Pentecost 15 A: Love or Justice?
Dear Partner in Preaching,
Given the choice, which would you choose, love or justice?
I know this is a hard choice, as both are really important. So if you’re anything like me, you understandably want both. And yet every once in while, we are forced to make a choice. And that can feel really, really hard. I think that’s part of what is going on in this quite remarkable parable. You know the contours of this story as well as I do, but lets tarry for a few moments at the climatic moments of the story.
Let’s first put ourselves in the place of the workers who were chosen last. Likely they had all but given up hope for work that day and would soon make the long and disappointing trek home. These aren’t folks who are trying to make a little extra pocket cash, after all. They are laborers who can expect to earn from their work no more than a daily wage – just enough, that is, to support them and their families for one more day. What we now call food insecurity is their norm, and so it’s easy to imagine their excitement when they finally get an invitation to work – they won’t earn a full day’s wage, but enough perhaps to scrape by. That excitement only multiplies when the manager unexpectedly and inexplicably pays them for a full day! I suspect that equal measures of relief, joy, and gratitude suddenly coursed through their veins as each received their payment.
Now, let’s put ourselves in the place of those who had been called to work at the beginning of the day. Grateful for employment, they had labored all day, doing that work on this day as they had so on so many others not because they derive any particular pleasure from their labor simply because they have to put food on the table (an experience, by the way, that is not limited to folks in the first century). At the end of their shift, they line up, as they do every day, to receive their wage. And when word travels down the line that those hired at the end of the day received a full day’s wage, their own moment of wonder turns quickly to anticipation as they calculate what that might mean for them. It’s a reasonable expectation, don’t you think, that if people who had worked only one hour received a full day’s wage, then those who worked all day would receive much more? But all that anticipation turns to dust in their mouths when the manager gives them the same payment: a day’s wage. This must seem to them so utterly unfair – they have, after all, worked literally ten times longer than those other workers. And so resentment, rather than gratitude, now grabs hold of them. And sensing this, the owner of the vineyard protests that he actually has treated them fairly, paying exactly what was contracted, and wonders why they begrudge his generosity to others.
It’s all too easy, I think, for us to dismiss these laborers as ungrateful or selfish or, to borrow a biblical phrase, hard of heart. But come on – their reaction is almost exactly what most of us would have felt had we been in their shoes. Because what happens to them simply does not add up and so doesn’t seem fair. Never mind it’s what was contracted – if those who worked an hour received a day’s wage, then those who worked so much longer deserve more.
So I’ll ask again: if forced to choose, which would you take, love or justice?
I know this parable is at one level about generosity, but I think that every act of generosity is also and simultaneously an act of love. Which brings the occasional clash of these two values to the fore. These workers want justice. And who can blame them. They feel cheated because they calculated their wages in accord with what the manger paid the latecomers. And that’s what justice does: it counts and measures and calculates because justice is a matter of the law and seeks to ensure that all people receive equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal standing. Which is why justice is so important to us.
But the manager responds that he has acted not with justice in mind but rather with love expressed through generosity. And when these two – justice and love – clash, it can get ugly. Because where justice counts, love loses track. Where justice calculates, love lets go. Where justice holds all things in the balance, love and generosity give everything away, upsetting the balances we have so carefully arranged.
Love, however, is not the opposite of justice – far from it! Nor does love countenance or encourage injustice. Rather, love passes beyond the realm of justice and law into the realm of relationship. Think about it for a minute: what would it be like to govern your relationships primarily by the law of justice, counting up every slight or injury done you by your partner so that could do the same to him/her? Keeping track of every time your child or parent disappoints you so you can hand them the tally at the end of the day? Logging every hurt you experience at the hands of those around you so that you can remember, keeping a record of your grievances and waiting for reparations?
Can you imagine living your life this way? I think it would be hell on earth. For as we observed last week, while the justice makes room for relationships, it’s love, generosity, and forgiveness that enable relationships to flourish.
And here’s the thing about this hypothetical choice between love and justice, Dear Partner: it turns out that it’s not hypothetical after all, as we actually make this choice every day. When, for instance, we forget all the times a colleague has been helpful and obsess about a perceived slight. Or when we overlook all those who drive their cars quite reasonably but instead get driven to distraction by the one guy who cuts us off. Or when we overlook the thousand kindnesses a partner or friend has performed on our behalf but nurse a grudge about the one thing they did to hurt our feelings. At each of these turns, we can choose: will we call for justice, or will we live out of generosity and love.
