Our Story

There is a story in the New Testament. The story is a great story, but it causes more reaction than most stories in the Bible. It is a story Jesus tells about a farmer who needed some day laborers. The farmer goes to town early in the morning and picks up a truck load of workers. When the farmer hires them they all agree before they get to the farm to work for the wages he offers. He offers to pay them a full day's pay for a full day's work. Every body is happy. But the farmer sees that there is a lot more work than the people he hired can do, so he goes to town and picks up another load of workers. About half way into the afternoon, he begins to really worry that the work will not be finished by the end of the day. He rushes in and picks up another load of workers. We have no explanation as to why these workers were still unemployed at that hour.

When it comes time to pay, the farmer calls those hired last out to the pay desk first. The farmer and these workers had never talked about pay. The farmer pays these last to the job workers the full day's pay. Now naturally, those hired first start to think that they will be paid more because they worked more. When they are called they get paid what they had agreed to work for. They get a full day's pay for the full day's work.

As you well know, they were not happy. They start to complain. The farmer asks, "How did I cheat you? Did I not pay you what you agreed to? Did I not pay you a fair wage for your work? Why are you so upset by my kindness to the others?"

What strikes me so amazing is that we in this country get so outraged by that story and it seems to me that it is our story. America is the late come workers. We are only two hundred years old, but we have more than half of the world's wealth. We are the workers who have been abundantly compensated for our work in the world. Compensated far more than so many who have worked so much more, longer and harder. We are the people who have been given so much more than we have earned, and yet we have this amazing outrage when we read about some farm hands being helped by this farmer. If it is the lack of fairness that troubles us, (it is not fair to pay the last workers the same,) then it is not fair for this country to have the great abundance of wealth that we have at the expense of all the other nations who have been working in the vineyards of the earth for far longer, far harder, and for a lot less.

Perhaps that is the reason we dislike the story so much. It is too close to home.