Is God Fair?
Am I? Are you?
The power of Jesus’s parables can’t be understated, but there is one in particular, when told to secular audiences today, still can trigger a self-righteous response.
Permit me to tell you the story in my own words. If you want to read it yourself, it’s Matthew 20:1-16.
One day a landowner went to the town square to hire laborers to work in his vineyard. It was harvest time.
When he got there he found men waiting to be hired and so he and they agreed on a wage for one day’s labor. Immediately they went to the vineyard and got to work.
Three hours later the owner went back and saw more men standing in the market place. He told them he would pay “whatever is right” if they too would go to his fields and get to work. So they did.
Again, two more times three hours apart the owner repeated this hiring process.
About one hour before quitting time he went out once more and found others in the same place as before. “Why do you stand here idle all day?” he asked.
“Because no one has hired us,” they said.
So he told them to go work in his vineyard as well.
Soon after this, evening came and the owner told his foreman to call all the laborers together and pay them starting with the last ones and ending with those hired first.
Those hired at the end of the day were paid the amount agreed to by the first men, as were all the others.
When the first group came to be paid they expected more, and yet they were paid the same amount, and they were upset, to put it mildly.
In essence they said, “We busted our butts all day in the scorching heat, and yet those who only worked one lousy hour before sunset got the same pay. IT ISN’T FAIR!!!”
So now, what do you think? Do the workers have a point?
Personally, I would agree that what the owner did was not fair.
So what possibly could the owner say to defend himself? Here is how verses 13-15 in the English Standard Version put it.
But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius [a day’s wage]? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’
Then Jesus concludes the parable with this statement —
“So the last will be first, and the first last.”
To really appreciate this parable we need to go back to the very first verse, what Jesus said to start this story.
For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
Matthew 20:1 (ESV)
The purpose of the parable is not to talk about land management or employment equity. It is to describe how God runs his kingdom. And by understanding how God runs his kingdom we also begin to understand how we run our own kingdoms, a.k.a. our lives.
The owner agreed to an amount that enabled not only each laborer to survive, but also his family. To give those who came later less would be to permit them to starve. This gives us a glimpse into God’s compassion.
Because God is compassionate to the needy does not require him to adjust what he pays the first ones.
But it’s more than compassion, it is necessary to provide for those who are struggling for the practical stability of society, something those first woke-like laborers gave no thought to because they didn’t see it as their problem.
Let’s go one step further.
Who were Jesus’s first laborers?
His disciples.
In the context of heaven,the harvest is not grapes, but souls. Now we can have a different understanding about the statement “So the last will be first, and the first last.” This would mean that in heaven at some big party, say, those last saved would be shown to all the laborers who gave their lives before them. What a cool way to introduce the new members to their forever family.
