"Do you begrudge me my generosity?" No, no, of course not! It's just that it confuses me, this generosity. It is indeed generous, and one expects that of God. But it also does seem, somehow, unfair, and one does not expect that of God. I do, honestly, have some modesty, I really do! Enough even to put myself fairly low in the pecking order of holiness, but today's Gospel does lead me to imagine a scenario, and it turns out to be a very likely scenario: A heartless criminal, who has for a lifetime abused his wife, beat his children, robbed his church, stabbed innocent people while he was on one more prolonged drunk, and then finally began committing one crime after another, each more serious, each felony worse. At last he is apprehended, and after a fair trial, he is rightly imprisoned for life. In the last year of that life, he comes to regret what he has done, and now starts teaching reading in the prison library to young illiterate inmates, hoping that they might find a way to make their long sentences pass more quickly by being able to read good literature in their free time. And he dies, and on the basis of that year of teaching reading, angels whisk him to Heaven as the Seraphim sing, St Peter beams, and God embraces him with open arms. And when I arrive, will I be treated that well? Surely. Might I be treated better? Absolutely not. I don't begrudge that, I really don't. But the hardened criminal who taught reading for a year is also as joyfully welcomed as Winston Churchill was, as Pope John the 23rd was, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Dorothy Day, Francis of Assisi. St Paul. Now that confuses me. And a loving glorious God looks down upon earth, sees me, with my furrowed brow, smiles at me, and says: "Billy, do you begrudge me my generosity?" Again I say, No, no, but again I wonder—Why? Why? Not a question I can answer, and then I realize that the good news is that it is a question I do not need to ask. St Mary was there, working in the field of God at daybreak. St Peter, and St Paul, and St John, and the rest, came early in that morning, and the great heroes and saintly people of this and every age came still later, some at noon, some just after. But I arrived to do God's work in God's field alongside all of them just before the day ended. The prison library teacher and I both started pretty nearly at the end of the day. And most of you arrived with us. Now, I do not doubt that some here, and in other churches, may well have worked in that field longer, and toiled many more hours, far more faithfully. If you are perfect all day, from start to finish, if you have never once in that day said or done or thought anything that Jesus himself would not have said or thought or done, and if during the night as you slept, in your dreams you dream only of your love for God and your delight in his commandments, and then you get up and begin another perfect day once again, and you repeat that always, from the very beginning of your days to the very end of your days – perfectly, well then yes, you do have a case, you do have cause, you do have a right to wonder about God's fairness. You might even be in a position to ... well, you know, begrudge him his generosity. But if for you, as for me, that perfection is not the case, and I bet it's not – then we, the imperfect ones, have no case, no cause, no reason to question, no right to hold a grudge. We are the ones who arrived so late in the day, we are ones who did not do the heavy lifting that St Mary did, or St Barnabas, or St Teresa or Harriet Tubman or Oskar Schindler or Dag Hammerskold. They, and they alone, are the ones who have a right to ask God: "Do you reward us only the same as you do Bill Rhodes?" But of course, they are the very ones who would never ask such a question, they are the very ones who are standing beside God beaming along with him in limitless generosity toward the likes of me—and you. God says to me, to you, what he says to the disgruntled workers who in the Parable started so much earlier in the day: Did you not agree with me to work in my field for an agreed upon compensation? He says to me, to you, did we not have an agreement, set out at the beginning, set out, detailed, on the day of your baptism? Did we not agree, before the work began, that you would turn from wickedness, follow Jesus and him alone, respect the rights and dignity of all other humans, work against oppression and make no peace with injustice? And when you failed to do all that you agreed to do, did we not agree that you would say you were sorry, would repent, and return to me? Did we not agree that I would then forgive you, and help you do better in the future, and love you anyway and always? Did we not have an agreement?. So go, take what is yours, what we agreed upon, and do not begrudge me my generosity toward others. And do not feel guilty or self-conscious about my generosity toward you yourself. Do not begrudge me that either