At noon, when he goes back downtown, he sees some guys hanging out on the street corner, and invites them to come to work in his vineyard, telling them that he will pay them what's right.

At three in the afternoon, he's back downtown where he spies a couple of young men with nothing to do and, even though the sun is beginning to move toward the far west, what the heck?....he hires them, promising to pay them what's right.

Finally, at five p.m., he goes back to town one more time. Now, there's almost no one left loitering on the street corner. After all, the day is almost over. But there are two slackers, leaning up against the wall of the unemployment office sharing a bottle of Ripple. Even though it's only one hour before quitting time, he hires them as well.

If you're keeping score, by the end of the day we have different groups of workers in the vineyard who have been there for twelve hours, for nine hours, for six, three, and only one hour.

Now, they will be paid. If you will recall, a wage was agreed upon only for those who got there first. A denarius. But this peripatetic employer pays those who got there last, first. To everyone's amazement, he pays those who have only worked one hour a denarius. So that means that those who have worked for twelve hours, sweating in the vines all day long, will probably get....twelve denarii. Right?

No, they get what they agreed to work for, one denarius. There are murmurings of injustice. Is this any way to run a vineyard? No, they are told, the injustice is only apparent. You agreed to work for a denarius. You have been given a denarius.

Now Matthew, in his editorial introduction to this parable (19:31), suggests that this parable has something to do with Jesus' statement that "the last shall be first, and the first shall be last." But such an interpretation may not get at the true scandal of this little story, the bite.

On the first day of class the professor says, "Now students, I have this complicated, very complicated, math problem, the solution to which shall constitute your entire grade for the semester. I'm going ahead and giving you this problem here at the beginning of the semester so you can start work immediately, and I do urge you to begin immediately. I want you all to make A's in this class."

Well, you want to do well. So you get the problem and go to work, first week of the class. You go to the library. You search for helpful books. You begin calculation.

To your surprise as the semester moves along, you note that even by mid-February only a few of your fellow classmates have begun work on the problem. Well, tough luck for them. That's their problem. They will be sorry come May. You have been at work on this problem since the second week of January.

The week before exams you are proudly putting the finishing touches on your paper. Before the class starts, you mention to some of your classmates that you have been hard at work and you find out that some of them haven't even begun. Some in the class tell you that if they stay up for the next 48 hours, maybe they might be able to almost get it finished. There are others who haven't even started work at all. Well, that is tough. That's their problem.

Then comes the last day of the semester. After all your work, you proudly hand in your work to the professor. To your shock, everyone else has their work. How did they do it? You are about to learn how.

"Professor Smith, thanks for helping me figure this out last week. Why, without your help, I would never have gotten it finished....," you overhear one to say.

"Well, here it is, Professor Smith. All done, thanks to your kind assistance yesterday," says another.

"Thanks for coming by the dorm last night," says another.

You are aghast. No wonder they finished their work. While you were hard at work, figuring it out on your own, this professor has been all over the campus spoon-feeding it to everybody in the class, everybody but you, that is.

When you tell Professor Smith what you think of it, she says, "Why do you begrudge my generosity? Did I not say that the goal of the class was to get people to finish the problem, to make an A. You were able to finish it on your own. Fine. The others needed a little special attention. You got an A. They got an A. What's wrong with that? Am I not doing you right?"

Somehow, it just doesn't feel right. You look at your A. It was what you wanted out of the class. But now that everyone else also has an A, what with Professor Smith's midnight forays into the dorm and everything, it doesn't feel like an A.

Isn't it odd how the professor's graciousness doesn't quite feel like graciousness?

I don't think we'll get at the scandal of this story by focusing on Matthew's "the first shall be last and the last shall be first." That acts as if the scandal of the story of the workers in the vineyard is that everybody despite when each arrived, got a denarius, or as if the scandal of the story of the professor is that everybody got an A.

That's not really what gets us about this story. After all, a denarius a day is not all that great a wage to begin with. While nobody knows the precise value of a denarius, we do know that it took about a denarius a day to support a laborer and his family at the level of bare subsistence. A denarius a day is not that generous. It's not as if this employer is throwing around money.

The story has little to say about wages anyway. It is mainly concerned with the comings and goings of the owner of the vineyard. He goes out in the early morning and hires workers for the day and that ought to be it. But to our surprise, barely three hours later, he's back again. And then again at noon. And then again and again. We wonder why that owner of the vineyard was so bound, bent, and determined to hire everybody off the streets whom he could lay his hands on. Were his grapes already overripe? Did he know it was going to rain and the harvest might be ruined? Did he have a soft spot in his heart for the unemployed?

We don't know. The story doesn't say. All that it says, and with great detail, is that this particular master expended a great deal of gasoline going back and forth from his vineyard to town, picking up anybody off the street who would consent to go work for "what's right."

Well, what's right? For us, justice is a matter of giving people what they are worth. Let's see, you worked longer so you should get more. You stayed in school all the way through your BA, your MA and your Ph.D. You should get more. You have a higher IQ so it's only right that you should get more. That's justice for us.

But in the story, justice is determined, not by "what is right" (after all, the owner did pay what he agreed to pay, he just paid it to everyone). No, it is the owner's repeated, relentless desire for laborers, for workers in the vineyard. It isn't that a denarius is all that generous. The generosity is in the owner's repeated, unrelenting call to come into his vineyard. The generosity is not in what is earned, but in the invitation. He just wouldn't quit going back and forth into town. He just wouldn't stop calling, wouldn't stop hiring, inviting, seeking, offering.