Put this way, of course we want to live out of love. But, truth be told, that’s hard, damn hard, as we seem almost hardwired to count our hurts and disappointments rather than our blessings. I don’t know why that is – perhaps it was evolution’s way of teaching us to avoid threats – but I know it’s far easier to live by counting rather than by grace.
So perhaps I’ve asked this question wrong. Acknowledging that while we want to chose love but end up calling for justice, maybe rather than asking which we would choose, I should instead point out which one God chooses. Because that’s why Jesus tells this parable. The primary actor in this story is the vineyard owner, the one who keeps sending for workers all day long until everyone has secured employment, the one who instructs the manager to pay generously, the one who takes the time to answer the indignant laborers, the one who in all ways and at every possible turn chooses love over justice.
We know God cares about justice. The law, prophets, and Jesus’ own life and ministry testify to that. But in the end, justice can only make things better. It’s love that saves, and so when forced to choose – between exercising God’s just judgment against us or forgiving and accepting us in love – God in Jesus and his cross and resurrection chooses love. No matter how much identify with those who worked all day, in the end we realize that we are the latecomers, those who had no good reason to expect such lavish, even reckless generosity. This is God we discover in Jesus, Dear Partner, the God who looks at us in love and therefore overlooks all those places we fall short and chooses to treat us with unmerited grace, mercy, and generosity.
Which would we choose? Better question – which has God already chosen? Thanks, Dear Partner, for sharing the news of God’s remarkable choice.
Yours in Christ,
David
Post image: Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, 11th Century Byzantine.
So I agree that indeed love is the goal and Gods’love for us is the greatest gift. However, I have not looked up the definition of Justice as I write this but as I reflect on life experiences Im not so sure that “justice” is exact measuring things tit for tat. I think of justice as reflecting what is “right” in given circumstances. If one child needs food and another school books am I going to give both food or books or do I meet the need for the individual at the time and place. This may be simplistic but I think it reflects the idea of God’s justice because it is combined with love.
David, I love your thinking and I ask you to think again about this parable. You’re making justice into accounting. We don’t have to choose between justice and love. Justice isn’t just unless it is loving (and vice versa). Those who began laboring at the beginning of the day were paid 1/10 of those who worked for only 1 hour. That is neither just nor loving. God is both loving and just. While I may begrudge someone receiving a full measure of God’s grace when they’ve lied, cheated, and stolen from their employees their entire lives, they get God’s grace and love anyway and I hope and pray that God throws justice into the mix. I get the same amount of God’s love and grace even though I was on the receiving end of my wealthy employer’s wrongs. Could this parable be about the differences between God’s world and our world? Human beings struggle to be loving and just. In God’s realm, we’ll have/be both.
That’s an important point, Carol, and I definitely don’t want to pit justice against each other. Justice, indeed – and especially God’s justice – should be loving. But, as all the statues of a blindfolded “lady Justice” exemplify – justice is supposed to be blind and impartial and rule out things like love. And the version of the cross that stresses that Jesus had to suffer God’s punishing wrath on the cross in our place rely upon stressing God’s justice as central, whereas I think this parable says that when push come so shove – and in the relational sphere by which God ultimately relates to us – God will choose to love us no matter what. At the very least, it demands that we rethink, or broaden, our definitions of justice. Thanks for writing.
Respectfully, I believe you are both missing the point, which is in the final statement: “the last shall be first and the first last.” This is a parable about the reversal of the world’s way of ordering itself, and so the world’s concepts of love and of justice are inapplicable. The parable expresses the preferential option for the disadvantaged, for those who come last – that God’s love for these “least” within the world drives divine action to overturn the world’s way of doing business. It is a parable about God’s justice, which cares little for the concept of justice Carol expresses, and it is a parable of God’s love, which acts differently than David outlines. Carol’s last point is closest to the Truth – love and justice are in harmony within God’s context. That harmony reaches into the world’s systems and overturns them.
