Be honest. When you read or heard our gospel reading just now, did your heart leap for joy? Were you excited when you heard in the “parable of the day labourers” that the workers who had toiled and slaved all day long in the hot sun were going to get the same day’s wages as those who had worked for only one hour? Probably not!

This is not a favorite parable. It goes against one of our most cherished values, that of just reward for hard work. The more you work and the more productive you are, the more you ought to get paid. I don’t know many who would disagree with that. And this is the complaint of those who worked all day: “You have made them equal to us.”

The parable provokes one of the most primitive cries of childhood, when one sibling gets a better gift than another, the one who feels cheated screams: “But that’s not fair!” And so, it goes: Some seem to get more than they deserve while others get less. It’s just not right. It’s just not fair. So, what is this parable trying to tell us? What is the lesson here?

Well, if we continue with the metaphor of the family, we might be surprised to realize that parents do not always provide for their children in a manner that would be deemed as fair and equitable. If a child is sick or has a learning disability, do they get more of their parent’s attention? Yes, they do, and they should. If an older child runs into financial difficulty, are they likely to get more support than the other children? Yes, they might, and maybe they should. Perhaps we are looking at this parable through a human lens of superficial fairness versus a true lens of deeper justice.

Here are two lessons we can take away from today’s parable:

1) Day labourers are dependent on the generosity of owners. They cannot take anything for granted. Every day they must wait and watch and hope. So, it is for all of us in relation to God. That is why we pray in the Our Father “Give us this day our daily bread”. We stand in a relationship of absolute dependence on God. Never more is this so obviously true then in this time of global pandemic. We cannot presume that we are owed anything or that we have anything coming to us.

2) We are being compelled to look at our lives and those around us from the standpoint of God. Our sense of justice is offended by the owner’s action, but he is operating out of a higher sense of justice. We must shift our focus from ourselves to God who understands us completely and therefore knows how to properly apportion his gifts.

Yes, children complain about the perceived injustice of their parents because they cannot see all that their parents can see. They lack the breadth of vision of their parents. So too, we can be like children complaining about the perceived unfairness of God without seeing the whole universe from God’s perspective. Our God is a generous God.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened to the eleventh hour’s laborers’ family if the landowner had paid them 1/12th of a full day’s wages? They would have gone hungry that day. The poor in those days lived a hand-to-mouth existence. So, no work means no pay and no food. The landowner is compassionate towards them and pays the eleventh-hour laborers not what they earned, but a full day’s wage so their families won’t go to bed with empty stomachs.

God is gracious and generous, and we need to learn to be more like our Father. We need to move to try to see the world from His perspective of love. Only then can we appreciate a sense of true justice and live with an attitude of gratitude and not resentment.

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