“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, † he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ † 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The Bible gives us two versions of the way the world works. According to one version, people get what they deserve. If you love God, obey God, work, and follow the rules things will go well. If you thumb your nose at God, if you’re selfish, lazy, and a cheat, you’ll pay a price.

This view is given a high place in the Old Testament. And there’s a lot of truth in it. How we live does have a lot to do with how things work out.

But there’s another view that we find more in the New Testament. There is no perfect, or simple, relationship between virtue and good fortune, or wickedness and misfortune. Many people have a lot of benefits dumped into their lap without deserving it. And many people have trouble dumped on their lap without deserving it. Jesus’ own life is the best example of that. Life, on this plane, includes a lot of injustice.

The Christian solution to this “problem” of injustice is that there’s more to reality than this plane, the one we can see. There’s the afterlife, or eternal life, or the kingdom of God. Or if you have trouble with those concepts, there’s a deeper life, or the life of the soul and conscience where these things get worked out.

But notice that today’s lesson, the story of the landowner and his hired help, says that even on the level of the kingdom of God there may be not be what we would call perfect justice. The person who works all day, or a whole lifetime, sweating in the sun, can get the same reward, no more, than the person who lounges all day in the shade and shows up only at the eleventh hour. This is where the expression "an 11th hour conversion" comes from - a deathbed conversion.

I recommend you try this private thought experiment. Ask yourself this. Where do your sympathies lie in this parable? With the twelve hour workers? Do you feel as if you deserve more than the latecomers- the slackers, or those whose lives seem too easy?

Or do you feel like a latecomer yourself? Do you feel that you’ve already gotten more than you deserve - not just in terms of material advantages, but also in terms of the joy and delight you find in life? There’s a lot of meaning in your answer to that question. I’ll let you contemplate that on your own.

Maybe the most important spiritual challenges we face in life is: How do we make peace with the way the fortune and misfortune get spread around? Very often they don’t get spread around in a way that matches up with what we deserve. Of course, in the deepest sense, no one deserves anything. We didn’t deserve to be born. But leaving that out, and assuming that once we are born we have a claim to something, the truth is, life involves a lot of accidents, good and bad ones. How do we make peace with those accidents?

Some years ago, a church member died. I’ll call her Elsie, but that’s a made-up name. Elsie’s husband had died years earlier. They had no children. She worshipped here every Sunday for a long time. She lived a very modest, frugal life. She made and paid a modest financial pledge to the church every year.

Toward the end of her life when she was frail, Sandra and I went to see her more often because she had no family in the area. Her only relatives were a sister, a niece, and a cousin. We talked with the sister and niece on the phone a number of times about Elsie’s situation and safety. They had both of our home phone numbers, just in case. Sandra especially went the second mile, and a third mile and fourth mile, and really befriended Elsie as Sandra is prone to do.

After Elsie died, her sister and niece thought a graveside memorial service in a couple of weeks would be best -just for the family and a few friends. So, the sister and niece came to Middletown and invited Sandra to lunch to talk about the service. They went to a restaurant. After the lunch, the server brought the bill. The sister picked it up right away - not to pay it, but to read it, out loud. “Twenty one dollars and sixty cents. That’s $7.20 apiece, plus a little for the tip.” At which point, the niece and sister dug into their purses to come up with their fair share.

Sandra, being the way she is, not prone to hang on to money very tightly, thought this was a little silly and awkward, so she said, “No, I’ll pay the bill.” The sister and niece wouldn’t hear of that. So Sandra just pulled out a $10 bill, laid it on the table, and said, “There. Let’s leave a nice tip.”

Fast forward several days. After the service, there was a small reception at Elsie’s house. This is the second lunch in the story. This time the sandwiches were provided. As this reception was winding down, Elsie’s sister told me that Elsie had left behind a substantial estate which Elsie’s husband had inherited. It probably hadn’t been touched for twenty years. She, the sister, was sorry that Elsie had never named the church in her will, especially since the church had meant so much to her and she’d gotten so much help from Sandra.

Then she told me how big the estate was. Over $6 million. Split three ways, between the sister, the niece, and the cousin. So I did my solemn duty, with a smile on my face. I said, “If you’re really sorry that Elsie left out the church, you know what you could do?” She thought that was pretty funny.

Let me insert a footnote here. Since I’ve been in Middletown, over twelve years, two people - one of them being Elsie - who attended worship here every Sunday for years, who died without any children, left behind estates totaling $10 million. Of that, the total amount left to First Church was $1 thousand. We need to put the church into our wills. End of footnote.

Well, the next day, Sandra and I were having lunch again, this time in my office. We’d brought our own sandwiches from home. I told Sandra what the niece had told me, about Elsie’s estate and will. Sandra’s mouth dropped open. She was amazed, as I’d been. We were both a little disappointed.

But then I learned something about Sandra. I saw an odd expression on her face. She was smiling, as if she knew something that I didn’t know. And I said, “What’s so funny?”

And that’s when she told me about the lunch at the restaurant - knowing now for the first time that these really sweet ladies, digging into their purses for their fair share of the bill, $7.20 plus a little for the tip, had just had $2 million each dumped into their laps.

Sandra, in telling me this, wasn’t at all taking a dig at them, or trying to put them down. It was just one of those beautiful, revelatory moments. Her last words on the subject, and the last words I’ll say too, were, “You know. We get involved in these relationships, and what we learn about life along the way, really is priceless."