Gracefully Unfair

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, Codex Aureus Epternacensis, 11th Century

It’s not fair, this may be what I signed up for but it’s not fair

That in this crazy mixed up world of grace the last are first and the first last

Where a person can work from sunup to sundown laboring in the vineyard

Bearing the brutal rays of the sun beating down upon their backs

Getting up early to be the early bird that gets called out into the fields

Being the ant who works all day every day unlike those others

Those others who might look different, party different, act different, smell different

So that they get left behind among the other laborers, for it is about my skills

The sweat of my brow, the skill of my hands, the pain in my back from the harvest

And yet others work less, coming in later, leaving earlier, getting the same recompense

In a world of continually increasing worker productivity and efficiency

What is this inefficient master doing in the distribution of grace

Don’t I deserve more for my labor, for my conscientious and diligent striving

For I could manage the field better than this crazy master and the world would know no rest

For everyone would work as hard as I do or they would never work at all.

Yet maybe in this crazy and gracious world a new and strange master emerges

One who challenges the lords of commerce and time or wage and resource

One who sees the people left behind in the world of competition

Those in the market at 9 o’clock and noon and even at 3 or 5 o’clock

Those who no one sees or cares about, those who no one will hire

Those who wait all day in the hope that they too might enter into the fields

Perhaps in this crazy mixed up world of grace they are seen and valued and fed

They receive the same in some injustly and unfairly gracious manner

And why does my heart grow angry against those for whom the master’s heart breaks

Neil White, 2014

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Sign of the Rose