A landowner goes to the town square where laborers gather every day looking for work. It’s a kind of labor market not unlike the system still in use where migrant workers follow the harvest. He hires a group at sunrise, the official beginning of the work day—about 6:00 a.m. It’s a big harvest. Maybe it looks like rain, maybe there is a chill in the air and a threat of a ruinous freeze. In any event, he returns to the labor market at 9:00 a.m. and hires another group of workers. At noon and at 3:00 p.m., he’s back again, hiring a third and fourth group. And at 5:00, not long before sunset, he hires a fifth group to help finish the job.
Laborers are paid daily at sunset and the owner begins with the last group hired. To their absolute delight, they receive a full day’s pay. I know who else is delighted as well—all the other laborers who know that if these people who worked just a few hours received a full wage, they, who worked all day, from dawn, through the blazing heat of midday, who did most of the work, surely they will be rewarded appropriately.
And so when their turn comes to be paid, and they receive the same amount, the full amount but no more, the amount they negotiated at the beginning of the day, they are offended. And the owner responds—gently—‘Take what you have and go . . . Are you envious because I am generous?’
It is difficult to understand that God loves all equally and each uniquely. It is not easy to accept the fact that my enemies are not also God’s enemies, or that the people who so flagrantly abuse the standards of integrity, faithfulness and justice, to which I am committed, are somehow loved by God, as I am.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525