What is Labor Day to the Christian?

The Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16 records a story that Jesus told in his day.

You can read the story for yourself here.

Farms and farmers’ markets were the heart of the economy in Jesus’s time.

Farmers grew food and sold it at markets in the cities.

When farmers needed a labor force to work on their farms, they hired day laborers from the cities.

Likewise, when people in the cities needed money to buy food from the farmers’ markets, they hired themselves out to work on the farms.

So, the story Jesus told is one that would sound so normal to people that it would almost be boring…until the surprise twist at the end of the story.

In this story, a farmer needed laborers to work in his vineyard. So, as any farmer would do, he went to the public square in the nearest town. There, he would find people waiting from someone to hire them for the day.

In this story, the farmer went to the public square five times in the same day. Clearly, his farm was doing very well. He needed more labor than he could find in one trip to town!

The farmer hired his first group of laborers “early in the morning.” He told them he would pay the normal wage for a day of work.

He hired four more groups at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m. Each time he hired a group, he told them he would “pay them whatever was right” at the end of the day.

In Jesus’s day, the people listening to the story would maybe be getting bored by this point. Nothing about what Jesus is telling them sounds any different from talking about your commute and all the emails and meetings you had at work today.

But the end of the story is not only a huge surprise; it upends and upsets “the way things are” or are supposed to be.

When the farmer calls the laborers in from the fields to give them their pay, he gives all of them a day’s wages–even those who only worked an hour!

The laborers who worked all day were furious. They believed they deserved more than the laborers who only worked part of the day. Or, another way to put it: Those laborers deserved a lot less than a full day’s wages because they only worked part of the day.

The farmer doesn’t argue. Instead, he reminds the all-day laborers that he kept his word to them. He gave them a full day’s wages as they agreed. Then, rather than make a case for being fair, he makes a case for being generous. He wanted to give what he wanted to give; not what the economic rules said people deserved.

The rules of the free market economy (and of religion) say that people get what they deserve. If you work harder, you deserve to get more. If you don’t work hard, you don’t deserve much at all.

But Jesus starts this story with this line: “The kingdom of Heaven is like…”

He is setting up the way his kingdom works against the ways our economic, political, and religious systems work.

That is to say: “In your economic, political, and religious systems, people get what they deserve; in my kingdom, people get what I am happy to give them far beyond what they deserve.”

I think wages are important to understanding Jesus’s meaning.

In those days, most people worked for daily wages. That is, they got up each morning thinking about where they would find the money they needed to feed themselves and their families for that day. We would call this a living wage.

The wages the farmer paid the laborers were living wages. That shows that his main concern was not what was fair, but what was necessary for people to take care of themselves and their families.

In short: The world’s economies say wages should be fair (with “fair” be subjective). In the Kingdom of Heaven, the Lord says wages should be living wages (even if they are unfair). In the Kingdom of Heaven, we value the dignity and worth of human life. We make sure that every person’s needs are met no matter what the economy says they are worth.

If we are serious about our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, we are serious about speaking up for the dignity and worth of every human being. We don’t talk about fair wages; we speak up and support living wages for all laborers. Generosity and grace are the rule in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Leave the talk about what is fair to economists and politicians; Christ followers raise their voices and work for generosity and grace for everyone. We are the voice crying in the wilderness: “Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low…and all humanity will see God’s salvation” (Gospel of Luke 3:5-6a).

Happy Labor Day!