P ♰ C

– by Jean Allen

The world operates on a certain sense of justice and this kind of justice is challenged in today’s Gospel of the landowner who paid the workers who were hired last the same as the workers who were hired early in the day. The world’s sense of justice is comparative and often competitive. “Hey! That’s not fair. We worked harder and longer than them; therefore, we deserve more.” This sense of justice resents anyone who seems to get more than their fair share and it engenders conflict and struggle.

The Kingdom’s justice, on the other hand, is not based on fairness but rather on love imparting dignity to the one who is receiving the justice. The landowner told the workers hired later that he would pay them “whatever is right” So, who decides what is right? If it was left up to the early hires, they would get the most pay and to heck with those other guys. It is God’s role to decide what is right because he knows that in the world’s sense of justice, there is always someone who loses. In this Gospel, there were no losers, only guys who decided they lost.

The Kingdom does not operate on the basis of winners and losers. This is an important lesson for us all. Christianity is not a worthiness contest. This truly is beyond our fathoming because it goes against the grain of everything we’ve been taught from infancy. The whole world operates on the reward system; from families to schools to the workplace, we’ve been taught that personal success depends on our own hard work. It’s extremely gratifying for the person at the top of the ladder and demoralizing for those on the lower rungs. God does not demoralize anyone. 

In the Kingdom, you have to go down to be up, you have to be less to be more, the smaller you are, the larger you become and failure is a pathway to God. There is only one requirement.

Just show up.