The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is one of the most difficult ones for a modern audience to appreciate. How can it be just that those who have worked for only an hour are paid the same as those who have labored through the heat of the day? It is the same sort of complaint we hear from people who have led exemplary lives only to be hit with ill health, economic woes and personal tragedies. “Why is God doing this to me? They ask. “It isn’t fair.” However, what Jesus wants to reveal, through His use of parables, is not what is fair and what isn’t but rather what enhances the presence of the kingdom of God and what blocks it. In today’s parable He uses the miserliness and envy of the workers. The kingdom of God is a place of forgiveness and generosity, not a place of greed and envy. The parables face us with a tough challenge. Can we understand and can we live in the way God lives?
For the Christian, envy and greed are not just addictions or illness. They create an obstacle in our way of understanding God and in our freedom to follow God’s guidance. Each of us is tested in different ways. We are asked to free ourselves, and to think that what another has is something I should have. It is true that such world view often emerges from our own sense of emptiness. Not having any sense of our fulfillment, we look elsewhere to fill the gap, but the gap is never filled. Instead we can look to the Lord and His teachings, for His grace and His guidance reveal a way forward in this labyrinth. We can do that, we can break the vicious circle of envy and greed and become fully alive in the kingdom of God.