This is also abundantly clear in the later allegorical interpretation of the parable, that is, in Mark 4:13-20. It is true that there the seed is first interpreted as the word of God: “The sower sows the word.” But from then on the text suddenly begins to speak quite differently. To see that, of course, one must not follow one of the smoothing and harmonizing translations of this passage. The Greek text, literally translated, says in verses 16, 18, and 20:
These are those who are sown on the rocky ground…
Others are those who are sown amid thorns…
Those are they who are sown on good ground…
But this means that the early church’s reading of Jesus’ parable first interprets the seed as the word of God, then turns around and suddenly reads the seed as a sowing of people. Two fields of imagery are mixed together. Thus the early church’s interpretation still had a feeling for the idea that the original background for the parable of the sower was the sowing of human beings.
Thus the parable corresponds exactly to what we have already seen in chapters 2 and 3. For Jesus the reign of God has not only its own time but also its own place to become visible and tangible. It is first perceptible in Jesus himself but then also in Israel, which Jesus gathers as a new community around himself. So also the parable of the sower looks to Israel, which is now being confronted with the reign of God.
The Workers in the Vineyard
The parable of the sower speaks of the new sowing, the growth, and the abundance of a new society within Israel, and so do other parables, for example, the workers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16):
It is with the kingdom of heaven as with a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. When he went out again at the sixth and ninth hours he did the same. And at the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired at the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the [whole] day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or is your view evil because I am good?” (Matt 20:1-15)
Here Jesus tells a story weighed down with joylessness. It apparently takes place at the time of the grape crush. The grapes are ripe and must be harvested as quickly as possible. Otherwise it would be hard to explain why the landowner would seek workers all day long. We cannot sense in this parable the least bit of the happiness that filled the days of the crush in ancient Israel. Here are none of the glad shouts that rang out over the vineyards, none of the greetings and blessings exchanged by passersby with the vineyard workers (Ps 129:8). The parable presupposes a grey and sober world of work in which labor is only a grind.
The reason should be clear: Jesus’ parables offer us an astonishingly vivid picture of the social conditions in Palestine in the first century. The times when free farmers in Israel harvested their own vineyards with joy were long past. Most had long since lost their land to large landowners. The Romans demanded such enormous sums that every operation had to produce a high added value and thus was forced to economize. This meant that agricultural operations had to be large and required cheap labor, either slaves or wage workers. Very few family farms could maintain themselves. So the majority of former farmers now worked as day laborers. They were hired in the marketplace in the morning and paid in the evening. Work went on from sunup to sundown, from daybreak to first dark.
An agricultural worker earned just enough in such a day’s labor to be able to feed his or her family the next day. If the worker was not hired in the morning, that family’s children would go hungry the next day. These conditions are reflected in the parable: a joyless work world. And to that extent Jesus’ story is completely realistic.
There is thus no reason to look askance at the “workers of the first hour” who demanded a just system of payment. From their point of view they were quite right. A denarius was certainly not a bad day’s wage. But if the last, who have worked only a single hour in the cool of early evening, receive just as much as they themselves who have toiled many hours in blazing heat, that is not only unjust but also inhuman. It degrades their labor. That is the logic of the “workers of the first hour.” Are they right?
Every society, even the worst slaveholding regime, depends on the fact that at least a certain degree of justice is preserved. Otherwise, the society will collapse. To that extent we can understand the wrathful protest of the one who makes himself the spokesman for the others, and to that extent the ending of the parable is in the first place “impossible.” Only when we have made ourselves aware of all that do we acquire access to the real meaning of the story, because here two worlds—or two different forms of society—collide.
On the one hand the parable describes the old society soberly and realistically, the society that repeatedly gains the upper hand even where Jesus is attempting to gather the people of God anew. There it is every person for himself or herself. There everyone struggles for her or his own existence. There people are envious when someone has more. There we find unending conflict between those “above” and those “below.” But rivalry exists in the same way—perhaps even more—between those who belong to the same social class. Their comparing of themselves to one another leads to constant mistrust and ongoing power struggles.
Law, one of the most valuable achievements of humanity, exists to hold these struggles somewhat in check. It is quite right that workers living in such a society struggle for their rights. In a world built on rivalry they have no other choice. The masterful art of the parable consists precisely in the way it shows, with the greatest possible economy of words and images, how God’s new world suddenly erupts into this world of the old society. For the story ends differently from what the hearers expect. They expect the last workers, who were idle almost all day, to receive only a couple of copper coins. That they receive exactly as much as the first must have been a great shock to Jesus’ listeners. The ground was ripped from under their feet. All previous standards were removed. But if they open themselves to the parable they do not fall into nothingness but find their feet standing on the ground of the reign of God, God’s new society.