opportunities for exploitation. The landowner is hiding behind "the tyranny of the contract" to exploit the day laborers who worked for him all day, under the guise of generosity towards the later laborers.
Labor for wage is a good thing to question, because in an empire, jobs which relate directly to the business of empire tend to earn the highest wages. Look at our present-day American empire and see how many positions of prestige and wealth are ethically bankrupt and involve directly increasing American power or profiting from disparity with developing nations. Note, too, that many of the most important jobs in human society -- bearing and caring for children, teaching, maintaining house, day-to-day caretaking of sick relatives -- pay almost no wages at all. Wage labor is a system designed to push people into working for the perpetuation of empire.
If the hypothesis i've offered in the past is correct, and Jesus wanted his followers to turn on, tune in, and drop out of the monstrous imperial machine, then the second view of the parable makes a lot of sense. Jesus would have wanted his followers to examine the true nature of wage labor.
John Dominic Crossan demonstrated in his complex anthropological investigation of Galilee at the time of Jesus (detailed in The Birth of Christianity) that a considerable upheaval was going on in which many peasants were driven from their land so that rich Roman developers could build large villas and other pet projects. Displaced peasants have a much lowered standard of living and are forced to take up crafting or day labor -- which Crossan pointed out added a dimension of significance to the fact of Jesus' career as a carpenter: he was a displaced peasant.
Property ownership is the key to power in a human society. Any class of unpropertied renters are kept in a state of perpetual debt to them. This is particularly hard to swallow when many of the unpropertied renters once owned their own land.
This is why throughout human history, mass displacement of peasants -- usually from families which had owned their land for generations -- is one of the primary causes of armed rebellion.
Christianity, which may have had its roots as a pacifist and egalitarian response to lower-class unrest, was over the generations misappropriated by the Roman upper-class and became a primarily "spiritual" movement, with all vestiges of its former radicalism painted over and spliced out. It became dominated by the heirarchical edifice of the church and became eventually a gear in the imperial machine. The "spiritual" interpretation of this parable, as an instruction on god's endorsement of the moral unfairness of deathbed conversions leading to eternal reward in heaven, is revealed as not simply being nonsense, but a deliberate burial of radicalism beneath a memetic morass.
[Matthew 20:1] "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
[2] He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
[3] About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
[4] He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'
[5] So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.
[6] About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
[7] 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
[8] When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
[9] The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.
[10] So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.
[11] When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
[12] 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
[13] But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius?
[14] Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you.
[15] Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
[16] So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
Those who say the primary or sole focus of Jesus' message was "saving souls" say this teaches us about getting into heaven. If you are born again while young and do good your whole life, you'll get the same reward as someone who converts on their deathbed after a life of wickedness and iniquity. This is because God is "merciful." Don't forget that the twisted assumption behind this is that God doesn't care about how good we might or might not be, just whether or not we have "accepted Jesus" (whatever that actually means).
Let us say that the above interpretation is correct. Even if so, this parable is hardly a ringing endorsement of the doctrine, because in that case at least a third of the parable is given to considering that maybe it's not fair for someone to "toil" all their lives (as if living an ethical life is necessarily drudgery) and get the same heavenly reward as someone who comes along at the last minute and converts right before they die.
Essentially, we are supposed to accept that god tells do-gooders, "Suckers! Gotcha!"
But all of this strikes me as an excuse to overlook the parable for what it is on its face: an examination of the way wage labor works. What we see here is that the person who pays the wage has the opportunity to set the terms, to give favor or not as they see fit; and that those who are forced to work for wages have very little input into the way they are paid -- creating opportunities for exploitation. The landowner is hiding behind "the tyranny of the contract" to exploit the day laborers who worked for him all day, under the guise of generosity towards the later laborers.
Labor for wage is a good thing to question, because in an empire, jobs which relate directly to the business of empire tend to earn the highest wages. Look at our present-day American empire and see how many positions of prestige and wealth are ethically bankrupt and involve directly increasing American power or profiting from disparity with developing nations. Note, too, that many of the most important jobs in human society -- bearing and caring for children, teaching, maintaining house, day-to-day caretaking of sick relatives -- pay almost no wages at all. Wage labor is a system designed to push people into working for the perpetuation of empire.
If the hypothesis i've offered in the past is correct, and Jesus wanted his followers to turn on, tune in, and drop out of the monstrous imperial machine, then the second view of the parable makes a lot of sense. Jesus would have wanted his followers to examine the true nature of wage labor.
John Dominic Crossan demonstrated in his complex anthropological investigation of Galilee at the time of Jesus (detailed in The Birth of Christianity) that a considerable upheaval was going on in which many peasants were driven from their land so that rich Roman developers could build large villas and other pet projects. Displaced peasants have a much lowered standard of living and are forced to take up crafting or day labor -- which Crossan pointed out added a dimension of significance to the fact of Jesus' career as a carpenter: he was a displaced peasant.
Property ownership is the key to power in a human society. Any class of unpropertied renters are kept in a state of perpetual debt to them. This is particularly hard to swallow when many of the unpropertied renters once owned their own land.
This is why throughout human history, mass displacement of peasants -- usually from families which had owned their land for generations -- is one of the primary causes of armed rebellion.
Christianity, which may have had its roots as a pacifist and egalitarian response to lower-class unrest, was over the generations misappropriated by the Roman upper-class and became a primarily "spiritual" movement, with all vestiges of its former radicalism painted over and spliced out. It became dominated by the heirarchical edifice of the church and became eventually a gear in the imperial machine. The "spiritual" interpretation of this parable, as an instruction on god's endorsement of the moral unfairness of deathbed conversions leading to eternal reward in heaven, is revealed as not simply being nonsense, but a deliberate burial of radicalism beneath a memetic morass.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 05:36 pm (UTC)That particular parable has always bothered me; now that you mention it, it's a really good illustration of the fact that in a wage economy, the same amount of time/work does not bring back the same pay.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 05:53 pm (UTC)...and then they all get fired and the owner hires some other day workers. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 06:14 pm (UTC)But in the New & ImprovedTM version of the parable, it is essentially god as the ruling-class landowner telling his worshippers to STFU. Instead of questioning it, now we are supposed to equate rulers with god and go along with their plan without complaint.
reminds me of another verse
Date: 2006-10-19 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-20 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-20 07:30 pm (UTC)Which works with your historical contextual interpretation here. Since in the earthly realms were time is a resource then with the tyranny of the contract those who did less for same pay would technically be getting more, higher in the hierarchy than the more oppressed.
Either way or both, yeah, I've always thought this parable was about egalitarianism (and not deathbed conversion - see the curry favor stuff and do good for reward instead of spirit of doing good stuff above).
I think you're on to something
Date: 2006-10-26 07:39 pm (UTC)Something like that ... but without detaching from actualities. I think those who take themselves away have a sort of "and the Devil take the hind-most" attitude.
To be in the world without being "of" it ... tricky.
FWIW in my tradition the monastic manner of life is considered, in a very real sense, the easiest ... and the extreme yogic manner easier still. Cuz it means leaving behind all the nasty dailiness that arises from life with others. The hardest, by far, is to be a house-holder ... always cutting against the grain and swimming against the current ... tiring, that is.