The Readings
Exodus 16: 2-15
Maurice Andrew says ‘that creation does not liberate oppressed people, but liberated people must be able to live from creation’ [1] That was very much the reality of the early migrants to this country, both Polynesian and European. The early hunter gardener Polynesian migrants would have needed to develop new skills for new species and environment and many of the plants they brought wouldn’t grow in the more temperate climate.
Early European migrants came with farm animals and exotic plants from a similar climate and there were established communities of hunter gardeners to trade with. But the land they came to was covered in forest so they still had to forage for much of their food until their form of agriculture became established.
In any migration both big and small there is bound to be a time when the past is viewed with envy and the decision to move is seen as the greatest disaster ever made. Faced with challenge people prefer slavery to freedom because slavery also has security and freedom is always freedom into an unknown wilderness.
Matthew 20: 1-16
Hiring day labourers was a normal occurrence in Jesus’ time although usually carried out by the manager rather than the householder. Those offering themselves for hire would likely have been people uprooted from peasant farms by wealthy landlords foreclosing on debt or forced from their farms because they could not support their household. During harvest and planting work at minimal wages on a daily basis was readily available but in-between times it was not.
Therefore, life was unpredictable and marked by unemployment, malnutrition, starvation, disease, minimal wages, removal from households, and begging. Their situation was more precarious than slaves since an employer had no long-term investment in them.[2]
Sermon
Like all of Jesus’ parables today’s reading is about the kingdom of God. It is not necessarily about industrial relations, or any form of class struggle but it certainly has element of that along with our ability to divide into in groups and out groups.