Sometimes chapter divisions obscure obvious connections. For example, many of us often struggle to make sense of the parable of the workers in the vineyard where the ones who work all day are paid the same amount as those who work only an hour (see Matthew 20.1 – 16). Sure, grace is involved, as well as the generosity of the landowner. But this time I saw a connection I had missed. Namely, without a chapter division, the story goes like this. 

But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard… When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.” (Matthew 19.30 – 20.1…8, NIV)

There it is, a clear example when the first find themselves last. First to go to work, last to be paid. Last to be hired, first to be paid. And, of course, they all get paid the same. 

There are many situations when the “first” work way harder than those who come later. For example, the first Massachusetts colonists, who came over on the Mayflower, suffered terribly and worked very hard just to survive. Once the colony was established, people who came later had it much easier. I’m reminded of the poem The Bridge Builder by Will Allen Dromgoole.

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

The Apostle Paul, the greatest bridge-builder of his day, was first to take the gospel to many places but felt last. Here’s what he said to the Corinthians:

What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. (1 Corinthians 4.7 – 13, ESV)