Thursday, July 13, 2006

... harvesting

i was reading my Bible this morning, trying to ingrain a (good) habit of making the train ride from the city to work my Bible-reading time, and hit upon the passage in matthew about the workers harvesting in the vineyard. the boss of the vineyard hires some guys at 6am and comes to a workplace enterprise agreement (is that what they're called?) with them for a denarius for the day's work. he gets some more guys around 9am, then noon, then 3pm, then finally at 5pm! all done, he starts paying them from the most recently-hired (the 5pm guys) and gives them a denarius, and when he gets back to the 6am-starters they get only a denarius too. disappointment all round for those guys, who seemed to be expecting raises.

the point of the passage is that the pay is up to the master of the vineyard, not the workers. it would have been understandable that jews who kept the torah should be upset that Jesus starts saying people need to repent and get right with God and thus be on even footing with "the righteous". imagine how they'd have felt knowing that serial killers and rapists and murderers - gentiles, the lot of them! - would be getting into heaven too!

it reiterates to me just how little i see the world from God's point of view and persist in using my own frame of reference. idiot that i am.

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