A man dies and meets Peter at the pearly gates of heaven.
Peter says to him, ‘You need 300 points to enter. What good have you done in your life?’ The man says, ‘Well, I was a faithful husband and father.’
Peter nods. ‘Good. That’s worth three points.’
The man says, ‘I attended church as often as I could and usually gave a tenth of my income.’
Peter replies, ‘Very good. Another three points.’
The man continues, ‘I worked hard all my life and tried to treat my co-workers with respect.’
Peter smiles. ‘Excellent. That’s worth another two points.’ And Peter looks back at him and says, ‘You only need 292 more.’
Frustrated, the man goes off to make a list of all the good he’s done, desperately trying to reach the 300 points needed. We’ll give him some time to think about it and come back to that story later.

EQUAL PAY
Maybe today’s Gospel will give us a clue about what happens next. The labourers, who have done a full day’s work, are shocked to discover they are getting the same wage as those who joined later in the day. ‘You have made them equal to us!’ they rage.
Not ‘You have underpaid us!’
Nor ‘You broke your promise!’
But: ‘You made them equal to us!’
That is the scandal here.
What disturbs the workers is not that they have received less. They got exactly what was promised
to them. What disturbs them is that others, the ‘undeserving’, got the same.
Suddenly, what felt like a fair wage starts to feel like an insult. It’s easy to want equality until you realise it might mean others having more than you think they deserve.
‘You made them equal to us.’ Them and us.
Words of division we hear all too often in our world today.
Though the landowner insists he is doing them no wrong, that they have not been short-changed, something inside the workers cannot accept that.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
If we accept that this parable presents ‘a day’s wage’ as a metaphor for salvation.
Then, of course, we know God’s love is not a reward system. Work harder. Receive more forgiveness. Do the right things. Earn more grace. Despite what the voice inside us may tell us sometimes,
God cannot give more salvation.
God cannot give more forgiveness.
God cannot give more eternal life.
Because when God gives, by grace, he gives all he has.
And maybe sometimes we start to resent others when we realise that God loves them just as much as God loves us. Or sometimes the person we struggle with most is one who reminds us that grace is not earned. Maybe sometimes that person is ourselves.
Perhaps we quietly believe that God must love others more, those who work harder, pray better, doubt less, or seem to get everything right. If we let ourselves believe that, then we will always feel left behind… Like we have fewer points than everyone else.

GOD’S GRACE
Which brings us back to the frustrated man, standing at the pearly gates. He’d been scribbling away, trying to think of other things he did to earn his place with God, while watching person after person go on in ahead of him. His school bully, a petty criminal, the woman who only comes to church at Christmas and Easter.
‘How did you get on?’, Peter asks.
‘This is impossible! It’s not fair! No one could earn that many points!
Only by the grace of God could any of us get into heaven!’
Peter smiles and says, ‘That’s the correct answer. 292 points!’
And he opens the gates.
Because the kingdom of God was never about accumulating enough merit to deserve entry.
It was always about recognising the generosity of the one who welcomes us.
Not them and us.
Not them or us.
Just us.

TOGETHER, AS ONE
It’s about letting go of the envy that divides, and instead enjoying the mystery that God loves us and wants to be in communion with every single one of us. And that communion can start when we enjoy one another, when we enjoy God, when we enjoy ourselves as much as God enjoys us. When we approach the altar as one body and receive the full wage of God’s presence in the Eucharist, a gift freely given. And as we do that, together, without comparison or resentment, then by the grace of God, the gates of eternal life will swing wide open.