Episode 8: Bills, Bills, Bills
I know earlier this month we talked about giving Jesus some room to be a baby, but honestly, this is the trouble with not having no evidence that Jesus was an angsty teen besides that short interaction. In today’s reflection, we’re going to be talking about Jesus as an adult. Which is really disorienting because technically by the time you hear this, we don’t say he’s born yet. It ain’t even Christmas right now yet!
But I chose this passage because of the ways capitalism is capitalisming right now. It’s the holiday season, which means gifts, packages, parcels and all that are floating about. And retailers (and celebrities) are doing what they always do, and that’s tryna convince you to spend your money.
We started off this panda bear with earnest commercials from retailers telling us they were here for us.
Now, I’m watching commercials of retailers telling me “it’s safe to shop with us for Christmas and we’ll always take care of you!” The same retailers who have been terrorizing their employees and making it impossible for people to take time off.
I am so disoriented.
In a whole panther. In a whole pantheon. In a whole Pangea. In a whole pan fried steak.
BUT I DON’T HAVE NO MONEY it is TRULY A PANDA BEAR OUTSIDE!
Anyhoo, perhaps this is my Grinch origin story. I hate that Christmas (especially this year) is about this.
At the Chopping Board:
There is enough resource in this world for everyone to have their needs met.
No matter how many active working hours I have in me, I deserve to have a daily wage.
The powers will try to convince me that I must do something special or extraordinary to be worthy of a safe and beautiful life.
I will remind myself that I am worthy of safety, beauty, care and love just because I exist.
Fish Sandwich
Matthew 20:9-16 NRSV
9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Bills, Bills, Bills
When I was 8, a groundbreaking womanist text in the form of a radio single changed the world.
At first we started out real cool
Taking me places I ain't never been
But now, you're getting comfortable
Ain't doing those things you did no more
You're slowly making me pay for
Things your money should be handling.
It was a catchy hit. A bop. And the best part of the song was the wordplay in the chorus.
Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through
Of course, people poked holes at the song.
“Why do women always want a man with money? They can’t take a brother when he’s getting started?”
“Why are Black people always talking about money? Everybody always chasing a dollar. What about love?”
“How y’all gon’ have a song called Bills, Bills, Bills, and then make a song called Independent Women? Y’all so double-minded! ”
I used to wonder these things myself, but then I realized that these were the wrong questions.
The better question is, why were these YOUNG women singing about financial equality in relationships and being mocked for it?
And how do we teach children to recognize signs of financial abuse?
Why do these teenagers have such intimate experience with someone using them for money? What’s going on?
After all, later on in the song, the women sing,
“Now you've been maxing out my cards
Giving me bad credit buying me gifts with my
Own ends
Haven't paid the first bill
But you're steady heading to the mall
Going on shopping sprees perpetrating to your friends that you be balling”
These are women who are lamenting the pain of living in a world where people, namely MEN, take advantage of their hearts and wallets.
These are women who are realizing that their labor makes the boss a dollar and they only take home a dime, if they’re lucky.
These are not gold diggers. They just notice their coins.
When you make 68 cents to every white man’s dollar, you notice your coins.
When it takes a year and 8 months to make what your peers make, you notice your coins.
When the greatest determination of how a community is doing is how its single mamas are doing, you notice your coins.
And so, here we have a story of Jesus noticing coins. And absolutely turning the concept of money for work on its head.
Here Jesus is, speaking in code. In a parable, he describes what the kingdom of heaven may look like. In your own devotional period, I encourage you to take a look at what he says in this entire chapter, because it is absolutely a doozy.
What is most significant about parables is that they are in fact, made up stories. They are folk tales. These stories are teaching tools, meant to help people understand a more elusive idea. But most importantly, these parables are made up. This is not a historical accounting of what happened, but instead, an imagined scenario that is intentionally designed. There is no landowner and there is no real field.
We don’t know if Jesus made this parable up, or if someone in his life taught it to him at the kitchen table, but here and now, Jesus decides to tell a very backwards story about labor and money.
Basically, in Jesus’ folk tale, a bunch of people came to work in a field because they were sought out by a landowner. There were different groups that came at different times. There was an early morning group who came at 9 am, a midday group that came at 12, and a group that came at 3, and a group that came at 5 pm. At the end of the work day, the boss says to the manager, “call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first. Those who were hired at 5 were paid for the whole day.
