One of the places I lived in Chicago was near a vacant lot where men began gathering around 6 a.m. every day, waiting for someone to come by and hire them. I saw them while I rode a bus to my own job. There were often a few persistent stragglers there at the end of the day. Maybe they had no place else to go. Maybe they genuinely hoped someone in need of workers for a couple hours would still come by.
One of the neighborhoods I worked in for a year during seminary had a couple different corners that men gathered at, hoping for some work for a day. Usually rough carpentry or painting. And in the drop-in center for the homeless that I worked at, every once in a while someone would show up, yell that he needed four guys (or whatever). Whoever scrambled fastest from his chair had a job for a few hours.
I imagine it was much the same for the laborers described in today’s scripture. Hanging out, waiting for some random person to come by and offer some work. And one day, someone did. Come on and work, said the vineyard owner. I’ll pay you a day’s wages. He hires more folks throughout the day. And at day’s end, everyone is paid the same. Which is, of course, outrageous.
But here’s the thing. What if the amount of sustenance someone receives doesn’t depend on the work they perform? What if, in an economy of grace, all had income that didn’t depend on the random choices of employers and a certain amount of luck? What if we actually valued people instead of only their labor? What if we stopped collectively exploiting people in economically precarious positions? Of course there would be outrage.
Perhaps Jesus intends to spark some outrage. Perhaps Jesus intends to spark some imagination. Perhaps Jesus intends to spark some self-reflection and realignment of values.
We need to look clearly, after all, at a world where resources are not equally and generously distributed:
- Where the people working in the fields and restaurants and meat packing plants and retail stores and hotels and nursing homes are paid the least and have the least protection.
- Where the consumer goods we enjoy so much come from third world sweat shops and open pit mines in places like the Congo. All of us in this room today benefit from labor that borders upon outright slavery, still.
- Where the poor among us are continuously stripped of dignity and subjected to personal and bureaucratic indifference on a daily basis.
And so on.
A song by “Sweet Honey in the Rock” is among the many songs and poems that make this point better than I might:
“Are My Hands Clean?”
(Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985)
I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela
Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the USA to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse “On sale for 20% discount”
Are my hands clean?
None of our hands are clean. We rarely acknowledge that.
In the meantime, we are in peril of joining those who bristle at the invitation to imagine an economy of generosity and grace. To imagine that all are equally deserving. To challenge our economy’s sinful sense of who merits an income or deserves economic security.
May God have mercy upon us who, right now, are among the first and forget the least.
Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16
-Rev. Ruth Moerdyk