25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Isaiah 55:6-9 · Psalm 145 · Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a · Matthew 20:1-16a
Five times that day the landowner goes out to the marketplace. Early in the morning, then at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and once more at five in the afternoon, when the day is almost over. There are still people standing around. Why have you been standing here idle all day, he asks, and they answer: because no one has hired us.
If you look closely, there is nothing about laziness in that. They were there all day, in the place where work is handed out, and nobody asked them. For me the whole text is in that one line: being out of work here means being unasked, and unasked all day long.
You could say they should have made themselves visible. Whoever is seen gets asked, and that is true enough. Only they were standing in the marketplace, which is exactly where you make yourself available. The landowner does not ask them why they failed to draw attention to themselves either. He asks why they are standing there, and offers them work in his vineyard.
It looks much the same in organisations. When a project is being staffed, a few names come to mind, and it is the same names every time. Someone who is not among them is not out because a decision went against him. He does not come up at all. And next time that even counts against him: he has never been on any of the important projects.
In the evening the wages are paid, and everyone gets the same: one denarius, those from the eleventh hour as much as those who have been there since early morning. The landowner also says in what order: begin with the last and end with the first. It does not have to be done that way. Paid in the other order, the first would have gone home with their denarius and nobody would have known a thing. He arranges it so that they watch.
And then they grumble. Nothing has been taken from them. The denarius was agreed that morning, they consented to it, and they are given it. My friend, I am doing you no injustice, the landowner says, did you not agree with me on one denarius? Up to the moment when they watch the others being paid out, everything was in order.
Our sense of justice rarely hangs on our own situation; it hangs on the comparison. And what upsets the first ones here is not the pay, it is that someone has joined who did not belong before. They worked all day and watched the others standing around. If those people now get the same, what they have themselves is worth less.
As a wage model this is useless. Equal pay for unequal work cannot be introduced anywhere, and that is not what it is about. What it is about can be seen in how often the man goes out. Five times in one day, up to the eleventh hour, when hiring anyone barely pays. He is not looking for cheap labour. He is collecting the ones nobody else collected.
So by that evening there are two measures standing in the yard. One counts hours, and by that one the first are right. The other counts who is there, and for that one it makes no difference since when. My thoughts are not your thoughts, says the first reading. That evening it means: both measures are standing there, and neither refutes the other.
Which leaves the order of payment. You can read it as a provocation, and the first ones do. You can also simply notice who gets called up first: the ones nobody asked for all day.
This is a reading aid, not a second full version. Zugemutet reads the four texts of the Catholic lectionary each Sunday for what they say about living together. The texts are given; I listen for what comes across.