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Reflection on the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Posted on September 20, 2020, by Susan Classen CoL

As I reflected on Jesus’ use of parables, I was reminded of an experience soon after I arrived to live and work in El Salvador. Felipa, a Poor Claire novice, was teaching a literacy class while a soldier watched through an open window. After a while, he interrupted the class and, with a menacing voice, leveled his accusation against her. “You’re teaching people how to think!” The problem wasn’t that she was teaching them to read, but that she was helping people learn to think for themselves. The same could have been said about Jesus and his parables.

Traditionally, it’s assumed that Jesus addressed the parable of the laborers in the vineyard to the grumbling workers. The landowner is like God, who generously shares grace and goodness. The workers are like us, grumbling and comparing who gets what. But William Herzog in his book, “Parables as Subversive Speech,” presents a very different view. Maybe the parable is
actually a way of inviting the desperately poor laborers to “learn to think.” Perhaps Jesus was helping his listeners to see injustice in their daily lives by revealing the way the landowner shames, humiliates and divides the workers, all under the guise of being generous.

Let’s look more closely at the parable in context. We know that the landowner was quite wealthy because he owned a vineyard which required a major capital investment, and he had enough servants to require a foreman. Most large landowners at that time increased their holding by taking over the fields of free peasants. Those displaced peasants were then forced into the lower class of expendable day laborers, so it’s quite possible that some of the laborers could have been former owners of the land they were now hired to work for a pittance.

Day laborers were desperately poor and they were expendable because there were so many of them. They usually died of malnutrition, rarely surviving more than five to seven years after being forced into that class. Even slaves were treated with more care since slaves were an investment. We know that unemployment was high because there were so many men waiting throughout the day hoping to get hired. We’re told in the parable that the landowner agreed to pay them the “usually daily wage,” which he described as “just” but, in reality, wasn’t enough to provide even
a subsistence level income. But the laborers then, as many laborers who pick the food we eat now, had no bargaining power.

Here are ways that the landowner violated the basic human dignity of the laborers.
 By humiliating and degrading them. Even their hard work, which was all they had to offer wasn’t valued. Payment, then, became a gift of charity rather than a hard-earned wage. The landowner had the power to choose to pay more or to choose to pay less because he was in control.
 By fostering divisions and turning them against each other. Those who worked all day would resent those who came later as much as they resented the landowner.

 By making an example out of the leader who dared to speak up. The landowner’s attitude was condescending guised as courtesy. “My friend,” he said, “I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage… Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?”
 By blaming the victim. Take it or leave it. You agreed to work. It’s your fault if you are unhappy with my choice.

I was particularly struck by the way the landowner’s actions divided the laborers against each other because the strategy of fomenting division is apparent today and throughout history.

Like many of us here, I’ve been reading about the roots of systemic racism. Before Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, the lives and working conditions of indentured servants and slaves were very similar. They were co-workers and neighbors who united in rebelling in common cause against the rich landowners. “Race” as defined by skin color didn’t yet exist. The power of the united rebellion was extremely threatening to the wealthy, so after it was put down, they enacted laws which created divisions between poor workers by labeling some “white” and giving them a few more rights than what they had before and labeling others “black” and taking away some of
their rights, thereby creating a significant divide in what had up until then been a single pool of much-needed laborers. We still see those divisions. People who have a great deal in common because of socioeconomic status are divided along racial lines that were not drawn until Bacon’s Rebellion.


Jesus, the Light of the World, shone light on the injustice suffered by the poor in his times and invited them to think about what was happening to them. He challenged them and challenges us to stretch toward God’s ways, which Isaiah describes in our first reading: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” We will never understand God’s ways but we can stretch towards them.

During these times of chaos and uncertainty, our readings provide guidance. We can and must exercise our human capacity to think about what is happening around us. And we can and must maintain a spirit of profound humility knowing that God will show us the next step even
as we recognize that God’s ways and thoughts are always beyond our human comprehension.

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Susan Classen CoL

Susan has been a Loretto Co-member since 1996. She is the director of Cedars of Peace, a retreat center on the grounds of the Loretto Motherhouse. A passion for transformation is the common thread that weaves its way through her varied interests which include gardening, woodworking, retreat leading and involvement in Loretto’s Farm and Land Management Committee. Previously, she lived and worked in Latin America.