2011-09-18–It’s Not Fair!

It’s Not Fair!

            It’s a phrase I heard just about every first class of every semester in my decade of teaching in University and Seminary settings. It’s a phrase I continue to hear at home. If you are a teacher or a parent, it’s a phrase that you’ve heard so often that you already know what it is. So, what is it? “It’s Not Fair!”

I must confess that it became very confusing during my teaching career—as the phrase was uttered, I became less and less sure if I knew what fair was. And I became more and more sure that my students and I had different definitions. If I declined to extend a due date, that wasn’t fair; but if I did, that wasn’t fair either. If class was cancelled for a snowstorm, that wasn’t fair; if a class was added to make up for the cancellation, that wasn’t fair either. See how confusing it was?

And believe me, to those of you who think the study and application of canon law is dead, you need only get into a conversation about fairness with a theology student to find out that what an earlier generation would have called “Jesuitical casuistry” is alive and very well amongst evangelical Protestant teenagers, at least. I came to call those conversations, the rigorous application of logic in the utter absence of reason. You get the picture.

Now, I don’t want to get to down on our university students. After all, they learned this fairness business from us. We have elevated equality to perhaps the highest place in our ordering of public virtues. As a society, we seem to value equality over just about everything else. We may disagree over just what equality looks like, but whatever equality is, we are sure we are for it.

Ironically enough, it’s that very commitment to equality that gets in the way of the Gospel this morning.

We have moved a fair way in our Gospel lessons. We have passed over Jesus’ teaching on divorce, his blessing of the little children, and most importantly, the story of the rich young man. It is that story that starts the cycle that culminates in this morning’s Gospel lesson. If we are going to get to grips with the parable of the landowner, we need to back up. We need to begin our reflections with the Rich Young Man.

You remember his story, right? A rich and righteous young man comes to Jesus asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus—good rabbi that he was—advises him to keep the commandments. “All these I have done from my youth, Lord,” is the young man’s reply. “You need do only one more thing. Go and sell what you have. Give it away. Come and follow me. Then you will have treasure in heaven.” The rich man, you will recall, went away sad because he had many posessions.

The disciples are baffled by this exchange. Here was a fellow who had, by all ways of measuring, made it into God’s favour. He kept the commandments. The disciples knew that he was not boasting, but simply telling the truth. How did they know? Not only had he had been materially blessed by God. He was wealthy. But also, Jesus never questioned the truth of the answer. Jesus had no trouble calling hypocrites on the carpet. He does not do so here. The disciples knew their theology from the book of Deuteronomy: “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land.” Here was a fellow enjoying the good of the land. He must be obedient. He must be on his way to the kingdom.

No wonder the disciples exclaim, “Then who can be saved?” What they are asking is, “If this man who bears the blessing of God and our Lord’s own approval, is not saved, then who is?” Jesus’ reply, “for mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

Peter, again missing the point Jesus makes about the graciousness of God, wants to turn the teaching away from God and to his own efforts. “We’ve left everything. Does that mean we’re in?” Like the young man who had everything and assumed his everything was a sign of God’s favour, Peter had nothing wanted that nothing to guarantee the same thing. And part of Jesus’ response is the parable that is our Gospel lesson for today.

It is the story of a landowner looking for day-labourers. He comes first at first light and hires a group to work for the day, agreeing to pay them the usual wage. He comes again at mid-morning and hires a few more, again promising the same wage. And so he does three more times—at midday, in the afternoon, and just before sunset. So, there are five groups of workers—some who have worked a full day, others who have worked a part of the day, and still others who have hardly worked at all.

At sunset, all the workers are called together and they are paid. Those who hardly worked received a full day’s pay. And all of a sudden, all the other workers are humming with excitement! Look at how much they got for so little effort! Surely our pay will be greater. The second group is called. They are paid the same. Now there is confusion. The third group—same pay. Confusion is giving way to frustration. The fourth group—the usual days wage. Frustration is sliding into anger. And finally, the fifth group. Those who had been there since first light. And again, only the same  day’s wage. And finally, here comes the complaint. “It’s not fair! Here we’ve been breaking our backs in the hot sun all day long and we get the same wage as those who have done no work at all!”

Why does the landowner treat the workers in this way? Is it that he wants his crop off the land quickly? Is there a storm coming? Is it late in the season? The text doesn’t say. And it doesn’t say so on purpose. The landowner has his own reason and it has nothing to do with his needs.

As I imagine the story, I hear the landowner speak in two different ways. Sometimes, I hear him gently correcting the complaint: “Now, I paid you what I promised. Are you envious because I am generous?” At others, I hear exasperation in his voice. “Look, I paid you what we agreed upon. How is that unfair? Or are you upset because I’m generous?” Either way, the parable concludes with the same point as Jesus’ earlier response to Peter with his nothing: the last shall be first and the first last. The point of the parable is that God’s grace is grounded not any need or achievement—whether ours or even God’s. It is grounded only in God’s own generosity. Grace—God’s unmerited favour—does not hinge on our definitions of fairness. God does not believe, apparently, in equality. And that’s a good thing. That’s Gospel. That’s Good News.

