The laborers in the vineyard parable, with commentary from Cynthia Bourgeault and Maurice Nicoll.
The parable:
But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing in the market place idle; and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he said unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard. And when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. And when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they received it, they murmured against the householder, saying, These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong:didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take up that which is thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last.’ (Matthew xx.1-16 R.V.)
“Jesus threw people koans and riddles that could destabilize and scramble the egoic operating system. Like the laborers in the vineyard, for example. When the people that come to work at 5.30 pm get the same income as the ones that come at 5.30 in the morning. And if you’re in the egoic operating system, you’ll scream, it’s not fair. Because the egoic operating system can only perceive through comparison, contrast, fairness. If you’re in the other, you get something different. So in other words, the part that was not picked up about Jesus, and I think still isn’t to this day, is that he came as the master of the change of perception. And the reason is that people immediately put him in an old and familiar category, rather than looking at the path that he was on. He’s teaching a unitive doctrine of the integration of the being along these two axes [horizontal and vertical]. So that we can move with no sense of lack, and no sense of separation. I’ll read a few comments from the Gospel of Thomas, which get the idea of what a unitive perception of the world is, and the kind of integration that a human being is called to do in this life as they move into this perception.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mary Magdalene and the Path of Conscious Love, 4:44 2-06 13 Jesus, a teacher of unitive perception.
“As long as you’re looking at things with your usual consciousness, with your usual operating system, this parable will be irreducibly unfair, because it is a wonderful, savage parody of the whole system of the egoic mind that keeps track of things by comparison and contrast.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mary Magdalene and the Path of Conscious Love, around 2:30 6-05 44 Self-emptying or kenosis.
“When you approach the story from the perspective of fullness, you see that there’s enough for everybody, that the good of everyone has been tended, and that all along it had never been a question of competition, but an invitation to participation and exchange.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Jesus, p39
“Man as he is by birth and natural growth is not a full man, evolved man, being a seed himself, the latent seed of himself, having all the requisite physiological, and also psychic functions (of thought, feeling, insight, consciousness, etc.) that can bring about his own unfolding into evolved man or full man. All real psychology – all true science of the soul – is about this new seed, man himself. If we imagine this progress, we can realize it is not in time, but in some other direction. What does this mean? The parable of the laborers in the vineyard seems to be based on the argument from time. Some worked a longer time than the others. Is this, then, a side of man nearing a new realization of life and aware of a higher range in himself, which begins by understanding that time is what prevents him? The passage of time is not evolution. It is not the quantity of effort but its quality that marks development. Time is not progress, and length of time is nothing by itself. Evolution, development, is a higher or deeper form of a thing. It is a movement towards something above what a thing is, not to something tomorrow. It is a moving towards what is more internal, to what is deeper experience, to greater integrity and purity of vision, to quality and not mere quantity.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p50-51.
“The Kingdom of Heaven, Christ says, is not as you think, and it is impossible to think concerning it as to what you shall have. It is not something that can be thought of in terms of rewards as men understand them. To think of it as a place where a man shall be given a throne and power and authority over others, as a reward for anything he has given up in this life, is to think of it from ideas that have nothing to do with it. The Kingdom is different from anything on earth, different from anything a man’s senses can show him, different from anything he can think. A new understanding is necessary, born from ideas that Man at the level of “Earth” does not possess. To understand anything about the Kingdom, his natural ideas must be left, or rather transcended. For while with his natural ideas he can understand the world and its kingdoms, he cannot understand the higher level of the Kingdom of Heaven. He cannot even begin to understand a single thing about it, for the lower level cannot comprehend the higher.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p80.
“In order to understand the psychological meaning of the parable, the central idea must be grasped, for a parable always contains an idea that is not a natural one, and one which may even contradict any natural idea that we possess. The whole parable is about acting from the idea of Good and not from the idea of reward. For if a man acts from Good itself, he does not seek a reward for he no longer acts from his self−love or the idea of merit. To act from Good makes all who do so equal. To act from seeing the Good of what one does cannot produce any feeling of rivalry or envy. Nor can it create any feeling that a reward should be expected, for to act from Good is its own reward. And to act from seeing the Good of what one does has nothing to do with length of service or any period of time, for Good is above time. For God is defined as good and God is outside all time. The source of Good is outside time, in eternity. The parable is about eternal values: it is not about time. It has nothing to do with our natural ideas derived from time and eternity.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p82
Logion 4
Yeshua says...
A person of advanced age must go immediately
and ask an infant born just seven days
about life's source.
Such asking leads to life
when what is first becomes last.
United they become a single whole.
Logion 102
Yeshua says...
Cursed are your religious leaders
for they are like dogs sleeping in the feed bin.
They do not eat
nor do they allow the cattle to eat.
Read more Impressions on the Parables of Jesus.
Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, Shambhala Publications, 2008
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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