There was a time – within the memory of most of the people here today – when people doing the same work were paid different amounts. It was most obviously apparent when women were traditionally paid less than men. But then, the protests and challenges began and now we have a better employment compensation system. We call it "equal pay for equal work". Many people fought long and hard to achieve that. It’s the only fair was to operate, we believe.

And then we read today’s Gospel lesson, another of Jesus’ parables, one which offers a different view. We know the story well:

It is the harvest season for grapes. The owner of a vineyard gets up before dawn and makes his way to the centre of the village where day-labourers are gathered, hoping to find employment for the long twelve-hour workday.

These men were much like our modern-day migrant workers – totally at the mercy of others for any kind of employment – for anything that would feed their families for another day.

When the vineyard owner arrives, he chooses only a few of those assembled to go to his field. He agrees to pay the going wage, which was about enough to keep a peasant family going for a single day.

The vineyard owner returns to the village three more times and hires a number of additional labourers over the course of the day. Some begin their work early in the morning, some come at noon, others around three o’clock, and still others are not hired until late in the day. When it comes time to pay them for their labour, the workers discover that all are paid the same wage, no matter how long they worked.
Those workers who were hired first begin to object. They feel slighted, perhaps taken advantage of. They protest that they laboured all day in the hot sun, so surely they deserve more money than those who have worked but an hour or two! This is definitely not equal pay for equal work! It’s not fair.

But this is not a story about fairness. It is a story about justice – God’s justice.

What does justice look like to us? Many of us would say "equal pay for equal work", the longer you work, the more you are paid.

But we must then consider:

Was it fair that the vineyard owner did not hire all the workers he needed at once? You don’t hear those who were hired first complaining about that, do you? They were more than pleased to have a whole day’s work ahead of them, with the promise of taking home something to their families that evening. They didn’t care that others would have no work that day and thus, no means to feed their families.

(We tend to protest an injustice only when we are the ones on the receiving end. Imagine, for instance, that you’re playing cards with some friends and you are dealt a perfect hand. You know the others around the table don’t stand a chance with their hands, but you don’t ask for the cards to be reshuffled, do you?)

Was it fair of those workers to complain about the pay that others received? After all, they got exactly the agreed upon pay. What others got should not concern them. But it does. They become angry, perhaps a bit indignant….They believe they "deserve" more money than the others. It’s a bit like when you are waiting in line at the theatre or the bank. If someone cuts into the line or gets called forward ahead of you, you get a little angry and resentful. You have waited longer than that other person. You DESERVE to be ahead of them, you mutter to yourself.

Whether we want to admit it or not, many of us are like those day-long workers. We have come to believe that we deserve certain things – that they are our right. We see television commercials that tell us "we’re worth it".

We even get a little hint of this kind of feeling in the pervious chapter of Matthew’s gospel. At one point, Peter asks Jesus the questions, "Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?" Is Peter implying that the willingness of the disciples to give up their former lives to become Jesus’ disciples somehow "deserve" a reward – perhaps a heavenly reward?

What about those workers hired later in the day? Were their families any less deserving of food in their stomach than the families of others? Should they suffer because the bread winner of the house was not hired for a full day’s work?

God’s justice demands that we turn away from our self-centredness to consideration of others.

The landowner may not have treated each of his labourers in a "fair" manner, but he certainly acted justly.

It’s his vineyard and it’s his money that pays the workers. As Jesus reminds us, he can do what he wants with what is his. And he chooses to take care of those less fortunate than himself. He isn’t concerned about who got there first and who didn’t get hired until later. His primary concern is people not having work and therefore having nothing with which to feed their families. So he keeps on taking more workers through the day until all have a place in his vineyard.

He acts with justice. Everyone receives what they need – not what they necessarily want or believe they deserve.

Think of all the things we have and experience that come to us, not as a reward or prize that we deserve:

• We live in a prosperous country, free of oppression.
• Higher education is readily available to us.
• We benefit from a good health care system.
• Our supermarkets overflow with a vast variety of foods.

Do we "deserve" all this? No – it comes to us as an accident of our birth. We have done nothing to earn it.

Think of God’s love and forgiveness for each one of us. We certainly don’t deserve that, yet it comes to us, freely and generous.

And our only response to that extravagant love and generosity is to pass it on – as we said last week – to pay it forward.

Think of what our world could be if everyone received what they needed! No longer would the poor suffer – there would be no poor.

As Christians, that is our goal, our responsibility, our calling – to do what we can to ensure that everyone has what he or she needs, by sharing what we have.

There is an old Jewish parable about a father and two sons. It goes like this:

The father was an ideal mentor. He took his sons to the fields as soon as they were big enough to walk and taught them all he knew about farming. When he died, instead of dividing their inheritance, they continued to work together in partnership, each contributing his best gifts. They shared all the farm produce equally, and they also shared the work fairly.

One of the brothers married and had eight children, while the other remained a bachelor.

The single brother thought about this fact, and he came to the conclusion that their habit of equal sharing was, after all, unjust. "I am just one," he thought to himself, "but my brother has ten mouths to feed." So, with this thought in mind, he decided that his brother should have a larger share of the produce than his own. In the middle of the night, he got up and quietly took a sack of grain from his own store and placed it in his brother’s. This became a habit, and he regularly secretly took extra produce across to his brother’s storeroom. And so the years passed.

Meanwhile, the married brother was also thinking things through. "I am married", he thought to himself. "I have a wife who cares for me, and strong children who help me with the farm work. My brother has no one to support him. It isn’t fair that I should take as much as he does from the produce of the farm." So, he too began to get up in the night, and to take some of his own share of the produce over to his brother’s storeroom.

This went on for several years, and neither brother could understand why his own stock of produce never seemed to diminish, even though each was giving some of it away regularly to his brother.

Then it happened that one moonlit night, they both set off to visit their brother’s store at exactly the same moment; and, each carrying his sack, they met one another in the middle of the field between their two cottages. At first, they were both shocked by this unplanned encounter, but they soon realized what they were doing. The dropped their sacks of grain, and embraced each other.

The old rabbi telling this story said that although there was not a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall. It was, he said, God weeping for joy because two of God’s children had gotten the point.

The real secret of human joy is in sharing what we have with others, so that everyone has what they need, not what they think they deserve, or don’t deserve.

We can imagine that God wept for joy over the actions of the vineyard owner that day he paid his workers.

"And the last shall be first, and the first will be last – and all will be well in God’s world when that happens.

May we follow the example of the two brothers and that of the vineyard owner, that the joyous tears of God may wash over our world."

Amen.