Us vs. Them: SALT's Commentary for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A): Matthew 20:1-16
Big Picture:
1) Jesus is approaching the end of his public ministry, rounding the corner into the last lap. He’s about to foretell his death and resurection for the third and final time, and shortly after that, he’ll ride into Jerusalem in a jubilant procession, complete with palm branches and a donkey. Just a few days later, he’ll be killed. As the end approaches, the stakes — and the tensions — are on the rise.
2) One way to think about this parable is that it’s meant to counter a charge by some religious authorities that the Jesus movement is too lax in admitting questionable newcomers to full membership (“tax collectors and sinners,” for example, and/or Gentiles (Matthew 9:11)). A traditional interpretation of the parable allegorically reads the early-arrivers to the vineyard as Jews or Jewish Christians, and the late-arrivers as Gentile Christians — but this line of thought is misleading for at least two reasons. First, it resonates with ugly anti-Jewish tropes (for example, Jews as “stingy”) and so smacks of Christian self-congratulation. And second, for Jesus (and for Matthew), the heart of the matter here had less to do with sectarian identity and more to do with other things: the character of salvation as a gift and not a reward for human efforts, for example; or the question of “who’s in and who’s out”; or the challenge of intra-communal conflict and contempt — and these themes are alive and well in Christian communities, both then and now, with no reference to Judaism necessary.
3) This passage is bookended with versions of the same aphorism: “the last will be first, and the first will be last” — a clear signal that the parable is to be understood as a picture of how God’s kingdom turns supposed hierarchies upside down (Matthew 20:16; compare 19:30).
4) In the ancient world, many thought that the eye emits rays that enable a person to see, like a kind of lamp. As we’ll see, Jesus picks up on this notion at the climax of the parable.
Scripture:
1) Like last week’s reading, this is a parable about what “the kingdom of heaven” is like. Its central point, then, isn’t economic or moral; rather, it’s meant to evoke and illustrate the realm of God, the new world that has “come near” (Matthew 4:17).
2) The word translated “landowner” is oikodespotes, “head of household.” It’s the same term Matthew uses at the end of an earlier chapter packed with parables: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household [oikodespotes] who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). Thus the word is meant to connote a wise and generous authority.
3) In the parable, a householder hires laborers for his vineyard at several times over the course of a day, and ultimately compensates them all with the typical daily wage (one denarius), paying the latest arrivals first. This causes consternation among the early-arrivers — which they express, please note, as “grumbling” not that they ought to be paid more, but rather that the late-arrivers ought to be paid less: “you have made them equal to us” (Matthew 20:11-12).
4) There’s a work-and-reward ethos underpinning this complaint, the idea that goods should be distributed according to the effort and excellence in “bearing the burden of the day,” as the early-arrivers put it (Matthew 20:12). This rings true: indeed, it’s striking to consider just how much of our everyday lives — at home, at school, at work, and even in personal relationships — is saturated with this basic idea: you get out what you put in. But the householder’s response makes clear that this vineyard, and by extension, “the kingdom of heaven,” operates with a very different, apparently upside-down logic. Divine blessings are given not according to who works the hardest, but rather according to the free, generous will of the householder. Such blessings, then, are actually not rewards at all — but gifts. The governing ethos of the “kingdom of heaven” isn’t work-and-reward, but rather gift-and-gratitude.
5) But there’s something even deeper going on here as well. A work-and-reward mentality could just as easily have led the early-arrivers to demand higher wages for themselves, or to expressly envy the deal the late-arrivers got (the same pay for less work) — but instead, their “grumbling” is pointedly cast in terms of competitive contempt and resentment: They haven’t worked as hard as we have! They don’t deserve to be equal with us!
6) Strictly speaking, the early-arrivers don’t “envy” the late-arrivers, since “envy” means wishing to possess something someone else has. Rather, what we have here is the opposite: wishing someone else didn’t have something you’ve already received. Indeed, the early-arrivers are neither “envious” nor obsessed with “fairness”; they’re scornful. They’ve judged the late-arrivers to be less worthy, and they resent the householder’s action because it erases that imagined pecking order: “you have made them equal to us.” Put simply, when the early-arrivers look at the late-arrivers, they see a “them” to look down on.
7) The householder, however, will have none of this. The NRSV translates his response as “are you envious?”, but the Greek is literally, “is your eye evil?” Jesus uses this “evil eye” idiom one other time in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy [literally, ‘if your eye is evil’], your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23).
8) Thus the problem with the early-arrivers has to do with how they see — or rather, fail to see — the world around them. Where they could and should see a “we,” they see an “us vs. them.” Where they could and should feel camaraderie, they feel contempt. Where they could and should see and celebrate a vineyard of God’s grace, they see an arena of competition, and a cause for resentment. In short, their “eye is unhealthy.” Their whole way of seeing the world is distorted and obscured. Their “lamp of the body” is emitting darkness, not light, and so their “whole body fills with darkness.” Even the householder’s generosity itself — the very abundance of which the early-arrivers, too, are beneficiaries — is twisted into an occasion for division and scorn, for the invention of a “them” for “us” to look down on. And that kind of clannish divisiveness, of course, is exactly what lies in store for Jesus, just up ahead, on the road to Golgotha.
Takeaways:
1) This parable is a classic case of “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” To listeners who feel unworthy, or unholy, or “on the outside looking in,” the parable comes as radiant good news: despite appearances, there is a hidden pattern of blessing in creation, heaven’s pattern, based not on righteousness but on grace. The work-and-reward ethos, so dominant in the world as we know it, has no place in the “kingdom of heaven” now dawning on earth. Be encouraged, for the “last” shall be first! And by the same token, to those who feel entitled and superior, “holier than thou,” or “on the inside looking out (and down!),” the parable comes as a sharp word of warning: beware the us-and-them arrogance that cuts you off from your brothers and sisters, and ultimately from experiencing God’s generosity. Re-light the lamp of your eye; turn your perspective upside-down (or rather, rightside-up!). Be humbled, for the “first” shall be last!
2) Jesus’ use of the “evil eye” idiom puts a new spin on his declaration, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). We’re called to see creation through the householder’s eyes, as a vineyard full of hard work, yes, and at the same time full of God’s graceful gifts (even the hard work is a gift!)— and then, once we see in this way, we’re called to act accordingly, becoming “lamps” that illumine the world of blessing for all to see. Can we see creation in this way, as a garden of God’s generosity, despite how things often seem, despite the drumbeats of “scarcity,” “threat,” and “work-and-reward”?
3) It’s easier said than done — and not only because those drumbeats are compelling and familiar, or because the world is so full of loss and suffering, or because our lives (especially these days!) are so beseiged by various forms of “us vs. them.” Seeing the world as a graceful garden, and acting accordingly, takes profound trust and patience, insight and imagination. It’s just plain difficult; we need each other’s help to do it (that’s what the church is!), and God’s help most of all. But when we do see in this way, when the lamps of our eyes are illuminated, the wounds of creation begin to heal, little by little. For when we see each other not as rivals but rather as fellow beneficiaries of God’s merciful gifts, equally “un-entitled” and equally beloved, the whole idea of “us vs. them” begins to fall away. The report that “you have made them equal to us” becomes a cause for delight and celebration, not complaint. And what emerges, in the end, is an ever-widening “we”: children of God in the image of God, the One who turns the world rightside-up, humbling the “first” and lifting the “last.”