"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. Gospel of Matthew
Over my forty years of employment, I worked with organizations that proclaimed to be "equal opportunity" employers. These employers had a rather complex system for hiring and promotion based on three main criteria:
1. academic qualifications of the individual,
2. experience and skills of the individual,
3. personal suitability of the individual relating to the job.
As long as you had the academic qualifications, you could get an interview for the job. An interview board would then establish who best had the experience, skills, and personal suitability for the position. After the interview process, if the person didn't like the results, they could file a grievance and the whole process would be checked by a separate committee. Were there many grievances filed? All the time. The question as to whether the interview board made an impartial selection was always a sensitive issue.
A question arises from this Gospel Parable above know as "The Laborers in the Field": "Is God an equal opportunity employer"? Based on our cultural understanding of fairness and impartiality, the answer, in most cases, would be "no". The workers who labored all day in the hot sun were justified in their complaints that it was unfair for them to received the same wage as those who were hired at the last hour of the day. So today, we would probably argue: "Where's the human justice in this"?
The point that Jesus is making in this Gospel Parable, and what we often fail to see on its quick reading, is that the Kingdom of God is not based on human constructs of what we think is fair and reasonable; but on relationship -- the relationship that exists between a loving and merciful God and the people He calls His children.
To put this Gospel parable into a "relationship" understanding, let's imagine for a moment that one of the persons who worked all day in the hot sun was a father, and at the end of that hard day's work, he discovers that the person who was called at the last hour and received the same pay as himself was his son. And the father knew that the son needed this day's pay to provide for his young family. Would the father complain against his son for receiving the same pay as himself? Of course not. He would go to his son and with great delight, celebrate with him his good fortune. He would be happy for his son, and rejoice over the master's generosity. Why? Because of the relationship of love that exists between the father and the son.
If the person who worked all day in the hot sun was a wife and mother, and the person invited at the last hour was her husband, there would also be much delight, much celebration in that household that evening because all would share in and benefit from the master's generosity.
Through these examples, we begin to see, not only the relational connection that God has with us, but also the overall relational connection that God desires we have with each other as part of a human family. We are His children and there is nothing that God would not do to bring us into right relationship with Him, and in right relationship with one another.
Church is really only the stage where each of us are invited to act out of this relationship that God desires for us in our day-to-day lives.
Is it easy? No it is not. Does it always happen? No it doesn't. The reason for this is because we so often get caught up in our human constructs, our human way of thinking. Self-concern and self-indulgence so easily comes into play and causes us to forget God's plan for us. We forget the delight and the celebration we experience when we enter into the fullness of God's presence. We forget that this expression of God's love is found only in sacrificial giving.
On the cross, Jesus invited the repentant thief to share in the delights of God's Kingdom that had been prepared for him since the beginning. He comes at the last hour, but received the same good fortune. Do we delight in, celebrate and embrace such a loving Father?
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