Today's Gospel (Mt 20: 1-16) is the familiar parable of the vineyard owner who hires workers at different times of the day, starting at dawn and ending at 5 p.m., and pays them all the same wage. Those who worked all day complain that they aren't treated fairly, since they didn't get any more than the folks who only worked for a couple of hours. The owner pushes back and says that he's been fair to the workers who started first, paying them exactly what was agreed to, and that it should be no concern of theirs if the owner wants to be generous and pay the last-hired workers more than the amount to which they were entitled. Of course, it is a parable about the Kingdom of heaven, and the message is that God in His generosity gives all of us the tremendous gift of entry into heaven, regardless of when we became followers of Christ. In that context the parable makes sense, since by definition being in heaven is the ultimate we can experience, so no one could get anything more and there is nothing about which to complain. But in the context of work on earth, this parable always seems a bit problematic. The complaint of the first-hired workers has some bite to it, doesn't it? Sure, the owner can do what he wants, but his actions just don't seem fair. Fundamentally fairness is about how people are treated in analagous situations, and people who do the same job as others but do it for a much-longer time should get more money, fairness seems to dictate. That issue of economic fairness or economic justice is one of the central ones in our country right now. According to The New York Times last Sunday, the richest one percent of the country now owns 40 per cent of the country's wealth. That's up from under 30 per cent in 1989, and continuation of the treand that started in the 1970's of the "rich getting richer." The losers in this trend equation have been everyone else, but especially the poorest 20 per cent, who actually own none of the country's wealth (they are in debt) and the middle class, whose percentage of ownership in the country declined significantly. You see the same kind of trends when it comes to income, where those at the top of corporations have seen huge increases in their income, while those in the middle or bottom have seen stagnation. The issue in today's parable seems to be that the owner was too generous-- gave the last-hired more than that to which they were entitled, thus frustrating the first-hired, who got only what they had agreed to accept. Today's problem in the U.S. (and other developed economies) is the opposite-- the workers receive less than they believe they should, or jobs get outsourced, and folks have to work two or even three jobs just to survive. More than any other, I think this issue drove the results of the last presidential election. Viewed from a historical perspective I think there is little doubt that our economy is currently structured in a way that produces results that fly in the face of traditional concepts of fairness and justice. As Christians we need to think about that. After all, it is pretty hypocritical to say we care about the poor, and then to do nothing about the conditions that keep people in poverty. Economic justice matters. It matters not just from a faith perspective. it also matters from a very practical perspective. Laborers in a vineyard aren't the only ones who grumble (or worse) when things don't seem to be fair.