The Economy of God

 The Gospel for this coming Sunday is from Matthew.  In it, we hear the story of the laborers in the vineyard.  Specifically, Jesus tells a parable about the owner of a vineyard who pays all of his workers the same, regardless of what time they show up at work.  The guy who starts at 9 am gets X dollars, and the guy who starts at 3pm also gets the same X dollars.  The message, in a general sense, is that regardless of when you come to God, you get the full measure of His love and kingdom. 

 Of course, when we compare this with life on Earth, this makes no sense.  How incredibly ticked off would you be if you got to work early every day, and some dude who got in at 3 pm every day got the same pay?  Or if someone with half of your experience and seniority got the same pay as you?  That would set me off, for sure.

 But the economy of God sort of works like that – the latecomer and the less experienced worker get the full measure of God’s love.  This make no sense to us, not by our standards.  But with God, the full measure of His kingdom is available to all comers, regardless of starting time or experience.  I know I’m not making any ground-breaking observations here, but it’s worth saying.

 But I will tell you this: recently two things made me think about how God sees the significance of getting “paid” at the end of the day.  First, I was talking to my old college roommate who has been out of work for a while and living on the financial support of his fiancé.  It’s extremely stressful for him.  Right or wrong, he feels like a loafer because he’s not putting the proverbial bread on the table.  The second thing that happened is about me.  When I woke up this morning around 5, I looked in my bank account and my direct deposit pay wasn’t there, although it usually shows up right after midnight.  I got a little concerned as to why the money wasn’t there.  It showed up in a couple of hours, thankfully.  Maybe the computers were slow, I don’t know.  But for the time before it showed up, I was thinking about all the expenses I needed that money for.  Mortgage.  Food.  Utilities.  In short, true necessities.  And I thought about what I would need to do if the money didn’t show up.

 What’s the point?  God knows that our “pay”, our share of the kingdom, is something we need, not just a luxury.  And for that reason, God is not going to deny us our “pay”, our share of the kingdom, because we were a little slow to get His message.  God is a god of grace.  All we need to do is try our best, whenever we show up.  But don’t worry if you’re late to the game.  Jump in where you are.  In this spiritual sense 9 am and 3 pm (even 4:59 pm) are the same thing.    

The Older Brother