THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
September 21, 2008
Napa Valley Lutheran Church, Napa, CA "NO FAIR!"
David Hamilton, pastor Matthew 20:1-16
One day it happened that a pastor and a politician both died. They arrived at the Pearly Gates at the same time, and the pastor motioned for the politician to go on in ahead of him. As the politician walked through the gates, he was greeted with fireworks and a marching band. Angels rose to their feet, applauding. Cherubs threw confetti. A limousine pulled up to meet him, and a tuxedoed driver opened the door for him with a flourish. Off they went, with people cheering at the curb all along the way. The pastor couldn’t help but begin to picture the welcome that must be waiting for him, a Man of God. But when he stepped through the Pearly Gates, St. Peter said to him, “Oh, hi, pastor - come on in. Make yourself at home.” And that was it. No band. No crowds. No limo. “Hey!” the pastor complained to St. Peter, “This isn’t fair. I saw the way you treated that last guy. And this is the kind of welcome I get?” “Well” St. Peter said, “You have to see it from our point of view. We’ve got neighborhoods full of pastors. But this is the first politician we’ve seen up here in a hundred years!”
Most people have a fairly well-developed sense of what is fair and what is not fair. And if you were to describe to them a situation, like this morning's parable describes, in which one person worked hard at a job all day long, and another person worked at the same job for only an hour, and then both were paid exactly the same amount, most people would judge that as a gross injustice. You know that there isn't a labor union in the land that would stand for that kind of treatment of its members. Picket lines would be established. Press conferences would be called. Lawsuits would be filed. And, of course, the charge made wouldn't be that the latecomers were overpaid; no one would be arguing that the guy who only worked the one hour should be paid less than he was. Do you think the ones who worked all day would be happy now if, at the end of the story, the owner of the vineyard simply went and took away some of what he had given the last workers hired? Maybe we'd say at least then it was fair; though there might still be something of a bad taste left over, knowing now what the boss' attitude toward his workers really is. He wanted to treat them all alike! Of course, in the parable, the boss shows no inclination of backing down at all - not to take back part of what he paid, or to pay anyone any more than he had promised. "I've done nothing wrong," he tells the unhappy workers. "I was fair with you, and generous with the others, and what right do you have to complain about either of those actions?"
Well, sure, if you put it that way, it sounds reasonable. But that doesn't change the fact that the two sets of workers were treated differently. "Aha!" the owner of the vineyard says, "That's exactly the point. I didn't treat my workers differently. I treated them all the same!" The one disgruntled worker who speaks up at the end of the story puts his finger right on the heart of the problem when he says, "These last ones worked only one hour, and yet you have made them equal to us!" Equal! Of all the nerve. When any fool could plainly see that there was nothing equal about them at all, the vineyard owner goes right ahead and makes them equal anyway.
Doesn't he realize the danger in that? Doesn't he realize that civilization as we know it would come crashing down if people who clearly were not equal began to be treated as though they were equal? And yet the owner shrugs off all complaints with a truth that no one could argue with: "Can't I do what I want to do with the things that belong to me?"
But what would it be like if this were the way the world worked? What if everyone were treated equally, despite whatever reasons could be given for making distinctions? What if everyone had equal access to health care, despite their employment or income? What if everyone got equal respect, despite whatever differences there were in age, or race, or gender? What if everyone had equal access to education? Equal housing? Equal retirement benefits? Well, we would say, it would never work. People would lose their motivation to work hard. Companies would lose their competitive edge. And besides that, somehow, it just wouldn't be right. Everybody equal? Well, maybe so in the Kingdom of heaven. But certainly not in any of the kingdoms of this earth.
But, you know, our answers to those questions and our gut reaction to Jesus' parable really have a lot to do with which category of worker we think we belong in. If we see ourselves as being among those who are the hard workers, the dedicated employees, then it would be hard not to be offended by the kind of unfair generosity the owner of the vineyard demonstrates. It's almost a slap in the face, isn't it, to have our hard work treated as though it really wasn't worth that much. But on the other hand, of course, if you're one of those Johnny-come-latelies, one of the ones who got there just in time to pick the last bunch of grapes or help put the tools away, dusted off your hands, looked around and said, "Whew! I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a cold one," then you're probably feeling pretty good about the whole thing. An hour's work and a full day's pay - it just doesn't get much better! But where's the justice, the fairness, in that?
Jesus says, "The last will be first, and the first will be last." And that's the way God is at work. And so we better get it out of our heads that it will be any different than that. We worship and serve a God who isn't very good at keeping score, and who doesn't seem at all inclined to take our advice about it. If God would just listen to us, we'd know exactly how much each person should get paid, exactly what kind of a heavenly reward each one would deserve. Old Joe? Well, he was quite a saint. Let's get him the marching band and the limousine. But Bernie? Aw, he'll be lucky if we even let him through the gate.
But isn’t there something fundamentally wrong about the workers making judgments about each other, rather than just leaving that up to the boss. It's like Jonah, in the first lesson, telling God that God is wrong, wrong to be concerned about those nasty old Ninevites. "Those people don't deserve your love," Jonah tells God. "They're evil; they're mean; they really deserve to be destroyed." But God says to Jonah, "Yes, and in addition to that, they're mine - and it's right for me to love them." "But that's not fair," Jonah complains. "Oh," God says, "and it's fair for me to love you, but not them?" "Of course," Jonah replies, "because I'm the good guy. I've worked hard for you, Lord. I deserve my reward."
And then it all becomes very clear. God doesn't pay on the basis of what we deserve. God gives freely on the basis of his love for all humanity. And, as it turns out, that's a very good thing, for all of us. By the grace of God, we receive not what we’ve earned, but rather blessings now, freely given, and blessings for all eternity.
Sometimes we like to go on and on about how life isn't fair; and I suppose, in a lot of ways, that's perfectly true. There is a lot about life that isn't fair. People are born with different talents and abilities; they find themselves in different situations with different opportunities. Bad things can happen unexpectedly, and the injustice of it all can hang heavy over our heads. But when we focus our attention only on those things that aren't the way we think they ought to be, when we begin to compare our circumstances with people who we think are better off, in some way or another, then we start to sound like the grumbling workers in the story, or like Jonah sitting under the bush, wishing it would all just end. We begin to wonder why God has treated “everybody else” so much better, and us so much worse. And we start to complain, that it just isn't fair.
But what if we were to put ourselves into the other pair of shoes, and look at the story from the other point of view, from the point of view of the ones who got so much more than they expected or deserved. And isn't that really our story? Think about it. The sun came up this morning, and the world is a beautiful place - and what did I do to deserve that? I woke up alive, with family and friends who love me - and is that really fair? The Word of God, and the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, are offered to me, absolutely free, by a God who calls me his beloved child - apart from any work or worth I bring. And where's the justice in that?
The answer is, there is no justice in that sense of the word; there is no fairness. There is only grace. Everything we have is so much more than we deserve. God gives it all to us, freely and in abundance, without counting hours, without keeping score. And when we finally get that through our heads, then we can become something more than just joyless slaves, grumbling along, doing our duty, waiting for payday, worrying it won't be enough, checking out what everybody else is getting. Instead, we become thankful recipients, knowing that all that we've been given is so much more than we could ever have desired or deserved.
What God gives us - it just isn't fair. No, it isn't. Thank God for that!
Amen.
