“Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous? Thus the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
– Matthew 20:15-16

This morning’s gospel reading was accompanied with an unusually short homily by our priest. He is a remarkably intelligent man, albeit known in our parish for not being a man of few words. His homilies, though theologically enlightening and profoundly insightful, are usually incredibly long.

This morning however, it was only three sentences.

The gospel reading today focuses on the parable of the vineyard workers, in which the owner of a vineyard hires workers in the morning for a day of work at the “usual daily wage.” The owner then goes out periodically throughout the rest of the day, and hires more workers. But as the day grows shorter and each subsequently hired laborer works a short shift, at the end of the day all the workers are paid equally, those who worked the full day, and the one who worked for only an hour. The laborers from the morning expected to be paid more than the others, and were incensed by the fact they received an equal wage, to which the vineyard owner responds with the quote from above.

Our priest explained that in his years of reading this passage, he too always felt a sense of injustice with the way the first laborers received their payment. But after studying the semantics of the passage and the rhetoric of what is said, he said he finally understood why; because he identified with the first worker, and not the last.

The metaphor of the passage is pretty clear: God, as the owner of the vineyard, calls each of us, the laborers, to a life of His works, at the end of which we will receive our reward, His Grace.

With that understanding of the parable and reading it through our narrowly human understanding, it can be easy to feel that sense of injustice. Those of us who have been lived a Christian life for, well, most or all of our lives, will receive the same reward as those who convert only at the end.

For that matter, the same reward as those who potentially live a life of evil, but repent at the final hour and accept Christ.

How is that fair? How is that just?

But what if we are looking at it wrong? As humans we judge things based on our sense of justice and injustice, and our own sense of time. But we must understand that our time is not God’s. We liken ourselves to the first workers and judge those who come later as the last, but what if, in the grand scheme of the world, we are laborers called last?

Are we now so quick to speak of injustice?

In the end, God’s Grace is God’s to give. Not mine, and not yours. Therefore it is God’s right to reward, or to withhold, as He deems in accordance with His Will. This is a fundamental tenant of Christianity; the abandonment of yourself to God’s Will, and one that I understand as being a barrier for many to embrace the Christian faith. You either get it, or you don’t. You accept that God is God and all that comes with it, or you don’t.

If we are the laborers called last, how blessed are we?