Disability through the Parables by Rebecca Parnaby-Rooke

Day 1 of 5: The Workers in the Vineyard

Then, with only an hour of the day left, [the landowner] went out and found other people standing [in the marketplace]. “Why are you standing here all day with nothing to do?” he asked them. “Because no one has hired us,” they replied. “Well,” he said, “you too can go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the vineyard-owner said to his servant, “Call the workers and give them their pay. Start with the last, and go on to the first.” So the ones who had worked for one hour came, and each of them received a dinar. When the first ones came, they thought they would get something more; but they, too, each received a dinar.
-Matthew 20:6-10 (Bible for Everyone)

It’s just so unfair, isn’t it? Those who had worked all day turned up for their coin to find the ones who only turned up at the very end of the day when most of the work was complete got the same coin too. Outrageous! Or, actually, is it?

I have often heard this parable discussed as a demonstration of God’s extravagant grace. But it wasn’t until I came to experience disability directly that I began to understand this parable on a personal level. Who were those people standing in the marketplace at the end of the day? Why were they still there? When workers were being hired at the beginning of the day, why weren’t they? “Because no one has hired us” was their reply when asked — not “because we couldn’t be bothered to look for work” or “What business of yours is it anyway?”

These people had been waiting, perhaps even wandering the streets actively seeking out work since they had missed out on the landowner’s earlier sweeps of the marketplace, and near the end of the day they still hadn’t found work.

Why might that have been? Perhaps it isn’t too much of a leap to suggest that those workers left unhired in the marketplace were not the most strong-looking, unscarred, well-reputed workers; more likely, they included a scrawny lad who couldn’t manage the oxen as well, or maybe a boy who would need to cover his ears if he heard a loud noise and then drop all the crops. Ableism is not a new thing.

If the society within which those people lived had doubted their abilities and not given them a full and equal chance to find adequate paid work, that was not the workers’ individual faults. They were inherently entitled through their very being and personhood to the same opportunities as anyone else. And perhaps that is what the landowner recognized in giving them the same coin as everyone else, no matter at which point of the day he found them. Does it still seem so unfair then?

Reflect: Does the way your church is set up enable disabled people full access to God? Are we gracious in giving disabled people the same access as everyone else, or do we resent the perceived imbalance of reasonable adjustments and accommodations?

Start reading this 5-day devotional in the app. Find it on the Featured shelf.

Download & Subscribe