Jesus told a parable which began:

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 20:1-4 – June 27, 2012)

We all know how this one goes. The owner hired more workers at various times throughout the day, finally hiring some who worked only one hour. At the end of the day, he paid all of the workers the same wage regardless of the time they worked. The earliest hired thought that was unfair and complain, to which the owner replied, basically, that he paid them what they agreed. Jesus ends with the famous aphorism, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” ~ Every time I read this passage the words that strike me most are “I will pay you whatever is right.” The definition of “right” in this circumstance, it seems to me, depends on who one is in the story, especially if it is set in our modern capitalist society. Perhaps not in Jesus’ time and place, but in our time and country with religious pluralism and economic disparity the definition of “right” is a variable thing. For the employer, a “right” wage would be that which maximizes his profit. For the supervisor in the vineyard, a “right” wage might be a perhaps larger amount sufficient to keep the workers happy and working. For the worker, a “right” wage would be enough to support his or her family with some for saving and a little left over for discretionary spending. For the government, a “right” wage would be at least enough to keep a worker off the public dole and to allow the worker to pay sufficient taxes to fund necessary public services. What is “right” is a hard thing to know. ~ In fact, I can’t imagine a modern worker accepting an employment contract that simply said, “Worker will be paid what is right”! Can you? Most employment agreements need to include a set starting wage in dollars-per-hour and a description of non-salary benefits including health insurance, pension or profit-sharing plan, vacation allowed, and so forth. Whatever is “right” needs to be carefully laid out. ~ Why should that be? Why isn’t there at least some universal notion of “rightness”? Shouldn’t there be some normative standard for the moral treatment and compensation of employees? Shouldn’t workers be able to trust their bosses to do what is “right” for them? I think there should be . . . but the truth is that human nature is “fallen”, that humans (both workers and employers) are greedy, that (as I’ve said) “right” is not always obvious. That’s why we have laws. That’s why we have regulations. That’s why government in a world where corporations are multi-national or trans-national or global (or whatever term you want to use for “great big and humungous”) cannot be “small”. Government needs to be big enough to lay down rules for how “whatever is right” can be determined in a pluriform society. ~ And the church and her members need to be “big enough” to speak up for what is “right” when others in our society – whether individuals, or big corporations, or the government – would do what is “not right”. If something is “not right”, speak up and say so! Be the first to do so, not the last.