Our readings this week are 1 John 5:1-5 and Matthew 20.1–16.

This week we encounter the parable of 'The Labourers in the Vineyard'. It is another very well-known one, in which labourers at the end of the day are paid the same amount - a full day's wage, regardless of whether they've worked the whole day or just a few hours.

It's a parable that peaks with the kicker: 'Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?' - implying that the generosity of God is dependent entirely upon his grace and not upon our works, which is always worth remembering.

But the result of that generosity in the parable is, of course, muttering amongst the workers – his treatment is so patently unfair. At least, from their point of view.

I remember an insight from someone who was looking at this parable from a cultural context in which this sort of day labour still exists. Their take on it wasn't that the landowner was being generous, but rather that he was being cunning. By paying the workers the same amount for different levels of work, he sowed dissent amongst them. He made them enemies to one another, such that they couldn't unite. They couldn't demand their rights. They couldn't unionise. In effect, because of the dissension it caused, he was maintaining his own position and wealth and power through a show of generosity.

I'm not sure that was the intention Jesus had when he told this parable, but it does raise an interesting question about what happens when God's generosity collides with our established worldview. What if grace is offered to us in a form that doesn't fit our understanding of how the world works?

These labourers, when they were all paid the same amount, were confronted with something that didn't fit their understanding of how the world worked. Their understanding of what they were worth, tied so closely to their capacity to work, didn't allow them to see the deeper truth: that they were valued equally as human beings. The waiting around in the marketplace was, perhaps, of as much value to the landowner as working in his fields, because it was the person he was paying, not simply the economic unit.

Had they recognised that fact, you wonder if perhaps this parable might have ended quite differently. If instead of comparing the size of their packets, they’d allowed themselves to be transformed by this ridiculous act of generosity, if they'd gone home able to see the brothers and sisters around them as human beings and as individuals, and not as competitors, and treasured who they were more highly than how much they were paid – then maybe they would have discovered not that they were in a union, but that they were part of a family.

It challenges us, I think, to look at the attitudes that we carry into the world. To question our own response to grace. To ask ourselves where are we blocking its flow, and where are we reflecting it?

All of us, most of the time, are quite happy to be forgiven. But forgiving is often so much harder. All of us need to be loved, but I'm sure we all also have people whom we find it very difficult to love.

When we encounter grace, can we learn to not just accept it (as though we deserve it!), but to inhabit it, and let it inhabit us? Can we deliberately take the time to recognise it, and dwell in it, so that it begins to infuse us, and we begin to embody it? Are we open to letting our worldviews and hard-earned attitudes be eroded as the economy of God penetrates and soaks through to the deepest levels of who we are, and changes us so fundamentally?

The good news is, it doesn't matter when you start to work in this way - whether you're there from the very beginning of the day, or coming to this as evening draws close: the generosity of the God who overflows with his abundant gift of grace is without limit and without end. He’s even happy to pay us for all the time he’s been waiting for us to show up! And the treasures of his gifts can never be diminished by sharing. That, in fact, only makes them grow.