Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18; Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20:1-16a

If the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard were about the wages and hours of laborers, it would be shocking in its apparent endorsement of injustice. But it isn’t. The idea of a parable is to arrest our attention with something surprising or outrageous in order to make a point about something else. The point here has to do with our relationship with God. What God has to offer us is not money (though some would have it so), but God; or, put another way, grace. In this world we tend to value things on the basis of their scarcity, and money can be hard to come by and difficult to get enough of, even for those who are willing to work for it; so our Lord seems to use it here in order to get us thinking about what is of value. Relationship with God is greatly to be valued, but it isn’t scarce. God offers himself abundantly to everyone, not as payment for doing good things but as a gift, as is always the case with love. To share in God’s own life is a gift into the mysteries of which we will be delving for all eternity, without ever exhausting its riches, and that is so whether it is a gift we find ourselves willing to receive early in life or late. But to say this is not to deny the value of our work. What we do with and in God has great value precisely in so far as it is an expression of the divine life we have been, in Christ, invited to share, the divine love we have been called to express in all we do.