There are three really interesting questions that arise in my mind as we hear this Gospel this morning. The first is, why don’t some of us hear it as good news? I hope I’m clear that the “us” with which I’m identifying are those of us who are long-term disciples. Who, maybe, cannot really recall a time when we weren’t Christians. And others of us who, though you might recall a conversion experience, a time when you directly and distinctly encountered God’s saving grace, it was a long time ago. Either way, I’m talking to all of us who have been at this a while. There are temptations that we face as long-time believers. One of these is to start thinking like both the rich young man, with his wealth, and Peter with his poverty. Both thought that he had placed a stake of claim on the favour of God.

If you’re like me, you think, man, I’ve been at this Christian game a long time. In fact, I’m pretty good at it. And deep down, I may acknowledge that I’m saved by grace, but, you know it’s really deep down. Overlaying that awareness of the unmerited favour of God of years of Gospel effort and work that I think should be rewarded. Do you think so too? Here I am, God. Look at how hard I’ve worked! Why, I can’t imagine you getting along in heaven without me there! I sometimes catch myself thinking like that. Do you?

And there’s nothing like meeting a new believer to pour cold water on that way of thinking. Here is John or Jane. Someone who has been found by Christ. And accepted by Christ on the very same basis as we are. Grace. That person can sometime be for us a walking reminder of God’s generosity in a way that makes us want to say, “It’s not fair!” We don’t hear it as good news because it reminds us that none of us can corner the market on grace. At no point can we say, “I’ve earned it.”

And of course it’s not fair! And that very unfairness—to use a line from an old Sunday School song I learned when I was a child—that’s wonderful extra good news!      It’s wonderful extra good news because it is the very same basis on which we stand accepted by God in Christ. All of us together—early risers and late comers—have found our way into the kingdom of God not because we’re rich or we’re poor or because we’re saintly or we’re sinful. We’ve found our way because God came to us in Christ and said to us, come and work in my vineyard.

The second question is to those of you who are self-styled late-comers. How are those of us who are early risers and those of us who are late-comers ever going to get along? Did you notice that the parable ends before we find out how the early risers respond to the rebuke of the landowner? Jesus simply says that his kingdom is like this.  There are folks who have been in for a long time; there have been folks who have just arrived. And when the tensions arise, remember that you both are here because my heavenly father is gracious. The tensions are never going to be finally put away, at least, not until the final reckoning at the end of all our days. Before then, we are all going to have to get along.

And tensions will come. And conflict will occur. And, I pray, when they do, we will remember grace. I pray that when we have to have those difficult conversations that we have been talking about for the last couple of weeks, those conversations that begin with the hard words, “You have sinned against me. . . .” or “I must ask for your forgiveness,” I hope we will remember the grace that is freely given to all of us.

The grace that calls us together. The grace that grounds us as a community. The grace by which we stand as brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, heirs with him of the kingdom that is coming. The grace that is greater than all our sin.

The last question is to a group of people who aren’t really addressed by the parable. They’re in it, though. And I would fail in my duty as a preacher were I not to address them. What about that group of people who are neither early-rises nor late comers? What about those people who are, in the language of the parable, still standing in the marketplace waiting for work? Will you come and join us?

“Come and work in my vineyard.” Those are words for you this morning. They’re an invitation rooted into the boundless generosity of the God who has come to us in Jesus. The folks in the parable clearly don’t have it all sorted out. There’s tension in the ranks of the workers. There’s conflict. You’ll find that in church too. The church is full of hypocrisy. I think that’s a good thing—it means there’s room for all sorts of people! Grace doesn’t come only to people who are perfect. Were it to do so, none of us would be here. Grace comes to all of us because God is generous. Perhaps God is saying to you today, “Come and work in my vineyard.”

If he is, we will find a way to welcome you here. We’ll baptize you. We’ll renew your baptismal vows. We’ll start you on track to confirmation. If all of that sounds like a foreign language to you, there’s still a place for you! If you have heard the call of God to come and work, however thick we, Jesus’ followers, can sometimes be, dare not stand in your way.

We dare not because we are about to remind ourselves about the free grace of God. We are going to come to the communion rail. Here, we will bask again in the unmerited favour of God. We will be reminded of his great love for us, that, while we were far away from him, he sent his Son to find us, and to bring us home. We will be reminded that, as we eat some bread and sip some wine, we will in fact be taking the very life of Jesus into our souls, we will be united to God.

Because we’re perfect? No. Because we’ve got it all figured out? Ceratainly not. Because God is generous. And only because God is generous.