Is God a communist? That's how the priest opened his homily this Sunday, and a ripple of uncomfortable laughter went through the congregation — the kind where you're not sure if you're allowed to laugh, but you can't quite help it. He'd just read the parable of the workers in the vineyard — a landowner hires at dawn, then again at nine, noon, three, even five o'clock with an hour of daylight left, and pays every one of them the same denarius. Full day. One hour. Same pay. The dawn workers grumble, and honestly, I get it. If I worked twelve hours in the sun and watched someone stroll in for the last sixty minutes and walk away with the same envelope, something in me would flare up too. But look closer at what actually happened. The twelve-hour man got exactly what he agreed to at dawn. Nobody shortchanged him. Nothing was taken from him and handed to someone else. The only thing that happened is that somebody who had no claim on anything got a gift standing righ...