Like Rocks to be Crushed

More on the Parable of Laborers in Matthew 20:1-16.

In the "real world" we treat one another as means to our ends.  The landowner is a means to wages for the workers.  The workers are the means to harvesting products for the landowner.  Each party uses the other to in order to attain a personal goal.

In a profound sense, then, they are enemies.  They hold one another hostage.  They are kept at peace by the necessities of enlightened self-interest.

The landowner, however, is very strange.  The workers are not valued in terms of what they produce.  They do not receive wages.  In fact, they receive a calling and a gift.  The landowner has no concern about an exchange, a quid pro quo.  The workers are valued rather than evaluated.

The parable subverts completely our individualist consumerism.  God cannot and will not be treated as a means to our end.  We cannot game the system to get more because we get it all at once.  Paul says it so well in Romans 8:32--He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?  Of course God will!

So jockeying for prestige and position is beside the point.  Staging a protest at the vineyard gates is an exercise in missing the point.  Will we complain because God is good?  Will we let God be as good as God wants to be?  And will we take part in that goodness?

Our culture "has turned us ever more quickly into anxiety-laden, functional atheists needing ways to use God to make our lives work" (Alan Roxburgh, Missional, page 73).  Our consumer culture is based on the dissatisfaction that results from comparison.  We have no sense of what "enough" might be.  The fear is that if we did know how much is enough, then we might stop buying things.  And our consumer-driven economy would collapse from the weight of mindless overproduction.

We as consumers are rocks to be mined, crushed and processed for the sake of the system.  Yet, Jesus makes clear in this parable that no one is a resource to be mined for the gain of another.  God is not at our disposal as a means to our comfort, serenity and sanity.  These are fringe benefits of a proper relationship with God.  Our neighbor is not to be mined as a way to calm our fears--even if that neighbor is a spouse, a child, a parent or a friend.

Is the problem in the parable that Jesus doesn't understand business?  Or is it that we don't understand Jesus?  We should be cautious any time we find ourselves trying to correct Jesus.  We should be worried any time we find ourselves trying to rebuke Jesus.  No, Lord, we want to say, the world doesn't really work this way.  We must defend ourselves at all times from the predatory desires of others.

Of course, we know how things worked for Peter when he tried to correct Jesus and put things back on a practical footing.  He was called Satan and told to step back for a while.