What’s most immediately compelling about this story is that the landowner goes out to seek laborers for the vineyard. It’s not that the laborers have to apply, or know someone in the office, or wait in a lottery, or get the right credentials. The landowner seeks laborers.
But when it comes time to get paid, the checks don’t make sense. Everyone gets paid the same, no matter how many hours they worked.
This passage is often used in the spiritual sense. We, as Christians, often say, “it doesn’t matter when you accept Christ into your heart. If you’re a 9 AM Believer or a 5 PM Believer, you still get into heaven.”
But For the time that we have together, I want us to consider just the words of this parable in an earthly sense. I do not have a heaven or a hell to send you to. I do know that for the time we are on this planet, we can either build heaven or make hell. And this image of what the kingdom of heaven is like isn’t just about the hereafter; it’s about what kind of conditions need to be spun upside down in order for heaven to be real here.
The landowner began to give out checks, but in order of those who came last first. So, the “latecomers” received their checks first. They all received the usual daily wage. Then, the next group got their disbursement. Grumbles resounded in the office.
Because the first group believed they’d get more. Instead, they got the daily usual wage. And even began to get angry with the landowner.
“This last set of people only worked one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!”
Christ subverts what we believe to be “fair.” Christ offers daily bread and daily wages. not one time stimulus checks that barely cover rent in most U.S. cities.
And yet Jesus, in the voice of the landowner, says to these people, “Friend (as if to disarm), I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for the daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
In Christ’s imagination, because that’s what a parable is, a glimpse into Christ’s imagination, everyone gets the same wage.
We do not currently live in a world that resembles this imagination.
Under capitalism, under the Empire, under Oppression, we imagine that those who work harder deserve more money. We think that people have money because they work hard.
But If that were the case, the people who would have the most money would not be White men who inherited wealth from the slave trade and make deals on wall street. If you believed that people who worked hard earned money according to their hard work, it would be single black mothers who had the most money. It would be Black trans women who run crowdfunding campaigns for their friends. It would be disabled and chronically ill folks who steward and manage care pods, pandemic or not.
There are people who work hard who never get any coin for doing so.
Jeff Bezos does not work hard. Mark Zuckerberg does not work hard. Michael Bloomberg does not work hard. Jay Z does not work hard. The rest of us do.
But Christ offers daily wages. You deserve to be paid a living wage. A daily wage.
And so here is the question-- What is the wage that will support your living?
You do not have to work for pay to be worthy of life. Christ goes out to find the people who need a day’s wage. Because everyone has to eat.
As Beyonce’ would later go on to sing, All the people on the planet, working 9-5 just to stay alive. How come?
I like the NRSV translation for a few reasons. It uses the word “daily.” You see the phrase “daily wage” four times in this passage. And when I hear “daily,” I think about Jesus’ prayer that God would “Give us this day our daily bread.”
No matter what kind of work you do, you need to eat. Daily. And I have to give a shout out to my friend Hannah Soldner, who put me on to this line of thought while at a United Methodist Women program. We were hosting a series of bible studies called People’s Bible Study, and I am so glad to call Hannah “my people.”
No matter if you’re a sanitation worker, a sex worker, an artist, a teacher, a student, a doctor, a parent, a child, an astronaut, a cab driver… You need to eat.
You cannot have your daily bread, in this economy, without a daily wage. A wage that suffices for the day.
But in Christ’s time, and in ours, there are ways that people are traumatized via money and benefits.
For example, Disabled people do not have less rent to pay. In fact, disabled people have to negotiate with ableist legislation that dehumanize, and policies that discourage marriage. Lest they be in jeopardy of losing their benefits.
If you’re a caregiver and your days are spent tending to loved ones, you don’t have less groceries to buy. Your bills are not prorated to meet your ability. In fact, as researchers, organizers, and every day people remind the world every day, it is incredibly EXPENSIVE to be poor. It is easier to save money when you actually have money.
