Who Are We Anyway?

Who Are We Anyway?

We need to read the story of Jonah more often. He’s an angry young prophet. Angry because he was successful. Odd.  He reminds me of another angry young man, Ambrose Bierce, who like Jonah got angrier as he grew older! Ambrose was a writer whose anger and cynicism drove his every word. He compiled a Devil’s Dictionary which offered definitions like this: “Mammon, n. The God of the world’s leading religion.” [The Devil’s Dictionary, Peter Pauper Press, 1958, p38] That would be the underlying problem in the parable Jesus offers in Matthew 20:1-16. Again, he, or Matthew, it doesn’t matter which, tricks the reader into thinking this is about the kingdom of God’s reign, when in the end it appears to be an invitation to compare and contrast what is real in the here and now with what could be if we were to take God and Jesus at all seriously.

 

A long-standing interpretation of this story suggests that the land owner is meant to be God who treats everyone the same (not necessarily fairly!), and the workers who grumble about their wages are made to look like ungrateful brutes. Again, looking into the deeper meaning of the story ought to convince us that the “landowner” of the story is not Godlike in the least, and the workers, surprise-surprise, are getting screwed, and worse still, being shamed and blamed publicly for their predicament.

 

Which is that they are poor. Poorer than the peasant class in ancient Israel who usually had a little land and a family. If these day-laborers have to rely the daily wage of a denarius, they were known to the Urban Elites, who owned most of the land, as “expendables.” The daily wage of a denarius could feed one person for two- or three-days max. These workers could not sustain themselves let alone a family. They are desperate.

 

Whereas our “landowner” is a Despot – the Greek word in the text calls him an Oikodespotase, literally “master of the household.” Oiko means “household,” but despotase is the root for Despot which even then meant an absolute and arbitrary ruler/owner, from whom there can be No Appeal. Oikodespotase was also the title slaves were required to use to address their masters – or, Oiko-Despot. The expendables hanging out in the local 7-11 parking lot looking for a day-job would not like or trust our Oiko-Despot, but had no choice but to work for him. Planting season and harvest time were the only two times of the year our Oiko-Despot would need their help. The rest of the year they usually had to beg, or form bands of bandits and rove the land robbing people. Which, by the way, was the end of the angry Ambrose Bierce who went off to Mexico to ride with Pancho Villa and was either murdered or executed as a result.

 

Our caste of expendables, one notes, have no leverage with which to negotiate a better or longer deal. It was unusual for our Oiko-Despot to hire them himself, since we learn he had a manager, a steward, who would usually do that for him. Yet, he seems to take a perverse delight in returning to hire more and more expendables all day long, only sending in the steward at the end of the day to do the dirty work of paying them, beginning with paying the last, those who worked the least amount of time, first. That’s when the perverse nature of the Oiko-Despot reveals itself. For when one of the expendables who had worked all day complained that they deserve more for working longer, our local Urban Elite Absentee Land-owner finally says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go… Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

 

Even the peasant farmers, fishermen and expendables listening to Jesus, and on the edges of the crowd some Scribes and Pharisees, keepers of the interpretation of the values of God’s Torah, would know that the answer to that last question is absolutely, unequivocally, “No.” Embedded in Torah is something called the Debt Code based on the understanding that the Earth is the Lord’s and everything therein (Psalm 24). And that YHWH is the true Lord of the Vineyard whose prerogative is to distribute the land as YHWH sees fit! The land is given as a blessing to extend abundance for everyone: the more one gets, says Torah, the more one is obligated to give as God has given! This principal of giving is meant to prevent covetousness and acquisition and greed and envy, all of which tend to engender covetousness and the desire for more which eventually leads to violence and becomes a curse. The plan as outlined in scripture is to prevent there ever being a class of “expendables” in the first place. Besides, the word our Oiko-Despot uses translated as “friend” when talking to the grumbler is really a condescending term, not the word used for true friends. He is only feigning courtesy. It’s a put down. He’s got his harvest in and can dispose of his rented expendables. Get out of here, I don’t need you anymore. Then he adds insult to shame and blame, “Or, are you covetous because I am generous?” Our Oiko-Despot is the absolute reigning king of Covetousness, having snatched up all their land when debt threw them into foreclosure. Wow. Talk about chutzpah! Those listening would know this.

 

The problem facing Jesus: those who claimed to be the guardians of kingdom values had become the perpetrators of an ongoing system of oppression. Perhaps that was the problem in Nineveh as well. We are not told. We do know that Jonah does not want to go to a large gentile city, tries to run the opposite way, ends up in a big fish that “spews” him back on dry land with fresh orders from God to warn the Ninevites, sits and waits for God to incinerate them when lo and behold, they actually listen and repent of the evil they had done – so God spares them! Because that’s what God does. Jonah knows this but prefers to be angry that God would save foreigners.

 

Perhaps Jesus is inspired to do the same for Israel. Here’s a story of business as usual. He seems to be saying, we can maintain this systemic bad treatment of the poor and blame them for their problems, and risk a calamity. Or, we can repent like the people of Nineveh and start over caring for one another in all the ways that Torah instructs us to do.

 

Perhaps we can think of situations in our own time and place similar to the exploitation and hubris represented by the Oiko-Despot in Jesus’s story, the expert at taking advantage of the poor and then shaming them publicly, blaming them for their expendable plight.

 

Perhaps we are meant to imagine, that instead of thinking whatever we have is ours to do with as we please like the Oiko-Despot does, and sustain systems of economic oppression, rather we are meant to be gracious, merciful, abounding with steadfast love for others, all others, loving our neighbors as ourselves, relenting from any behavior that shames and blames those in need, but rather cares for them as one would care for a sister or brother. Oh yes, and also many animals! We are to care for all the creatures on this Earth – the Earth which the Psalmist sings is the Lord’s, and everything therein. After all, Jonah was correct in his description of the God in whose image we are made. 

Or, are we? That other angry young man, Ambrose Bierce describes us like this: “Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.” [Ibid p39]  Amen. It is so. It is truth.