One can imagine what it may have been like in the 1st Century for day-labourers, anxious to get enough money to feed their families, to compete for jobs in a limited market. How they must have jostled and shoved to get in position for the attention of the landowner! The landowner, the Lord, on this occasion agrees for the first workers to pay what is just, the usual daily wage, while he offers to pay the rest: "whatever is right." (Mtt 20: 4) The workers, many of whom are starving, take up the offer not knowing what that will mean. Even the last workers, who have waited for the whole of the day, are prepared to work any time in the hope of getting something. The landowner, in paying them all the same, gives them all enough for their families regardless of time worked. This is the opposite to the concept of "survival of the fittest' deployed by Darwin. It is the compassion and mercy of a loving God who sees our needs and loves us even when we have not responded to him until late in the day. On the other hand we should not, in hardness of heart, resent that others find mercy, likewise, who have come to the Lord in the eleventh hour. Heaven forbid that I would hear the reproach: "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous." (Mtt 20: 15)
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