One of the chores that my little brother and I were given as children by our dad was mowing the lawn. The agreed-upon rate at the time was a whopping $1 each time we mowed the lawn. After several weeks we would have enough money to buy a pack of trading cards at the store.

There came a certain point in my adolescence when I realized that many of my friends at school were making twenty times my measly $1 for cutting the lawn, and so I went to my dad in protest. In typical fatherly fashion, Dad recounted how when he was young, the only money he and his younger brother made cutting grass was from cutting the neighbors’ yards; cutting their own yard was, to quote my grandmother, “the rent for living in her house.”

For all the other chores we were expected to do around the house, when we would approach Dad expecting some type of repayment, he would simply quote to us the Gospel: “Your reward will be great in heaven.” “Some reward that was!” I would think as I’d storm back to my room.

One of the chores that my little brother and I were given as children by our dad was mowing the lawn. The agreed-upon rate at the time was a whopping $1 each time we mowed the lawn. After several weeks we would have enough money to buy a pack of trading cards at the store.

There came a certain point in my adolescence when I realized that many of my friends at school were making twenty times my measly $1 for cutting the lawn, and so I went to my dad in protest. In typical fatherly fashion, Dad recounted how when he was young, the only money he and his younger brother made cutting grass was from cutting the neighbors’ yards; cutting their own yard was, to quote my grandmother, “the rent for living in her house.” For all the other chores we were expected to do around the house, when we would approach Dad expecting some type of repayment, he would simply quote to us the Gospel: “Your reward will be great in heaven.” “Some reward that was!” I would think as I’d storm back to my room.

The day laborers in today’s Gospel are likewise incapable of understanding the seeming injustice of the master of the vineyard. Some have labored all day (6am–6pm), and others have been recruited by the master of the vineyard at the “eleventh hour” (an hour before sunset), and yet each receives the agreed-upon wage: one denarius. It seems obvious that those who have labored in the sun all day (it’s currently 110˚ here in Texas) would be upset. I can imagine them walking back to their homes fuming just as I marched back to my room with my measly $1 in tote.

The seeming unfairness as the master of the vineyard distributes the day’s wages is meant to draw our attention. It’s that part of the parable that makes it a parable, rather than a mere illustration. The logic of the kingdom, “God’s ways” as Isaiah would put it, are very different from our ideas of justice. Whereas we would see everyone at least make the “minimum hourly wage,” in the kingdom of God there is but one wage, represented by the denarius: eternal life. While some spend many hours (many years) laboring, others are found by the master of the vineyard at the eleventh hour, but the wage is the same: one denarius.

And yet in the kingdom of heaven this is the only wage that matters: eternal life with God in heaven.

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