Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

The parable of the workers in the vineyard Matthew 20: 1-16

A familiar enough parable, perhaps too familiar as we can easily read it, pass over it, saying yes, I know what that is about.

This parable sits in the context of Jesus heading determinedly to Jerusalem for the last time and wanting to get some of the wrong headed thinking out of the disciples about what kind of Messiah he was and what kind of Kingdom he was inaugurating and proclaiming.

Some of that wrong thinking imagined that the Messiah (who they had no concept of being divine) would be a Priest King type. They would usher in the Kingdom outlined in the prophecies and re-enacted every Passover. Israel would be brought back from exile, they would be free, the law would go out from Zion, and the pagan nations would be brought under God’s judgment. And several other things as well.  Absolutely no thought of any kind of heaven as another realm but rather this earth and heaven being combined as outlined in Genesis. What happened in the Temple, the earth heaven realm in microcosm, would be enlarged to encompass the whole world.

And the disciples are jockeying for position in the cabinet, for a seat on the front bench.

Matthew 18 begins this section and it always worth remembering chapter and verses were added in the 16^th century. Here Jesus presents the least in the current society as the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. (Matthew has ‘heaven’ rather than God but means the same thing) This ‘none’ person is a child. This ‘children’ theme is picked up again in chapter 19v13-15.

Just before the parable we are reflecting on we have the hyperbolic saying about camels going through the eye of a needle which is nothing about a small gate into Jerusalem but is all about thinking about the unthinkable.  

Remember this was a time when there were mainly a small percentage of extremely rich people and a much larger number of poor people. 

‘The rich man in his castle the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.’

Then immediately before the parable, possibly the trigger for the parable, is Peter saying what they have given up in following Jesus and asking what they might expect in return.

Jesus gives an enigmatic response that may well have been taken literally by the disciples, lining up with their Messianic expectations of a real King and real Kingdom in this time space continuum.

But we are still turning things upside down – or perhaps the right way up.

I do wonder if the mother of James and John reflected about the request she had made of Jesus for her boys to have key cabinet positions when she witnessed Jesus climbing not a throne but a cross with two thieves crucified either side of him.

To the parable itself…

And one key reflection, the payment of a denarius. This was a day’s wage for a labourer. Is your mind thinking of zero hours contracts?

This payment had to be made at the end of the working day so the person could go and get food.

Deuteronomy 24.15 ‘You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the LORD, and you be guilty of sin.

All those hired received a daily wage – ‘give us today our daily bread.’

We see people are hired early in the morning, later in the day, around noon at 3pm and finally almost the end of the working day – and all receive enough to allow them to get their daily bread.

Are you concerned like me when you hear of 3,000 people applying for one job in a pub? Are you like me concerned when you hear the Chancellor talking about removing the triple lock on pensions and welfare? Are you like me concerned when we continue to be fixated with employment linked to financial remuneration and often linked to status and the value placed upon a person? Are you like me concerned that there appears to be little creative discussions about a world without paid employment for an increasing number of people? Are you like me concerned when you hear of the exponential increase in the use of food banks?

Now I know this parable is about God’s outrageous grace, acceptance, love, and the upside-down Kingdom. However, I would argue having considered it in its context we are a given license to make a current application. What better current application could we make than to argue that everyone without exception should have enough to purchase their daily bread and to purchase that bread with dignity not opprobrium for being feckless.