Thought for the week - 20 September 2026

It’s not very likely, is it? Paying the same amount to one who has worked for one hour as to those who work ten, it seems unfair. Is it also unfair that people doing different jobs get paid startlingly different wages to others? Why do we value the head of a Water Company such a lot more than a teacher or a Doctor? But no normal employer would pay the same wages to those who worked twelve hours and to those who worked one in the same job. If trades unions functioned in his society, there would be a walkout, braziers lit and banners unfurled.

Today’s Gospel, as so often, makes us re-examine how nor­mal life works. The Sower who scatters on unproductive land is not a role-model for any farmer. But may today’s householder be a role-model for employers in the new world order that the Gospel calls us to, as well as a symbol of Jesus?

A denarius a day was the minimum wage. If a labourer earned it, he and his family would eat; other­wise they would go to bed hungry. By paying all his workers a denarius, the householder provides them with basic necessities. Maybe those hired at the third hour were unlucky and got missed earlier. Maybe those hired at the sixth hour had slept in. Maybe those hired at the ninth hour were ill and couldn’t work a full day. Those hired at the eleventh-hour sound like grifters, chancers. None of them is allowed to starve through misfortune or indeed fecklessness – all are given their evening meal, regardless of their life situation, work ethic or age.

If members of our own family are physically ill, we do not let them starve. If they are mentally ill, we not only feed them, but involve them in as much normal activity as possible. Even those who are lazy and feckless, we care for. We might chivvy them, we might despair of them, but at the end of the day we feed them. Despite occasional grumbling, those with physical, mental and moral health see it as their vocation, hence their fulfilment, to care for family members without.

Today’s Gospel asks us why that should be different in a larger scale if we are still one family, God’s family, in which we share through Baptism, because through birth from Mary God became our Father, to whom we pray ‘give us this day our Daily Bread and forgive us as we forgive each other’. Can we then say ‘but not them, not him, and not her, because they are not our family when in fact, we are members of His family. Further, in today’s parable, and in the provisions for the poor he included in the law of Moses, the Divine Householder, the eternal Father, asks us not to humiliate the needy, but to accord them as much self-respect as possible, as we find at the raising of the son of the widow at Nain, when her life is restored to her as much as his.

What then does God do with the work we offer Him? And does He care if we come to it late or early – whose fault is it if people come to it late? Maybe other family members who judge others, tut at them, act as though they occupy a greater place at the table of the Most High? What we seek is to share in the Supper of the Lamb, our baseline of hope is to see God and we see God through Jesus who offers to share with us His own knowledge of his Father. No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. It is this knowledge that we labour in the vineyard for, and we share it with others because it is inexhaustible and eternal and not diluted by being shared but intensified. God must give himself to us and enlarge our hearts and strengthen our minds so that we can receive – indeed survive – such a gift, and that survival will make us change, and for the better.

The work of the Church is therefore to labour in a vineyard which we do not own. The Church is not the householder, it is the community of servants of the householder, therefore we are equal and ask not to be judged as we do not judge others, to be forgiven as we forgive others, indeed, to be worthy of the things we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer, and not to be harmed by our saying it glibly. The good we do has a divine value and when the House­holder comes ‘to repay everyone for what he has done’, we hope to find our works of loyalty and mercy have contributed to our eternal life; we will have done something to ‘earn our supper’ and to take our seat in Heaven.

Let us be wary of saying to ourselves, ‘I have worked hard for six hours’ (or nine, or twelve). We do not know all that God is doing, or plans to do, in others. Perhaps he is currently doing less through us than we think – or, perhaps, a lot more. We need to have faith in Him, and therefore in each other, because we are all members of His family, even those who do not yet know they are, and they will only know if we treat them as members of our own family, as our hope is that He does with us. If in doubt, say the Our Father and mean it.