Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Thus Matthew 20:1-15 is not about some abstract characteristic of God. Jesus speaks of the boundless generosity of God solely from the point of view that this generosity is now reality since his own appearance and is so in the form of a new society that is beginning to grow around him and through him. The parable speaks of how this new reality is breaking into the weariness and hopelessness of the people of God. It is an outrageous process. It makes the lowest into the highest; it awakens deep anxieties; it causes scandal. But it also allows hope to bloom and bestows deep joy.

In the parable of the hired workers Jesus depicts what is now happening, at this very hour: the coming of the reign of God. He interprets what is already taking place before his hearers’ eyes, its impact still hidden and yet visible. The parable does not provide a timeless teaching. It reveals things that are already happening and by revealing them sets them free. A new possibility for living becomes plausible.

The hearers can depend on the parable’s import. They can enter into the story the parable tells and allow Jesus’ words to give them a new foundation on which to stand. They can ask Jesus to make them part of his group of disciples where the new thing is already beginning to grow. Or they can become sympathizers with the Jesus movement and thus support the new world that is beginning there.

Thus, Jesus’ words are effective. They create reality. In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, which so exactly describes the gloomy social conditions of his time, Jesus was also surely thinking that the time of harvest in Israel must again become what, in God’s eyes, it should always have been: a time of jubilation and shouts of joy.

The Seed Growing Secretly

It is surely clear by now that Jesus’ parables illuminate the reign of God from all sides; still more, they entice us to enter into it. And because the reign of God cannot be reduced to simple formulae, Jesus’ parables often seem to contradict each other. We can show this through three examples.

The first of these is the parable of the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-29). It is one of Jesus’ loveliest parables: short, compact, positively functional in its direct and virtually unadorned style, and yet imbued with a marvelous hope:

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.

This parable tells of the coming of the reign of God in the image of a field that produces seed and allows it to grow steadily until harvest. The accent is not on the sowing. The farmer who sowed the seed is part of the plan of the parable. Nor is the accent on the harvest. It too is simply part of the frame that holds together the central and focal part of the parable. What is crucial is only the description of how the wheat grows while the farmer does nothing. Only here, in the central part of the parable, is there a description of “phases.” Only here does the narrative become detailed.

That is very strange to people today. As biologically enlightened moderns they know how the seed grows and why it grows and what one can do to make it grow faster or slower, taller or shorter, and above all pest-resistant. The work of today’s agricultural engineers is by no means finished when the seed is sown. At the least, there is still spraying to be done.

At that time in Galilee or Judea it was quite different. The parable depicts the impossibility of intervening in the growth of the seed. The farmers had to wait. They slept and rose, day and night, and the earth produced its yield “of itself.” Human beings could not understand or influence the miracle of growth. They only knew that God’s creative power was at work and in the end gave the harvest.

From beginning to end the parable is about the coming of the reign of God. It is not about the fact that the reign of God will only come if first the seed is sown. It is certainly not about the idea that the reign of God comes slowly, as grain gradually ripens. Its point is solely that human beings cannot bring about or force the coming of God’s reign, most certainly not by violence, as the Zealots thought possible. They can only wait. They may sleep quietly at night. God brings the reign of God. God alone.

The parable shows the creative power and historical might of God. No one will prevent God from working and bringing God’s salvation. The human response to this knowledge of God can only be a deep, calm trust in God.

The Other Aspect of the Matter