Draft # 1

In the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard a man owned a vineyard and set out to find workers to tend the vineyard for him. The conflict of the parable revolves around the distribution of money and the cruelness of the landowner. To summarize the sequence of events each hour the landowner set out to the agora(marketplace) to fetch workers for the vineyard. There were workers wondering in the agora in all hours of the night. The landowner ends up asking workers from all hours of the day to assist in working on his land. When it comes to paying time the landowner tells his steward to pay the laborers their wages. This sets up a conflict, because the workers who worked through the whole day were upset that they were paid last.
In the parable the landowner was obviously a wealthy man. He owns a vineyard, which shows he is wealthy, because he is able to leave his land fallow and is still able to survive. A vineyard produces a luxury item that is very profitable. The vineyard is so fruitful and vast, because the landowner had to go fetch a myriad amount of workers to tend to it.1 In the beginning of the day, the landowner needed workers to work for his vineyard more than in the later hours. Therefore, he needed to bargain in order to obtain these workers. However, in the later hours of the day, the workers are desperate because they have no jobs. The landowner recognizes this and sends them to his vineyard. By then, he probably already has a sufficient amount of workers in the vineyard. In the parable the workers are poor expendables, who most likely don’t have families and are single, because they don’t make enough money to support anyone else but themselves. Most often times expendables lead very sad depressing lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, short ,and full of sickness. During this time in history a lot of people were unemployed. Many workers were just sitting around in the agora in all hours of the night, which implies unemployment.2 The stewards role in the parable is simply to watch the workers, while the landowner does whatever he pleases. The landowner far from being generous is taking advantage of the unemployed workers, because the workers class are so low that they have no bargaining power and agreed to work without any kind of wage agreement. 3 In that time period the landowners goal was to keep their class powerful and to keep the classes below them, below them and powerless. A denarius a day would not sustain life, because the day laborer worked so infrequently and only would supply 3-6 days worth of food, which is not a lot. 4 Normally a landowner would pay the workers from whoever worked first to last. This particular landowner did the exact opposite. The order of payment was made to shame the workers. The owner didn’t care about the extensive and hard labor the workers did all day and wanted them to know that. The owner only cares about himself which is apparent in many ways. The landowner is so worried about himself that he sends his steward to send the news to the workers, because he was only worried about his well being.5 This was the landowners strategy, to protect himself and put others down. The landowner obviously thought that the land belonged to him, because he doesn’t share the land or money. God wants us to share and gives us things to share with others. When the workers raise their voice the landowner turns the question around and makes the workers seem ungrateful, which was meant to put down the workers and to make the man seem like he is doing nothing wrong.
Jesus is directing the parable to peasant farmers or people from the lower class. This is directed to and about the manipulation and corruption of the elites and the falsehoods that they tell to try to keep the large lower class under control. Jesus designs a confrontation between the groups that normally would not confront it in reality. In this way he stretches the truth in order to reveal it.6 One event of oppression causes others to be intimidated, which causes them to be cooperative, which was the goal of many elites. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the parable, because it reveals the truth and enables the powerless to be empowered. In the parable two classes confront one another. The Kingdom of Heaven will expose the truth and have social classes and groups confront in the end. The Kingdom and its standards are the reverse of the worlds and it’s ways.7 In the end this parable shows the use of intimidation and cruelness that the elite use to make the lower classes stay powerless, to protect the well being only of their elite class.