Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

It is with the kingdom of heaven as with a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. When he went out again at the sixth and ninth hours he did the same. And at the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired at the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the [whole] day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or is your view evil because I am good?” (Matt 20:1-15)

Here Jesus tells a story weighed down with joylessness. It apparently takes place at the time of the grape crush. The grapes are ripe and must be harvested as quickly as possible. Otherwise it would be hard to explain why the landowner would seek workers all day long. We cannot sense in this parable the least bit of the happiness that filled the days of the crush in ancient Israel. Here are none of the glad shouts that rang out over the vineyards, none of the greetings and blessings exchanged by passersby with the vineyard workers (Ps 129:8). The parable presupposes a grey and sober world of work in which labor is only a grind.

The reason should be clear: Jesus’ parables offer us an astonishingly vivid picture of the social conditions in Palestine in the first century. The times when free farmers in Israel harvested their own vineyards with joy were long past. Most had long since lost their land to large landowners. The Romans demanded such enormous sums that every operation had to produce a high added value and thus was forced to economize. This meant that agricultural operations had to be large and required cheap labor, either slaves or wage workers. Very few family farms could maintain themselves. So the majority of former farmers now worked as day laborers. They were hired in the marketplace in the morning and paid in the evening. Work went on from sunup to sundown, from daybreak to first dark.

An agricultural worker earned just enough in such a day’s labor to be able to feed his or her family the next day. If the worker was not hired in the morning, that family’s children would go hungry the next day. These conditions are reflected in the parable: a joyless work world. And to that extent Jesus’ story is completely realistic.

There is thus no reason to look askance at the “workers of the first hour” who demanded a just system of payment. From their point of view they were quite right. A denarius was certainly not a bad day’s wage. But if the last, who have worked only a single hour in the cool of early evening, receive just as much as they themselves who have toiled many hours in blazing heat, that is not only unjust but also inhuman. It degrades their labor. That is the logic of the “workers of the first hour.” Are they right?

Every society, even the worst slaveholding regime, depends on the fact that at least a certain degree of justice is preserved. Otherwise, the society will collapse. To that extent we can understand the wrathful protest of the one who makes himself the spokesman for the others, and to that extent the ending of the parable is in the first place “impossible.” Only when we have made ourselves aware of all that do we acquire access to the real meaning of the story, because here two worlds—or two different forms of society—collide.