Based on Matthew 20:1-16. Rather than a sermon this week, I decided to do something a little different - more in the style of a meditation. Maybe I'll post a comment telling people how it goes.....
I am going to try and take you back through time, back more than 2000 years, and tell you a story. It may well never have happened, but that doesn't mean that it's not true: for this is one of the stories that Jesus used to tell his listeners what God is like. Before us is a man, a working man much like any other.....
At the time, I was so angry. I couldn't understand why someone could be so unfair. You might laugh now, tell me that I had no right, but you weren't the one who was there and I was.
It was a hot day, and I stood at the hiring place hoping that I would be one of the lucky ones. Work is hard to come by, and if I don't work, I don't eat - and neither do my family. This day, I was lucky: a day's work in the Vineyard, picking the fruit. Off we went, and because we knew it was easy to replace us, we got on with it. There was plenty to do - it was a big vineyard. A long day's work in the heat of the sun lay ahead of us - but the reward, the wages, would be worth it.
You have to get a harvest in quickly, so it wasn't a big surprise when in the middle of the morning a few more came in to work; there was still plenty to do, and as lunchtime came and then mid-afternoon, more workers arrived. I felt a bit sorry for them - half a wage may be better than none, but too many half wages and you'll soon feel the hunger in your belly.
It was coming to the end of the day when even more arrived; it hardly seemed worth their while coming, they were only there for about an hour. Still, you don't turn down work if you want to eat, even if an hour's wage will only buy you enough for one small meal.
When they went up to collect their wages though, they got given a full day's wage. As one of the first hired, I couldn't help but think about what was coming to me: if that was what they got for one hour, surely I'd be getting enough to feed the family for a week. I started working it out: what I would buy, where I would keep the rest of the money, whether I was going to let myself have a day off sometime soon or just use it as a backup in case i didn't get hired.
One days wage. One lousy, mean, day's wage - exactly the same as the ones who'd stood around for most of the day got. All that work, the sun beating down, and I got the same as someone who had worked for an hour. How can you tell me that's fair?
The problem was, I'd agreed to it. As he pointed out when I complained, I hadn't been cheated by him - I'd got exactly what was promised. It was tempting to think that I should have just hung around waiting for evening before getting hired, but it doesn't work like that - you have to take what you can, when you can. Even so, I thought I had good reason to be unhappy.
I took my wages and walked away, heading for home. As I walked, lost in my own thoughts, I barely noticed until I bumped into him one of those who'd worked for an hour. To my amazement, he was crying; not in pain, but in joy. I didn't know him, but I had seen him around; a small bloke, a bit older, one of the ones that sometimes didn't get hired because the landowners want the strongest, fittest and youngest workers. He was speechless with the joy of what he had been given. And then I remembered the time last year when no-one hired me for a whole week, of the despair, the wondering why I wasn't being picked. And the joy when someone finally gave me a job. And do you know something? I cried too.
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