Jesus certainly had a way with words. Not one that I always appreciate if I’m being perfectly honest. There are certain phrases (rendered in any language you care to translate them to), that just get under your skin and challenge you. I don’t always enjoy that feeling.

In Matthew 20, we read Jesus’ parable of the workers. Some get paid what they were told they were going to get paid. Others get far more than they expected. The workers treated fairly suddenly don’t feel that they have been treated fairly at all. Why? Because the owner of the vineyard has been generous to the Johnny-come-lately workers who only did an hour’s work but got a days wages.

They complain, they grumble, the deal they were happy to take in the morning doesn’t feel so good now. They might have woken up that morning and prayed, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ as they walked to the marketplace. Yet now at the end of the day even though the Lord had heard and answered their prayer, they feel no gratitude. They have been dealt with justly, but others have been dealt with generously which makes their just rewards feel, well, unjust.

So Jesus has the vineyard owner ask them a question, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” To which the obvious answer is, ‘yes, yes we do’.

Any parent will tell you that our keenly developed sense of fairness starts at a very early age. Siblings compare slices of cake, sizes of presents, number of toys, almost anything in fact that suggests, ‘It’s not fair, they’ve got more than me.’

I’m not sure that sense of perceived injustice ever truly leaves us. Jesus certainly didn’t seem to think so.

But now that I’m a Christian you’d think I’d be way past begrudging the generous grace of God right? Not a bit of it.

Several friends have been given more opportunities than I have, others have more money, most have bigger churches, some labour in ‘easier’ fields. Some are more charismatic, others are better Bible preachers, team builders, leaders or whatever. They are wiser, smarter, richer, cooler. More, it would seem, blessed.

God has freely used what belongs to Him. Do I begrudge Him his generosity?

You bet I do.

That’s how I think when I am the worker who is chosen first. But because this is a story, I don’t have to be stuck thinking and living and believing as just one character. I can meditate on what it would be like to be one of the workers chosen at the end of the day.

Maybe they too had prayed, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and for 11 hours had wondered whether God would hear their prayer, whether they would go home empty handed and empty bellied. For 11 hours straight they would have had to hold on to God as no one came to offer them work.

Then they get work, it’s not much, but something is better than nothing right? But then they get more than just something. They get the day. The whole day. How would that feel? Stunned, surprised, delighted, grateful. Maybe I wouldn’t believe it, not until I was home with the money safe in my pockets or spent already on food. But it would be a story I would tell. And tell. And tell. ‘Remember that time we got paid a whole day for an hour’s work?’

Do I begrudge Him His generosity now? Not a chance.

And when I realise that this is exactly how God has treated me: I’ve been chosen, called to work in his vineyard, treated both justly and at the same time with abundant grace and generosity.