Paying the Vineyard Workers

 

Today I worked from home, then in the evening I went to another training session at the Labor Temple. Our local's office is on the far side of the building from the women's bathroom but really close to the men's bathroom, so that's some bad luck for those of us of the feminine persuasion. Today we talked about the LA teachers' strike, and I have it on good authority that this was the last training session. Travalon was planning to try everything on the menu at Butter Bird if this continued all summer.

Tonight at Night Prayer I had a question for everyone: the Gospel reading today was Jesus's disciples asking why he always talked in parables, and that got me to thinking about the story of the vineyard owner who hires people throughout the day to work in his vineyard, and at the end of the day he pays them all the same wage. My question was why did he pay the workers who had worked the longest last, so that they knew they got the same amount as the workers who had only been there an hour? To me, God comes across like a real jerk for doing this, because He easily could have paid the people who worked the longest first so they didn't feel slighted, but I must be missing the point. So I asked: what is the point? It was fascinating to me how some people totally missed what I was asking and said everyone gets the same amount of grace no matter how long they've been a believer, but other people totally got what I was asking and said, "You're missing the question. She's asking why the people who worked the longest got paid last." Right - I TOTALLY get the point of all the workers getting the same amount of money, and I said so, but I don't understand why the hardest workers got paid last and had to watch everyone else get paid the same amount. Some other people threw out some suggestions, but it is a mysterious parable. It also seems like a psychology experiment, because it was really interesting to see who understood my question and who kept answering a question I had not asked. It was not the people I would have guessed, which maybe says something about my ability to understand people. The person who was loudest about answering the question I had not asked is a stubborn person who never thinks they are wrong, so that tracks, but my biggest defender surprised me. I may have totally underestimated this person.

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