God's Commonwealth: each according to need

Sunday 18th September

God's Commonwealth: each according to need
Matthew 20:1-16 


No doubt the householder was a wealthy landowner: vineyards don't run at a profit until thy have been tended for many years and so represent a considerable investment for a luxury cash-crop probably for an international market. The presence of a steward – probably one of many – is another clue to the economic status of the householder or more literally “house-despot”.
We tend to assume that powerful figures in parables represent God even if, as in this case, they profit from the poorly-paid, sun-beaten and exploited day-labourers.

So let's throw aside the complicated allegorical readings of the parable, so loved by theologians-past and do two important things that may turn this story from a bit of Christian whimsy into something that actually matters. First let's take it at face value; this is a story about a God's values in relation to land and labour, second let's begin not with the most powerful figure but with the powerless.
The day labourers aren't quite the poorest of the poor but they aren't far off. Perhaps they once owned a little land; handed down from generations, but a few bad harvests and a couple of weddings later and they found themselves in debt and having to sell their livestock, land, and finally even their home to the big farming companies who turned the whole area over to cash crops and started hiring by-the-day.

Such labourers are still around today so it doesn't take too much imagination: we have our eastern European seasonal workers on illegally poor wages in English mega-farms, we have our Chinese cockle-pickers risking their lives in our unforgiving seas, we have our agency workers in warehouse offices able to be dismissed at a moment’s notice. And we have pension funds, supermarkets, the Queen, insurance companies, and the Church of England – owning or buying up greater amounts of land from family farmers and squeezing every penny of profit from the soil to devastating effect on wildlife and on communities.

So let's picture the scene that Jesus paints for us. A group of landless men and women gather at dawn at the town gate. All of them are desperate to work, all of them are a few meals away from starvation. Naturally the youngest and fittest will be chosen first because they will be the best value for money. The least able and the elderly will be left standing through the heat of the day waiting for landowners to get desperate enough to give them work. It's these folk who are at the very bottom of the spiral of poverty: the weaker they get the less they earn, the less they earn the weaker they get. This is a meritocracy: each is given according to his or her ability. It's fair and just in a secular logic: if you work you earn if you don't work you don't earn.

But Jesus' story has a twist in the telling. Because in Jesus' economy things are different: there are no undeserving poor. There are only needs and the loving desire to meet them. It is the rich who are undeserving in Jesus' economy because they take more than they need and merit is no excuse for greed while others starve in the kingdom of God.

What Jesus was suggesting in this parable: that God wants to give us all we need rather than just what we deserve was nothing short of scandalous, even blasphemy. But is it so different today?

There are at least two challenges in this parable. First, the challenge to see needs and meet them regardless of merit or reward. The second, to begin to ask the questions about how these people came to be in such a vulnerable position in the first place and who benefits from keeping working people vulnerable to poverty and exploitation.

The seventeenth century visionary and theologian Gerard Winstanley called the earth a “common treasury” belonging to God and gifted to us all. He recognised the profound link between economy, ecology, and theology. Drawing on that other visionary who described for us in the Old Testament 'the jubilee' he reminds us that we give it all back to God or we imperil first our worth and then our very lives.
The Kingdom of God is like.... What is it like? What sort of world does Jesus describe and how can we proclaim it for our land and our county. 

Definitely maybe

[For those seeing this on Facebook: this is André micside...].

In the operating theatre a nurse asks me whether I am nervous and whether I have trust in the success of the coming operation. Yes I am nervous, no I have not much faith in the possible result of the operation. Have gone through too many therapies already in the past three years. "Then why are you doing this?" You can hardly call this an appropriate time to ask such a question, so I make an impatient gesture with my left hand which shakes off one of the tubes already attached to me. Get on with it. In case anything goes wrong I even have meditated upon Matth. 22:23 sqq. - it will be under full anaesthetic.

Just concentrate on something nice, a place you love for example, I am told - quickly I move to a place where I love to read and meditate and watch some wildlife, a place I have not visited for about two years - most un-Hollandish landscape of landscapes in Holland - the anaesthesist gives an injection in my right hand which is supposed to make me drowsy -

when consciousness returns it remains dark. My eyes are covered with a thick layer of bandage which just allows me to conclude the sun is shining. You do not really sleep when you are forced to lie in darkness. I wonder if the sense of being stared at can be active when you temporarily lose this one very important sense. I think it cannot. Then again, who would have liked to watch at the moments I have to take out for myself and which are very frequent thanks to the infusion still attached to my right arm (I feel). But when my beloved enters the room I know it before she speaks - hearing? sensing it some other way? The hospital relies on her to spoon-feed me with the first real meal of the day. Have to ask again how it feels to visit someone who has his eyes locked away. "Pitiful" is the answer I just got.

The light hits hard when the bandage is removed. It looks like I will not be able to read The peaceable kingdom, about the Inner Light of the Society of Friends. I can read text messages though - one of them asks for a protest signature for a "prisoner of conscience" in Iran. How thoughtful of Amnesty International to support the Civilised World in its campaign against that foe of Israel's since the days of Esther or earlier. A campaign which may end in a nuclear attack.

During the day I manage to read about the Inner Light. The Quakers are presumably the only fraternity/sorority surviving of the English Revolution - the episode when Christian anarchism emerged.

Dusk presents me with two suns setting into the North Sea (some thirty miles away from the hospital). I gather the one on the right was the real source of light (judging by the time of year).
When I decide to go to sleep I notice that closing my eyes does not make the world go dark. It is lighter with eyes closed than with eyes open. In this strange light I see the letters of the book I was reading getting ordered into the shape of a cross - like the one in the centre of the Swiss flag (after which the Red Cross was designed).
A very strange experience to see this inner light, called forth by the pressure on my eyes which still seems to work even though the bandage has been removed.
No, I am not insisting on any Interesting Experience. It has a very material explanation - frightening as it is, though. Fortunately it lasts for only one night. The bright white cupola and the printed letters have disappeared. Together with the second sun.

Finally back at the keyboard looking for the AI-prisoner I come across a photograph of the person who is supposed to co-ordinate themes like this at Amnesty International. I spent three years of my life with her and this is the first time I look into her face since she wrote me off with a call (you might say I was taking it hard....).
Another confusing and frightening experience. Challenging me to think about what love really means.
Anyway, I signed the petition.

I am thankful for those who prayed for me this past year or longer.
I am equally thankful for those who did not or forgot about it. This, I think, is one thing I learned about love.
It looks like the operation has succeeded and it just might not need any sequel.
Which means my regular work on Christian anarchism might be resumed shortly. You should be able to notice it.
Ready to serve the God of the living....