This is when, of course, government subsidies and programs like food stamps, health coverage and vouchers for housing make a difference. Because it makes it possible for so many to breathe. The problem is not that these are free resources; the problem is that public programs for the good of the people are underfunded and rarely are carried out with dignity. And public programs save nations. Ask the rest of the world how they’re managing 2020. We are so far behind, because more of our people have to choose between paying rent and quarantining.
- But Fairness will always confuse the people who need the world to be crooked. And it will confuse the people who have been told that they deserve more than everyone else.
I will ask you this way.
Why do you think certain people came at 9 am and others at 12?And others at 3? And others so late that their daily wage was offensive?
Perhaps the people who came later were watching children.
Perhaps the people who came later took a little bit longer because their car broke down, for the third time this month.
Perhaps the people who came later had a heavy pain day.
Perhaps the people who came later were in the middle of a depressive episode, and the idea of being at work was yet another weight.
You just don’t know why people are late. But in this world, both then and now, we assume that those who get there early enough are responsible. But sometimes, it may be that you just had the cushions and the supports to assimilate into a capitalist economic structure.
You had a safe place to lay your head at night, and therefore, you could actually get some sleep.
You had a relative who could put you on and make an introduction.
You had the ability to take an unpaid internship.
Of course it was easier for you to get to work on time. Everything was set up to support you.
Some people have not even received the first stimulus check. And in this season, people are making arguments that are Anti-Black.
Why do people need $600 a week to sit on their behinds?
What would motivate someone to work if they could eat for free?
Waiters need to work for my tip, if I don’t like the service, I’m not tipping.
We can’t just give 1200 dollars to people, they will go out and buy sneakers/gadgets.
This the soundbite that people are running with.
But in the last few months, people’s electricity bills have skyrocketed because everyone is home at the same time.
People need multiple reliable gadgets in order to work from home.
The price of staple foods has been fluctuating.
And no one is canceling rent. Which means that bill has been mounting, and organizers are predicting a mass eviction wave in the next few weeks.
And we are arguing about a day’s wage?
And we’re arguing about 1200?
What will it take to completely reorient our understanding of labor, worthiness, deserving, merit?
Every so often, I see this thought exercise go viral. And it’s always a joy to think about. I want to invite you to think about this.
What would you do if you did not have to work for money? How would you spend your days if you knew you’d always have a safe place to live, a full fridge, and healthcare?
Every time I see some variation of this online, I’m always moved by the answers. At least from the people I’m in community with, people say they’d invest in their communities.
People dream of starting schools. Community centers. Elder care systems. Farming. Writing music.
And some people would just like to rest, which is generative for the community itself.
The lie is that having to work makes us better humans. We are a culture steeped in “rise-and-grind-i’ll-sleep-when-I’m-dead” rhetoric. This world has lied to us and told us that if we didn’t have to work for our supper, no one would produce anything. But the opposite is true.
How many vaccines, plays, stories, recipes, inventions, are trapped in the mind of someone who is burned out from working jobs that don’t pay well?
How many years could we add to our lives if we were not stressed by money?
Imagine who we could be, if we were not worried about getting to work on time? If no matter what, no matter how we spent our days, we could trust that our needs would be met?
So I want you to return to the psalmists for this morning. The Children of Destiny.
And instead of imagining this song as a song written for a man by a woman. I want you to read this as a song of a people, writing to this world.
What I would sing to elected officials who are moving like molasses on economic stimulus plans:
And now you ask to use my car
Drive it all day and don't fill up the tank
And you have the audacity to even come and step to me
Ask to hold some money from me until
You get your check next week
One of these glad mornings, our Leaders will have to account for the trillions of dollars spent on a military budget, while healthcare, education, arts, and agriculture are so very precariously positioned these days.
If you feel used.
If you feel unheard.
If you feel like you're pushing an impossible boulder up an incredibly steep hill.
If you look at your bank statements and see more month than money.
If you have to move money around and shift bills.
You are not alone. These are some impossible financial times. It is not your responsibility to keep your head above water, when the Powers are actively attempting to drown you. You deserve a daily wage.
Christ cares about your material realities. In Christ’s imagination, the landowner seeks out the labor. The landowner pays everyone the same. Because we all gotta eat.
May it be so.
In our to go bag:
What would you do if money were no object? How would you spend your days if you knew your most immediate needs would be taken care of? Take a few moments to dream about what you would do in that world.