One of the concepts which is most important to us as humans is the concept of fairness. We believe in equal pay for equal work. We believe that all people are created equal, and all should be entitled to equal treatment before the law. We believe in equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of gender, ethnic background, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. The French national motto has equality as one of its three components: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
The big surprise revealed in Matthew chapter 20 is that God doesn’t buy in to this fairness and equality thing. God isn’t fair. God doesn’t treat people equally. In the parable of the vineyard workers, people who did very little work got paid as much as those who had worked hard. If the employer had been fair about it, the people who worked all day would have been paid 12 times as much as those who only worked for an hour. The landowner wasn’t giving anyone less than what they deserved, but he did give a number of people more than what they deserved, and that’s what upset the other workers. There’s something in us that wants to compare ourselves to others, and cries out “What about me?” when someone else receives a gift or gets a pay rise.
But that’s not how God sees it. According to Jesus, God isn’t fair. God is generous and merciful, but he isn’t fair. God does give people gifts every day, but they’re not determined by reference to how hard the people have worked. Sometimes God gives bigger gifts to slackers and smaller gifts to hard workers. And when he decides whether or not to let you into his kingdom at the end of time, it won’t have anything to do with what you’ve done, how well you’ve behaved, or how hard you’ve worked. Getting into the kingdom isn’t a matter of what you deserve or what you’ve earned. It’s a matter of what you’ve been given, or more precisely it’s a matter of whether you’ve accepted the gift which you’ve been offered by Jesus.