Here is a kingdom which is not structured on justice, what we deserve, what's fair, what's earned. We may structure our kingdoms that way, or at least we attempt to do so. But that's the way we do business. The way God does business is another matter. Our statue of "Justice" over the courthouse door is a blindfolded woman with scales. Blind, dispassionate, impartiality and balanced objectivity. That's what we call right. But God's right is not our right. Persistent, intrusive invitation, not dispassionate justice, is the way God's kingdom is structured.

The grace in this story is in the owner's frequent forays into town, not in the denarius. The owner is the one who won't be happy until everyone is at work in the vineyard, the professor who won't sleep well at night until everyone in the class gets an A, the giver of a banquet who won't be happy until everyone moves to the music.

If all we want is justice from God, that's all we'll get. Take your denarius and go, says the master. Big deal.

But, through the master's resourceful, intrusive, never-ceasing mercy, we may hope for more than justice, more than just what's right. We may get the Master, constantly, persistently, relentlessly pursuing us and everyone else until the midnight hour, unhappy until everyone is there.

It's a story (you can think of others) about a God who refused to leave us alone, refused to leave things with just what's right, a God who came out and pursued us, sought us, found us, sometimes early, sometimes late. Your relationship to God is based not on "what you deserve," (who would want that from God?) but on the invitation.

The good news is, he's looking for you. Eleventh-hour workers are as sought by him as those who have been here all day. And, if you have been here since early morning, the bad news in the good news is that the Master invites, welcomes everyone, even those whom we have despised, thinking that we deserve more than they. Our worth in this vineyard is determined, not by what's right, justice, but by the invitation, who's called. Our Shepherd has yet other sheep to be invited into this fold. And our hope is that this God who has pursued us so in life, shall not stop pursuing us even in death, so that whether in life, in death, come early, come late, we are invited. The invitation is based, not on how long or hard we've worked, but on the mercy, the pursuing, never-ending mercy. The good news is, he's out looking for you.

Last week this young woman came by my office at the chapel to tell me that in her freshman year she decided that God was a fiction she had no need of. She had been living her life quite well without God but she said that lately she had been having trouble sleeping at night. It was like there was this voice somewhere down deep. She wondered about that. Well, I told her, at the end of our conversation, "You go right ahead up to Wall Street and you be an investment banker, but, dear, while you are on the way, you keep looking over your shoulder because I believe you are being invited."

Lydia Talbot: Will, the good news, bad news, conveyed in your message earlier in the program that the last shall be first, the first shall be last and that God's grace is the same for everyone, really sticks in the throats of most people. It probably does in my daughter who is just finishing final exams in college. Where do you see those vineyards in the world today? Who are the last? Who are the first?

Will Willimon: I think you picked up that it's odd how the good news of God's gracious love (that sounds so good for those of us who have been in the vineyard, the church, all our lives)....well, it sort of sticks in our craw that God is still busy, looking and bringing in people who surprise us.

In my former church, we had an evangelism program that lasted over a few months. We wanted to go out and get new members. We visited some of the apartment buildings we had never been in.

We went out into some of the neighborhoods near our church that none of us lived in and to our surprise, it worked.

We really did attract some people to our church but as somebody said, we attracted the wrong people. We didn't attract people like us; we attracted the ones that God was speaking to. It took some adjustment. I think in the end we were a much better church for it because we really once again experienced that probing, inclusive love of God.

Talbot: It says something about the real cost of discipleship! I suspect you are not surprised that some observers of religious thought in American life call you an iconoclast, controversial. You go against the prevailing winds. What do you suppose they mean by that?

Willimon: I think I am hanging out with a rough crowd! I am with a bunch of nineteen-year-olds and some of their adolescence keeps rubbing off on me. In fact, I think the longer I am with them at a university, the more I seem to be reverting, but then Jesus said that the only way you can get in the kingdom of God is to turn and become a little child. I think I am turning and becoming at least like a seventeen-year-old, but given enough time, I may get to the kingdom, too.

I am grateful to be in the college setting where people question and probe. I am enjoying being a part of that. I think Jesus was busy questioning and probing us.

Talbot: In one of your editorials on prayer in public, you say that you positively refuse to pray at the opening of sporting events. Why is that?

Willimon: Well, I said that prayer at a Duke basketball game is a very personal and private experience for me. I think prayer for Christians is an intense kind of tough experience and a college basketball locker room is not, to me, conducive to that.

Talbot: Does that include the final game of the NCAA?

Willimon: I think the Lord's name was invoked a few times for that tournament!

Talbot: You also attacked clergy who pray in public and water down Christian symbols and language.

Willimon: In our culture, Christians ought to quit apologizing and say, "When we are asked to pray in public, here is the way we talk. Christians have a particular way of addressing God and listening to God and this is our way. We are open to listening to other people's ways."

In the article you mentioned, I was sort of criticizing the notion that when Christians go public, somehow we have to generalize or make generic our approach to God. I just don't think we can.

Talbot: In our final moment, Will, who are the religious thinkers who have influenced you most?

Willimon: Karl Barth, Will Campbell, Frederick Buechner, whom you have heard of. We live in a wonderful time for Christian thought and it is great to be a Christian during this time with such great leaders.