Hi David, thanks as ever for a great post and some challenging questions. I just like to offer this thought to the conversation regarding the place and dynamic of justice in this passage. Maybe the land owner believes justice means everyone recieves enough to live on and support their family, regardless of their ability or opportunity to work. The story then challenges our assumption that some people deserve higher wages than others in relation to skill or hours worked rather than need. The actions of the landowner could then challenge us to readdress what is just, rather than people on low pay being reliant on sporadic generosity.
I think you’re right, Mike, and what’s striking is that the complaint of the folks who worked all day is precisely, “You have made them equal to us,” which makes me think, as I continue to wrestle with this, that it’s as much about status and relative position as it is about simply about wealth or reward.
David, what keeps coming to my mind here is the statement: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” I can’t help but wonder why the first field workers were chosen first. I see the land owner attempting to provide justice to those who may have habitually been chosen last to work in the fields, for whatever reason. It would be a just love, then, that the land owner shows, while others perceive it as unfairness or even oppression.
Matthew 19:27 27 Then Peter said in reply, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
I think Jesus’ story helps to illustrate his wrestling with position and status, based on Peter’s inquiry.
This is a beautiful commentary. If you don’t mind, I’d like to quote you in one of my sermons. Thank you.
You’re always welcome to use anything you find here, Julia. Thanks for checking in.
As a math professor and an Episcopal priest, I struggle with this question at the end of every semester. Do I grade justly and fail every student who did not adequately complete the work, or do I grade with love and allow those to slide by who had some legitimate extenuating circumstance? Do I bump up someone who really worked hard even if their grade didn’t quite make it? Is it fair/just/loving to record a grade that was not fully earned? Does that completely devalue the grading system? Is there another point of view?
You’ve given me a starting point for my sermon that I’m sure everyone in the congregation will relate to, even though most have been out of school for many, many years.
Thanks for this. Love and Justice made me think of Reinhold Neibuhr and so i have enjoyed rereading some of his stuff tonight. somewhere in the intersection of that feeling of relief the late hired workers feel and the final form of love which is forgiveness is the ‘sweetspot’ of ministry.
I think the problem we all have is in our understanding of the word justice. I think that often a biblical understanding of the word justice knows nothing of the blind lady holding the scales, in fact the parable itself is about the ‘justice’ exhibited by the employer. It’s a thought.
During Lent I was kneeling at the foot of a cross crying out for justice. My last call ended quite painfully and left my husband and I economically challenged for a year and a half. While I was not spouting baby bashing Psalms, I did groaning for justice. I somehow wanted the truth to be known and at the very least, those who had pushed me out to be called on the carpet. I asked, “God, where is justice? When will there be justice for me?” In the quiet, God spoke. “Here is your justice. You have been called to this time and place to minister to these people. Here you will be healed and sustained.” While I firmly believe that we need to fight for justice in its many forms (economic, legal etc.) we also need to be open to how God works justice in our lives and the lives of others.
I’m thinking right now as I’m writing my sermon that this parable is not about justice. This is not a story about wage theft or about day-laborers not getting paid for work they’ve done. Those are serious things that happen every day. If the story had the longest workers getting paid only for two hours, that would be a story about justice.
The longest working people in this story were angry because the shortest working people were paid the same as them. No one got ripped off. Some people were given more than others believe they deserved.
I think this is a story about fairness, jealousy, taking account of my neighbors’ worthiness – but I don’t think it’s about justice.
Grace is what we find at the intersection of love and justice.
Grace has no measure. If I jump in the pool at the beginning of the day, I am no wetter than the one who jumped in just before it was time to get out.
Grace – God’s lavish grace – is not meted out based on time served or the severity of the wrong. It may seem greater in our limited human understanding (thus the parable), but it is no greater or less.
John, I love this first sentence – thanks for that thought.
Assuming that the people of Ninevah changed their ways, God’s love/redemption provided the greater justice for the world. Imagine, 120,00 more people trying to live correctly, or at least aware that their previous ways were wrong – what a powerful force for greater justice in the world!!! Love and Justice are like Love and marriage – they go together like a horse and carriage!
Maybe the latecomers get paid for something important that they did all day: they waited and they hoped.
I just stumbled upon this today – and I want to offer a different understanding. I tell my kids I will not always be fair, but I will always strive to be just. Fairness means everyone gets the same – if you need a new coat, and your sister doesn’t, you still both get a coat because that’s only fair. Justice means you get a coat, and she might get something else later that she needs and you don’t. God is always just. Love is always just. God is not always fair.