Jesus taught in parables, but readers often turn them into allegories. An allegory assigns a one-to-one connection between a character in the story and a real person or group. An allegory is easy to interpret. For instance, readers may interpret the king in today’s story as God. The workers might represent Jewish Christians troubled by Gentile Christians who did not adhere to the Mosaic Law. The story becomes an allegory.
A parable is evocative. Today’s parable has one of God’s attributes, generosity, breaking into time and place. It calls on disciples to live in this world with a generous spirit. This parable contains deep insight into the sacred, and what prevents the sacred from entering our lives. Jesus signals this breakthrough at the beginning: “The kingdom of heaven is like…” We are to think of eternal, heaven-bound things.
The parable manifests the holy or the sacred. Consider this: What if blessed generosity is at the core of existence, an expression of the Creator of all things visible and invisible? What if we are called to contemplate the gifts given, and more, to make generosity one hallmark of our discipleship? We will have switched to heavenly thoughts.
Fairness is one of the first concepts youngsters learn to evaluate behavior. As we transition to higher things, fairness aspires to justice. Justice demands that we give very person his due. The daily wage in the Lord’s time was a denarius. That wage barely covered a day’s expenses, food, shelter, clothing. Supporting a family as a day worker was a stretch. Justice, however, calls for a living wage, payment for a day’s work that supports a decent life for a person and his family. True justice considers the inherent dignity of each person rooted in the biblical truth that God made each person in God’s image. In today’s parable, the king treats all workers fairly. The first-hired workers received what they contracted for. But then, the parable transforms our thinking from earthly fairness to heavenly generosity. The late-hired workers receive the wage that is determined by justice.
An obvious question jumps into our minds. Why did the king not treat the first workers with generosity? I think the Lord calls us deep into the darkness haunting our hearts and souls. He wants us to consider resentment, a force opposing gratitude. The grumbling workers resent the king’s generosity. Consider resentments: we resent those who seem to have won life’s lottery, the good-looking, those who inherit wealth, the natural athlete, the class’s smart kid. We also resent those who are different: those who live by other values or cultural norms, those who are of a different race or ethnic group, those who are strangers. We can even resent high achievers, hard workers who make us feel like failures.
How can we transform earthly resentment? We need to pull back from this world’s reward systems and consider what our God-king has given each of us: life, beauty, goodness, truth, friendship, affections, loves. If we can rise above earthly standards, we might find a state called contentment. When poet W. B. Yeats concluded his internal battles, he wrote of that state: “We must laugh and we must sing. / We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest.” Disciples find contentment when we discover our generous God.