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Shortly after hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, some news folks were discussing the situation in the Ninth Ward, the hardest-hit and poorest section of New Orleans. One of the commentators said: “It’s a bit unseemly to talk about cutting aid off to these people while the hurricane is still roaring through Mississippi. But let’s give it a try.” He joked. Ha ha. It’s hard to imagine a more pathetic and disgusting remark. The center of his comment, the thing that even allows it to be spoken, are the two words: “these people.” These people. Meaning: those people. Meaning not my people. Those people.

To be fair—though I don’t see why we should—this news guy is not alone. All people have a strong inclination to see crucial and defining differences between themselves and others. It’s not a new thing.

Today’s parable continues a series of passages in Matthew concerned with insiders and outsiders. It follows stories about looking for lost sheep, and talking difficult things through, and forgiving others. How you like this parable depends a lot on who in it seems most like you. The story is full of “those people.”

The first folks hired think that those last folks hired—I’m going to make a few assumptions here—the first group thinks the last group are lazy, good for nothings who are getting a free lunch through the misplaced and in-the-end destructive compassion of the landowner. The last folks hired—more assumptions—think that those first folks hired are privileged, greedy, whining achievers for whom the best is never enough. The middle-hired folks—we don’t know. The story is about extremes.

It is a question of who deserves what. The first workers feel that, on account of their competent skills and energetic effort, those who have more deserve more. The last workers feel that, on account of their circumstances and common humanity, those who have less deserve more. Whom does God favor?

What is fair here? Each worker—first, last, and middle—gets a denarius, which is what we might call a minimum daily wage. Enough, just barely, to live on. Is it fair that those who work all day get no more than those who work for an hour? Is it fair that people who have a hard time finding enough work to survive be paid less than what they need? You have made us all equal, complain the first group. But they don’t really mean that. They mean, you have treated us all equally. Is that unfair or fair?

It turns out that the word “fair” is a bad choice when talking about Godly things. No one said that God was fair. The word when it means balanced hardly ever even appears in the Bible. God is not fair. Instead, God is just. And God is good. And God is “of great kindness” as it says in today’s psalm. And those phrases appear about a million times in the Bible. Fairness may be about what we deserve. Justice is about God’s goodness and grace. Which is, thanks be to God, not dependent on what we deserve. As the wages of the workers were not.

You might find this comforting or not, depending. You might find it disconcerting in God. How you feel about a God who is slow to anger, full of compassion, merciful, and who relents as God does in the Jonah story—how you feel about that God depends on whether it is you or your enemy who is the potential target of that anger. Jonah certainly was unhappy with God. Sometimes I think we’d prefer to have a God who sides with us more than a God who is good.

“Are you envious because I am generous,” asks the landowner in the Gospel lesson. That’s a pretty bad translation. Envy is not the issue. The words actually say: “Is your eye evil because I am good?” It is a question of point of view, ours and God’s. Seeing different things. We see distinctions where God sees none. We see unfairness where God sees injustice. We see merit where God sees grace.

We worship a strange God. Or one could say we are strange. We sometimes find God to be hard to get along with. God and we don’t always come to the same conclusions about what should be done. God is slow to anger when we think God should be hot with anger. God is forbearing when we are vengeful. God says love ones’ enemies, turn the other cheek, don’t charge interest, give without complaint, forgive without conditions. Be generous to the undeserving. As Martin Luther wrote, in the eyes of the world God likes to do what is foolish and useless. That’s our God he is talking about.

Things that matter a lot to us evidently don’t matter at all to God. That’s what grace is. Grace means “it doesn’t matter.” It doesn’t matter how you do, or how well you do it, or whether you live up to your potential, whether you are up and coming or a has-been. It doesn’t matter whether you’re picked first or last. The Kingdom of Heaven is like that.

We read these stories to ourselves over and over again. We do that partly because we need a common basis to discuss how the world might be, a common language. In the U.S. civil rights movement James Baldwin referred to the story of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt thousands of years ago to describe what was going on in the U.S. in the fifties and sixties: Leaders, like the Pharaoh, frightened and obstinate; the taste of freedom that the Israelites felt mixed with apprehension about an unknown future. Everybody who knew the Bible stories knew what he was talking about.

But we tell these stories mostly because we want to be reminded again and again about what our strange God is like. Because it is easy, in our own preoccupations, to forget. To think God is like us. We want to be reminded that what seems ordinary, rational, what seems to be common sense, does not always equal what God is or wants or hopes for.

The story of the landowner and the workers seems both strange and attractive. Strange because we are people of the world. Attractive, because we are people of God. God is like in that story, good is like in that story, justice is like in that story.

In the Gospels, Jesus never tells us: To get the Kingdom of Heaven, do such and such. He only tells us: The Kingdom of Heaven is like this. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, Jesus tells us, the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, like a treasure, like a pearl, like a net. The Kingdom of Heaven is like in this story.

The Kingdom of Heaven is God’s dream for us. Where none of us is outside. There is no outside at all. No one is These people, no one is Those people. All are God’s people.