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Sept 19, 1999
At the outset I like this capitalist landowner. He is a hands-on guy. Up before dawn, he's at the hiring place to select personally his workers for the day. He doesn't delegate the hard work and he's back a few hours later at nine o'clock to hire more; and then at noon; and again in the late afternoon. Here is one executive who is going to earn his executive stock options.
But, on the other hand, he pursues a wage policy that is plainly crazy. If everyone, who ever reported to work, got the same pay regardless of the hours worked and the quality of the work done, we would have a capitalistic breakdown. The story stands on its head the most elemental control of workers' output - wages as rewards.
I have never been a day laborer. Trying to hitch a ride in my youth in France and Spain is probably the closest experience I can claim to being a day laborer. You stand there with your thumb out, in the rain in Spain, and never know whether the next car will pick you up or a thousand will pass by indifferent to your need. It's a feeling of dependency and vulnerability to the decisions of others, which must be somewhat like the many millions of day laborers who gather in places such as southern California and every European city and even right here in Hong Kong.
And day labor is not all that appealing. I have seen beautiful photographs of workers in the vineyards of Tuscany or Napa Valley and fantasized that would be a beautiful kind of work - for a day! I had a friend in Costa Rica who owned a coffee plantation and every January, when the coffee bushes were heavy with their berries, he would give a barbecue party. We his guests, upon arriving, were given a basket and invited to fill it with coffee beans before we lunched.
This was a joke because my hour of increasingly hot, sweaty work produced barely enough berries to cover the bottom of my basket. To consider that a coffee picker had to fill at least three such baskets to earn his day's wages quickly, and to allow me to enjoy my cappucino at Pacific Coast Coffee, quickly destroys any romantic notions about the charms of rural day labor.
Of course, none among us is a day laborer. We are salaried and do precious little manual work. A round of golf is about as physical as it gets for many here. Yet we can easily identify with the anger of those who worked hard all day and wound up with the same wages as those who were Johnnies come lately to the work but received the same wages. Salaried workers and mangers in Hong Kong are not spared the pressure of quotas and the constant struggle to produce or die. But it is a limited sense of solidarity we have. Worker solidarity like human solidarity only goes so far.
Is this an earthly parable about communal economics? At the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus' approach appeared to be from each according to his gifts and to each according to his needs. Is Jesus an incipient socialist in this parable. My reading is ambivalent. Jesus clearly affirms the importance of contractual obligations, a bedrock in our economics as his. Those who worked all day received the usual wage. They were not cheated. They were paid in full. Their upset came when they saw others who worked less get the same wage. They wanted more. It is very difficult when you are fully employed to identify with the struggle of those "who were not selected."
Likewise, it is very difficult for those who are physically and intellectually strong to identify with those who are different. It is in fact difficult for anyone who belongs to any majority group or who has a heightened sense of personal self worth to identify with the struggles of those who are a minority or who appear to lack self worth.
I chaired a meeting of 25 professional clergy this past week for a discussion on "Christian Issues on Homosexual/Lesbian Issues." It was a serious sharing which revealed substantive differences among we professional workers. The division came between liberal Christians, like myself, who believe we must interpret the bible, both in its original context and in our own, to arrive at the most responsible reading. Frankly, I am suspicious of those inerrant interpreters who believe that all scriptural truth is self-evident. I do not find the very few references in the Bible to same gender relations either as meaning what many bible readers think they mean nor comprehensive to our present situation which presents in modern consenting and committed relationships a social model of which the bible writers were entirely unaware and lacking in experience.
In these controversial debates I experience that both liberals and fundamentalists can get on their high horses and pronounce judgements upon the other side from a position of presumed moral superiority. But in our discussion of last Tuesday that presumption was claimed almost exclusively by the fundamentalist position which claims insider information on the will of God and do not hesitate to pronounce the judgement of God upon a different minority. We all need to ask in these heated discussions: Where is Jesus in all our argument and interpretation?
No matter what our standing, if we identify with a convinced majority, or minority, it is difficult to identify with the struggle of others who represent alternate readings, experiences, and lifestyles. It is very difficult to identify with the struggles of others.
I touched briefly last week upon the debate now taking place in international bodies like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank about how to handle the debt of the Third World countries to the First World. It is evident that the majority of these countries can barely pay the interest on that debt. In most of their cases half or more of all foreign earnings go only to service the debt. There is no prospect that the principal will ever be repaid and yet the continuance of the debt prevents these struggling societies from repositioning their economic planning toward any reality and hope.
And so there is a total or partial debt forgiveness plan a foot. It may happen just because it's in the self-interest of the lending agencies and the First World economies to reduce the burden of the Third World so that they can qualify for yet more loans.What is so disturbing to me is that the First World countries have framed the debate in such a way that the they are cast as generous, if they forgive the debt, and contractually sound if they do not. You read almost no history about how these loans were made in the first place, almost always to dictators in Africa and without any responsible checks upon the use of the funds to help the peoples and economies for whose need the loans were justified.
