Showing Up and Making Yourself Available

Yesterday at church we had the reading of the parable of the workers in the field.  The owner of the vineyards hires a group to work “early in the morning,” then hires other groups at 9:00, noon, 3:00, and 5:00.  When the day is done, he pays them all a full day’s wages.  This is a complex parable with many facets that can be endlessly interpreted.  Did those who worked all day got screwed?  Were those who only worked an hour or two unjustly enriched?  (Isn’t that a funny term – “unjustly enriched?”  I suspect it exclusively applies to “the other guy” and never to the one who uses it.)  Why did the owner pay the short-timer’s first and make the day-long laborers wait to get their pay last?  The questions are endless.  Perhaps I just didn’t want to do the heavy lifting yesterday, but it occurred to me that the takeaway was rather simple.  Who got what aside, the certainty in the story is that you don’t get anything unless you show up and make yourself available.  Here, the only folks who lost out were those who didn’t.