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Showing posts from September, 2017

The first shall be last and the last shall be first

The first will be last and the last will be first. In our Gospel reading today, the landowner hires some labourers and then pays those who have only been around for about an hour the same total wage as those who had been working all day.    Do you consider that fair?   Let’s do a show of hands.   Who thinks that is fair payment for the workers?   Who thinks that this this is totally unfair and should be challenged? It is easy to sit back and say yes but God’s ways are different from our ways, so just get over it.   Well, the trouble with that is that we don’t learn anything and there is a real risk that we just harbour a slowly growing sense that God is a harsh taskmaster who just does what he wants, because we are just the paid hands after all.   I think that is a shame because we then get a warped image of what God is wanting for us from the relationship, and it doesn’t tie with other areas of scripture where God seems to be saying he wants to embrace us in an intimacy t