The Master Compassionately Promoted Workers To His Vineyard

Here in the parable of the landowner hiring workers to his vineyard (Matthew 20: 1-16) Jesus presents to us a special kind of poor: the unemployed, the jobless, and those who seek and not able to get a job. The unemployed live in a vulnerable situation, they are underprivileged because they lack the capacity to earn a living for a decent existence, and therefore they are poor. What is the use of having astounding gifts and abilities if we are unemployed? What can a man or woman do with a lousy day searching for work; it has no medal for efforts.

Though Universal Declaration of Human rights by the UN in 1948 in its article 23 recognises that everyone has the right to work, free choice of employment, just and favourable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment; most developing economies face a huge unemployment crisis. As a byproduct of this crisis comes cheap labour, underpaid jobs, and workers’ exploitation.

As the master walked through the streets, I would think that he deliberately took walks through the streets, he saw the unemployed poor standing there, waiting to find a job. The employed must see the unemployed. John Berger argues that ‘seeing is an active and dynamic process’. He distinguishes between ‘seeing’, which is an involuntary detection of a stimulus, and ‘looking’, which is a voluntary act of choosing what to focus on. Unless we actively see, unless we are critical we would only see what we are told to see by the media and other establishments. The master looked for the poor. The master was critical in his seeing and understanding, the master was compassionate. Do we look enough to see the poor? Do we look with compassion?

The fact that the master dealt justly with everyone; but to the poor he was generous, beautifully captures the radical economy of God's kingdom. Generosity appears unjust by materialistic standards—those who worked only one hour received the same payment as those who laboured all day—they reveal a higher justice that transcends mere transactional fairness and ensures that everyone has enough for their needs.

At the end of the day all batches of workers go home happily except the contract workers. They roamed the place grumbling and perhaps with clenched fist and gnashing teeth. What made them unhappy? Though many batches of workers were hired for work, the landowner makes contract only with the first batch of workers; the second group receives a promise, not a contract “I will give you a fair wage”. The last group has neither a contract nor a promise, yet they worked. The batch that arrived first was angry not because what they received, but for what others received. They were jealous. We often take a moral high ground to say that others do not deserve. They could not understand and celebrate the generosity of the master. One who refuses to be happy in another’s wellbeing, growth and prosperity becomes threat to kindness.

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