Come on. Admit it. This Jesus-story messes with your head. Of all people, you’d expect him to break down the fairness of God. For goodness’ sake, he even kicks it off as,“The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” Sounds like we need to settle down for some divine justice TED talk.

But this vineyard story? It looks like God favors socialist philosophy, regardless if someone put in the work or not. Whatever happened to reap what you sow, give and you receive, an equal exchange of action and reaction, deed and consequence? How are we supposed to know God cares about what we do if the payout looks the same?

Is God an L?

The Hiring Line

Be careful you’re not grading the wrong test. Go ahead, shake your head. Very early in the day, he hires a crew with the agreement to pay them the normal daily wage. Cool. They go to work.

Then at nine o’clock, at noon, and even at five o’clock, he finds guys just “standing around doing nothing.” (You know the type, chronically unemployed, corner-standing lazy bums hanging out.) When asked why they aren’t working, they simply say, “Because no one hired us.” (Well, if you’d get up and get moving when most of the hiring is happening,…oh, whatever.) The owner hires them, telling them to join the other workers hired earlier that day.

Fee for Service

That’s cute. Everyone gets a little something. God’s provision is there for those who show up and respond to the call. Except there’s more to this story, the real twist isn’t in the paycheck. Not from what comes next as much as what went before.

Take a deep breath now. He did it again. Good old Peter pipes up, and in more than one way, Jesus had to adjust his thinking. The repetition of this scenario seems to indicate it’s a lesson not easily learned.

“We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get out of it?”  Peter asks. (Matthew 19:27) As in, where’s our benefits package? What the return on our investment?

Jesus just had indicated to a rich young man that to follow him, the man needed to sell all he had and give to the poor. (Matthew 19:16-26) For  this guy, it was a tougher sell than for those relatively poor fishermen who immediately dropped their nets when Jesus called them. Even so, Peter and the other disciples had basically sacrificed their entire lives to get behind Jesus. Shouldn’t this “Kingdom of Heaven” reward them in some way when it was all over?

Divine Reversals

Yes, Jesus says, but not like you may think. Be careful you’re not grading the wrong test. “Many who seem to be important now will be the least important then, and those who are considered least here will be the greatest then.” (Matthew 19:30) It's a kingdom plot twist.

Reverse logic is the mode of operation in divine action. Healing reverses illness, peace reverses anxiety, joy reverses grief. So too, the kingdom of heaven flips personal importance and status.

So, it’s no surprise that when payday comes, the owner tells his foreman to pay first the last workers and pay them a full day’s wage. Everyone else, regardless of how long they worked, get paid the same.

That’s the reversal in action.

“God, You’re Messing With People’s Wallets Now”

God, healing, peace, and joy are spiritual entities. You’re talking about people’s wallets here, but suddenly everybody becomes a philosopher.If you’re supposed to be fair and just, pay people according to the labor they put in, or at least bump the pay for those who worked longer hours. Raise the minimum wage if you want but be fair about it.

Let’s back up here again. This is not some labor union meeting. Nor is it a welfare program being proposed. What did Jesus say? “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

And like it or not, heaven’s view of what’s fair and equitable isn’t like ours. Heaven doesn’t play by our rules, what we call fair. This is God’s economy, not ours. So Peter, and the rest of you for that matter, make the adjustment.

Questions of What’s Fair and Just

What is fair and just and the way we believe and understand how the world should work isn’t the point here. Yet, Jesus sets the story in the familiar place of work and benefits with rewards associated in the labor market. It doesn’t seem right or fair, yet Jesus knew unless our perspectives are sometimes shaken and our sense of fairness gets rattled, those of us who sit in Peter’s camp might not buy into his message. Otherwise, we come down to doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Jesus was up against the mentality that everything good in life must be earned. That’s a paycheck as well as eternal life. That rich guy had asked Jesus, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Peter also was reminding Jesus what the disciples had done. Earn God’s approval? Jesus deconstructed that expectation, and he did it right where people sit.

The world values persons by the size of their bank accounts and financial portfolios. No, he says. “What’s important now will be least important then.”

Heaven isn’t a loyalty program. You don’t rack up points. You don’t unlock tiers. You don’t get platinum disciple status. Heaven is not earned by work, nor by what you give, nor by how you serve. You’re not going to balance your spiritual bank account with God like this.

A Liberal Grace

What does work is in the response to the owner of the vineyard. All the workers that day answered the owner’s call. It wasn’t the work they went out to do that got them a reward, but the fact that they said Yes to the owner. Every Yes was the same. And so, everyone who said Yes, regardless of the amount of work they put it, was rewarded with the same pay.

Interestingly, some of those who had worked the longest are the ones who protested. You can hear them now shouting how the system is so unjust. They want to flex their spiritual tenure. Recognize this story is not about your dysfunctional systems of the world. This is God’s will to bless all who say Yes to the owner.

God’s response, again to Peter and the rest of us who need some kind of hierarchy on which to sit, is, “Should you be angry because I am kind?”

In the end, Jesus is saying that God is an L, that is, a Lover. God’s Love is the source of forgiveness, mercy, and grace. It’s widely generous, beyond fair, reckless. Costly to God, worth being crucified over.

God’s Love doesn’t fit into your fairness charts or equity spreadsheets. It’s not to be weighed on our understanding of what is just, our sense of equality. That doesn’t mean justice and equality are to be dismissed in the relationships we have with each other. But it does mean, in saying Yes to God, a greater principle and operative have been designed to bring all persons who respond to that love and grace into the Kingdom of Heaven.

So when it comes to God’s grace?

Nobody’s too late.

Nobody’s too low‑rank.

Nobody’s too underqualified.

And if God is at all liberal, it’s how wide he throws the door open. That’s why,

“Many who are first now will be last then, and those who are last now will be first then.”

Matthew 20:1-16 

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