It was very easy for lending authorities to identify with dictators like the late Mobutu of the Congo. IT is difficult to identify with the struggling masses especially when our own culpability is called into focus.
As an earthly parable this story has some provocative lessons. But of course, it is a heavenly parable. At the very outset Jesus states: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE A LANDOWNER WHO WENT OUT EARLY…This is a heavenly story.
The Generous Employer may represent God. While there are winners and losers in the earthly market place, God runs heaven on his own standards, valuing persons because in his love he has a vocation for every one of them. The love of God disturbs us when we see others getting more than they deserve, although we ourselves can justify absolutely everything we get! The ruthless competitiveness of the Marketplace militates against our rejoicing when those on the fringe of employment, or acceptability, or conventional morality, have good things come their way (the elder son's envy and hostility in the story of the Forgiving Father.) Even in our achievements and our faith we are still insecure and troubled to see others getting anything if they do not conform to our standards of what is right and good and fair.
Remember that great line in THE UNFORGIVEN when the kid who has just killed his first man, a bad guy, and is deeply troubled, says in self-exoneration: "I guess he got what he deserved." And the Cliff Eastwood character replies: "Kid, in the end we all get what we deserve." That is a sobering coda to the earthly market place thinking.
As a story with a heavenly meaning, the parable corrects our very earthly standards with the standards of God's judgement. These are some further meanings of the parable as a heavenly story, suggested by Ronald W. Graham in his published sermon, "An Earthly Story with a Heavenly Meaning?" and I would like to draw upon his thinking now.
First, God judges according to our motive. If one worker bargains for a stated wage, he will receive it. If others accept the assurance of God's faithfulness and goodwill, their trust will be justified. In heaven there is pay enough for everyone.
Did you read the happy story recently of the American businessman who sold out his company which he had built from scratch. He cleared over US$400 M. To the delight of the 200 or so workers in his firm, he took about US200M and gave it to them as bonuses. Those who had been with him for years received several million dollars each. Those who were hired only the week before received several thousands. True, he did not divide his generosity into equal parts, but everyone got something. They all got a lot more than they had any reason under our earthly market standards to expect.
The Kingdom of heaven is like that. Could earth be more like that?
Second, God's judgement is rendered not only on the basis of what is accomplished but also according to the measure of opportunity. God sees everyone and everything and God appreciates that some are abled and gifted and start off with sunrise hope and invincible purpose. Others start off later in the day of opportunity; they have a disadvantage, some impairment, negligible or serious, of the mind, or the body, or the environment, or of social non-acceptance. They are among the differently abled. They are desirous of serving God but cannot as they would. "No one has hired us." I shrink from buying a big Mac with its 65% fat content but I admire Macdonald's policy of hiring the differently abled.
In our internet emerging economy and in places like Silicon Valley thousands of persons are becoming millionaires in short order. They have opportunity and have seized it. But what of the struggle of the many more who must resist the foe repeatedly and yet struggle on without earthly reward and social affirmation. Only God knows who among us deserves the victor's crown which on earth may so easily be rewarded to a few and withheld from most. Those who are victorious on earth seldom give full measure to the element of lucky circumstance in their rise. In heaven God gives full measure to the element of opportunity and the lack of it.
One of the truly fine films of this year is OCTOBER SKIES. It is the true story of four high school boys in West Virginia who in l96l, following the first outer space triumph of the Russian sputnik, decide to build a rocket. The situation, however, is that these are four poor kids in a typically poor West Virginia high school which never even sent a graduate to college. In their context their ambition is seen as a pipe dream by most of the authorities including their parents. They endure, they struggle, and they, after many setbacks, go on to win the state high school science fair and then the national high school fair with their rocket which actually does soar. All four go to college; two end up as engineers, one working all his career at NASA.
Yes, it's heart warming because the underdogs win. And they show extraordinary true grit, struggling on in the face of opposition from the school principal and their parents. But they did not do it alone. They had some who joined them in the struggle - a high school English teacher (there was no science teacher in this school) who herself was dying of leukemia and many poor folks, black and white, whose dimes and nickels kept the project financed.
And so it is in heaven Jesus tells us that the first may end up last and the last can end up first according to God's criteria which are not ours. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways. And aren't we glad of that! Aren't we glad that Jesus' parable as a heavenly story suggests that everyone will be welcomed, there will be enough for everyone. We do not finally get what we deserve. We get what God is willing to give us. This parable ought to give us insight and courage to work for more of the heavenly marketplace here on earth and in Hong Kong.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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