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Our ways are not God’s ways, as Jesus’ parable makes clear. I suspect many of us would side with the workers who labored all day in expecting that they should be paid more than the one-hour laborers. Yet all the workers were paid a daily wage. Was that the amount needed in Jesus’ time to get by on a daily basis? If so, would it have been more just to pay the less-than-all-day laborers less that a daily wage?
In any event, the parable calls into question our notions of justice. It prompted me not only to consider questions of economic justice, but also our judicial system. It seems to me that our system focuses on two questions: what law was broken? how do we punish those who broke it? Running like a thread through the Bible there is a different understanding of justice that is concerned with restoring people to community. The questions under that model of justice deal more with what people need and how to restore them to a sense of their human dignity.
We are living in a time when notions of justice are roiling in our culture. It appears our ways are not God’s ways - but I hope, as we seek new understandings of justice, we might turn our eyes toward God and ask for guidance in forming more perfect systems of justice for all.