DAY LABORERS

In Jesus's parable, why do we identify the rich landlord with God? Why do we call his actions acts of benevolence and grace? Why do we always take the side of the rich and the powerful in the stories Jesus told?

And worse, why do we demonize the grumbling day laborers? Mga arawan. Have we forgotten that Jesus preached a gospel for the poor?

A denarius was subsistence wage. It could buy a measure of wheat--one day's worth for one person. Or three measures of barley, enough for three people for one day. Just bread. Nothing else. This is why the poor ate barley.

During Jesus’s time, half of the population was slowly starving to death. During Jesus’s time 15% of the population were day laborers. Mga arawan! They survived from one day to the next. Each day laborer in the parable was promised one denarius. Each one received a denarius. Enough to buy barley to feed three for one day. Texts from Antiquity tell us that barley tasted good. For horses and cows!

Why were the day laborers who worked for 12 hours grumbling? Because they expected to receive more than one denarius each. Why? Because the landlord gave those who worked for one hour one denarius each. Everyone who worked more than one hour, especially those who did 12, expected to receive more. Everyone who worked more than one hour expected that his particular landlord was different; that this particular landlord would not do what other landlords did; that this particular landlord would not take advantage of the poor whose only choice was a denarius or nothing.

But the landlord was not different. He did what other landlords did. He took advantage of the already disadvantaged. He used a denarius, subsistence pay, to pit the day laborers against each other. He even took one of them aside, not the whole group, and arrogantly reminded him of his benevolence and generosity.

The parable is not about God or God's grace. It's about the rich's greed. It's about divide and conquer. It's about taking advantage of those who struggle to survive from one meal to the next. It is about how the rich get richer. It is about how the powerful stay on their thrones. It is about systems and structures founded on profit, private property, and privilege that make sure that significant numbers of the population survive from one day to the next, are underemployed, or unemployed.

Do not think for one moment that the denarii the landlord gave to those day laborers made a dent on his riches. Do not think for one moment that the "generosity" of Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, or closer to home, the Villars, Consunjis, Cojuangcos, Sys, Tans, Gokongweis, and Ayalas make a dent on their wealth. While tens of millions have been left homeless, jobless, and starving in the past three years, the wealth of the world's richest has quadrupled!

Do not forget this, ever! One third of the world's wealth is inherited wealth. There are people born rich who will never work one second in their entire lives yet will die richer!


*photo, "Day Laborers brought in by trucks from nearby towns," from wikipedia.