When I was a kid, my brother and I worked all through junior high, high school and my first year in college doing all sorts of odd jobs in the neighborhood: raking leaves, shoveling snow, hanging wallpaper, cleaning houses, gardening, or painting. Then after my first year in college, my best friend’s mother, who was big in one of the political parties, got me a summer job working on a city playground. This was my first “real” job, a payroll job! At the meeting for all the summer workers, the big boss said he wanted us to all work hard over the summer and not act like a bunch of political appointees. He wanted us to provide a happy summer for all the kids in the city.
Then my first paycheck arrived in the mail. I was so happy – my first real paycheck. I opened it up and I was shocked! It was the summer of 1973. I was 19 years old, and the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour. But my check was for less than $1.60 per hour – plus there were a lot of deductions for taxes.
All of us city playground summer employees were expecting to get at least minimum wage. So, we had a meeting, named a representative, and sent her off to talk to the big boss. Turns out that in 1973, the city did not have to pay us minimum wage because we were not full year-around employees, we were working less than 40 hours a week, and most of us were students. I guess in 1973 students were not considered real employees or workers. Plus, there was a whole bunch of other legal, labor regulations that supported the city not having to pay us minimum wage, even though the boss wanted us to work hard and not act like political appointees. My fellow workers and I were caught in a dilemma: the summer season had already started; it was too late to look for a better paying summer job. At 19 years old, in the summer of 1973, I began to learn about the difference between being an employee and being a servant.
The point of today’s parable is to call us all to service. An employee has a set schedule, a union, and a set of rights. So often we set up our relationship with God as if we were his employees and He were our boss. We complain to God about our life, or we want to blame him for something. We want what we perceive as just for ourselves. On the other hand, a servant works all day and then all evening, too. This is the center of our Christian life: service/servanthood.
We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.