Economic news has been rough this week.  It culminated for me on Friday with Christopher Dodd saying the home mortgage situation is the worst crisis of his 28-year career in the Senate, and the result of the Wall Street bail outs is that the US government now provides the final insurance for 70% of the nation’s home mortgages. The Feds are now functionally our nation’s primary home property owner.  The Depression-era fiction I’m reading makes me sweat bullets over the news, and this week’s lectionary is truly offensive.  It’s the passage that makes people ask, “Does this mean Jeffrey Dahmer gets into heaven?”  Substitute the name of any murderer having a deathbed conversion.

            Notice if you will, however, that Jesus does not start his parable by saying this is what heaven is like.  He says this is like the kingdom of heaven, Biblish for “prepare to be offended about the here-and-now.”  Today, we are offended by God’s economics.  We have laws against grocery stores and cable companies doing this sort of thing.  We call it “bait and switch.”  A retailer lures customers to the store by advertising something at rock bottom prices and, once they’re in, manipulating them to buy another product at inflated prices.

            To be fair, that’s not exactly what the landowner does.  He never promises anything but the going rate daily wage.  It’s just that he gives that to all the workers, whether they put in the standard 12 hours or just a few.  That’s offensive enough, but what gets our goat (and that of the full-day laborers), is that it’s as if the landowner wants to rub everyone’s nose in his so-called generosity, by paying the Johnny-come-latelys first and working his way back to the full-day workers—giving everyone the same pay.  If the late-comers get a full day’s wage for one hour, who can blame the early birds for perceiving a diminishing windfall?  They don’t get what they deserve, if this guy gets so much.

            We’ve all heard this parable interpreted as God-the-landowner outrageously generous with divine resources, good news for deathbed conversions.  Jeffrey Dahmer gets into heaven as quickly as Mother Teresa.  How fair is that?  Let’s agree we’ve heard that interpretation and listen to other scholars who portray Jesus as a satirist, critiquing the practices of rich people of his time—the John Stewart of the 1^st century.  His rich listeners can hear the story and dismiss it with, “Oh sure, like a landowner would be that generous!” but maybe we can listen to this as a parable about God’s economic system.

Jesus’ listeners had all been to Sunday School and civics/confirmation class, and they were waiting for Rome’s defeat so they could get back to Israel’s real constitution, that ideal of how life is supposed to go in the Promised Land that we call Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  It’s politics and religion expressed in economics.  Consumer debt slavery wiped out every 7 years.  Ancestral landholdings for each and every family, reverting to the original family every 49 years (the year of jubilee), whether or not someone else owns it.  No Federal bail out for failing banks engaged in sub-prime lending, because real estate speculation is impossible and housing costs cannot escalate.  Furthermore, the constitution says the nation and the individual is judged on the basis of how well they treat the most vulnerable, especially welfare families, illegal immigrants, and bankrupt peasants.  Food stamps, universal health care and free public education.  Church and state as one.

Remember those workers standing around the square all day long waiting to be hired?  They weren’t 1^st century meth dealers nor were they illegal immigrants.  They were displaced peasants who had lost their ancestral land because the king and nobles were paying off the military budget, which consisted of tribute payments to neighboring nations, the bribes of mutual cooperation treaties.  The payments consisted of annual grain crops grown on land reclaimed from orchards and vineyards which had taken years to establish.  The nobles had gained control of the land as payment of consumer debt by peasants.  The good news about Rome’s occupation (for them) was that the year of jubilee could not be observed, but the bad news was that a full day’s wage every day was absolutely necessary for a peasant’s survival.  Unfortunately for the peasants, God had forgotten to send manna to fill in the gap when there was no work.

             Poor persons overhearing Jesus’ story might be inclined to envy the folks hired at the end of the day, but once they recognized that winning this particular lottery was beyond their reach, they would side with the outraged full-day workers.  Was what they received really “fair” if other people who didn’t work the full day received the same amount?  Justice and fairness are not the same thing.  Sometimes I wonder whether we want either one of them—justice or fairness.  Liberation theologians remind us that God’s idea of justice might mean those who have gone without might, at some point, receive more than those who have been privileged.  The first shall be last.  The landowner does no injustice to any of the laborers.  He gives them what they are entitled to—a full day’s pay.  But given the first-century economic and political situation, perhaps it is more just than we think to pay all the workers the same.  Advocates of national health insurance say that it is based on, not how much health care you deserve (that is, how much you can pay for), but on how much you need.  From the owner’s point of view, it is more just that he pay what all the workers need just to survive than it is for others to get more than they deserve.  He needs to pay it.  What offends us is that others get more than they deserve.  More than we think they deserve.  How fair is that?

            Justice and fairness are not the same thing.  One of my lectionary buddies read this parable and wondered whether fairness was an idol, something we’ve made more important than God, more important than God’s grace.  He suggested humility as an antidote, humility as the cure, for our outrage.  That we receive all good things—food, health, life itself—is not a matter of because we deserve it but because God gives it.  God gives it.  What we are given is not about us; it is about the Giver. 

            Our Christian witness is supposed to be offensive.  Gratitude always is.  What could be more counter-cultural that trusting God’s abundance?  Behaving as if the good we receive is not due to our deserving, because we earned it, but due to God’s grace.  What the offensive landowner does in giving everyone the same pay is to act as if “what you need” is more important that “what you deserve.” No one needs “too much.”  That’s greed.  That’s standing with the noble landowners who have violated the historical notion of church and state.  They believe what they receive is what they deserve.  The offensive Christian witness stands in with Israel’s displaced peasants, doing what the Twelve Step groups advocate—living one day at a time.  The offensive kingdom economics is as radically dependent on “Give us this day our daily bread” as the Israelites were going out every morning to pick up the “what is this?” (manna).  In the story of Israel’s 40 years of manna in the wilderness, the coolest thing about it is that everyone gets enough.  Whether they deserve it or not, they all have enough.  Truth be told, none of them “deserved” to eat.  They’d all been complaining to Moses for getting them out of slavery and bringing them out without health insurance or a pension plan.  But apparently it’s OK to crab at God, to pick on God’s appointed leaders and blame them for God’s offensive bait-and-switch kingdom economics.  And YET God’s sense of justice, God’s kingdom economics, says it’s OK to give them all both bread and meat.  Everyone.  Whether they deserve it or not.  Whether they are able to pick up enough or too much.  They don’t deserve it.  It’s not fair.  But in God’s kingdom, “fair” is not the same as “just.”  The first will be last.

Do you see what I mean?  It’s not about us.  It’s about the Giver of the gift.