GRACE ISN’T “FAIR”
(Preached on Sunday, September 18, 2005)
Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? -Matthew 20:15
One of the most frustrating moments for an employer is the time when the government determines that there should be a new minimum wage. Within a wink of an eye people at the minimum pay scale receive a raise in wages.
That is the law and it will be obeyed.
However, that moment in time is only the tip of the iceberg, for all the other employees who were making beyond minimum wage, whether by tenure, or different skill or job expectations, now feel they deserve more money as well. After all, it is not fair that the difference between their pay and the pay of those making minimum wage has been narrowed so quickly and seemingly arbitrarily.
Where there was contentment, there is now discontent.
Regardless that just the day before their pay scale may have been acceptable to them, it is now unacceptable.
It just doesn’t seem fair.
We certainly understand the cry of the workers in this story told by Jesus: “It’s not fair.” Fairness is something we understand from our early days as very young children.
In fact, some scientists have identified that not just human beings, but other creatures as well, seem to have an innate sense of fairness.
Some researchers tested capuchin monkeys for this trait.
They gave them the task of picking up a small granite stone and bringing it to the researcher within one minute. If they were successful, they were rewarded with the “wage” of a slice of cucumber. The scheme worked well. It was a happy lab situation as long as each monkey received the same wage. This turned sour when the researchers varied the pattern. They tried giving one monkey a grape for its reward. Indignation broke out. First the others withheld their labor, and later they even took to throwing away the cucumber and the granite stone. It had offended their sense of justice, of what was fair.
Just like the monkeys, we are often happy with our lot until we see someone in a similar situation who is better off. Then we cry foul!
We want to go on strike and demand fairness and justice.
That is why this story from Jesus is one of the more upsetting stories he told. It is because of just this kind of situation that Union grievance committees were created. The workers who have seniority should receive more and have first access to promotions. Fair is fair!
And this gospel just isn’t fair!
That is actually the point.
For this story is not about how God helps those who help themselves.
It is not a call to do good so that good might be done to us.
It is not (and I once heard Jerry Falwell preach it this way) a story of how employers ought not to be limited by governmental regulations regarding fair treatment of employees!
It’s not even a sermonette on how we ought to feel kindly toward those prodigal sons and daughters who somehow manage to finally get right with God late in the game. Jesus goes out of his way to avoid any intrusion of some moralistic point in the story.
There is no suggestion of laziness or merit on the part of any of the workers — they are just people who got to work early or late. There is no lesson for us to learn or put into practice to make the world a better place to live. Because the story is not about us, but about God. Jesus begins the story by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like...”
He is trying to teach us something about God and the way God deals with us. Which is totally by grace.
God doesn’t keep lists of who has been around the longest or who has worked the hardest or who has done the most.
God simply says, over and over again, to whomever will listen and respond, “Come to the party!”
Now, we say we understand the point of this story — that everything is by grace and jealousy is not acceptable. But it is not easy.
After all, most of us here in church today are here as the “first” workers in the vineyard.
Most of us have been in church for most of our lives, from the first, put here by loving parents who raised us in the way of the gospel.
It is only natural for the first to think that we are the most deserving.
After all, we have been here for a long time, from the first.
The truth is, though we profess to believe in grace, we actually act as though, and consequently probably deep in our hearts, really believe, that it depends on what we do.
“As far as God is concerned, if I do this, then I will get that.”
And so, most church members actually operate on the assumption that those who have been members the longest deserve the most respect.
“Look at what that family has done, how much they’ve given over the years, how loyal they’ve been. Surely that is worth something?” Or, “Look at her dedication. She’s taken every office in this church. She’s usually the first to show up for an event and then stays to clean up. Surely that is worth something?”
Every church has in its membership those who have just arrived. Just as in the parable that Jesus told, there are some in our midst who’ve been here a short time, or maybe they’ve just come in the doors for the first time today. In many churches, it may take years before anyone hands these new people the keys to the church or invites them to positions of responsibility, but according to the parable this is too late. We ought to find a way to say to our newcomers that whatever blessings God has in store for us are theirs as well.
Can you imagine me saying to a visitor next Sunday: “Oh, you’re a visitor. Go ahead and vote in our congregational meeting today”? Can you imagine hearing that I have been handing out building keys to those who have worshiped only once or twice with us?
I think the Trustees or Church Council would have a hearing about it and do so rather quickly, don’t you?
That’s also what Jesus received for this story.
A rigged hearing on trumped up charges that resulted in those he angered with this message of grace demanding, and getting, his crucifixion, death on a cross.
The world has trouble accepting the message of Jesus that our relationship with God is not a matter of what we do, or the way we figure it, but a matter of what God does and the way God figures it.
Jesus delights in, and reveals, that God will always have mercy and abundantly pardon. The God who fills your cup to over flowing.
The God who decrees that the first shall be as the last and the last shall be as the first. The God who, like a patiently watching father, sees us while a long way off, sprints to greet the prodigal son or daughter, and welcomes them home with extraordinary hospitality.
The God of abundant grace who is reflected in Christ who, when at a wedding feast, turned water into wine; wine of top quality and far more than the guest could ever drink. This is the God Jesus wants us to know about and to know personally — the God who treats us with sublime extravagance, which refuses to be calculated.
It stretches our expectations to the breaking point. It liberates us to become built into a generous way of living in community.
A way where the sublime generosity of God is shared open-handedly with one another without calculation or thought of later repayment.
It we have not understood this amazing good news of Jesus, then we have missed finding the pearl of great price. What we need is a different angle of vision, a different way of looking at things.
Duke University professor John Westerhoff tells of being called in to consult about problems encountered by government teachers at a school for Native Americans out west somewhere. One of the teachers confessed to him that she was shocked by the lack of morals among the Native American children. “They cheat constantly,” she said. “We can’t make them stop.”
When he interviewed the children and asked them why they all looked on each other’s papers during the tests, they told him, “If someone in the tribe knows, he should tell everyone who doesn’t know it. If someone in the tribe does not know, he should go ask someone who knows.” Westerhoff realized that he was in culture with a very different orientation than his own.
What we have been taught to call cheating, they called cooperation. Which cultural stance is more healthy?
A lot of it depends on how you look at it.
To be followers of Jesus and to serve God is, in part, to be reminded, on a weekly basis, that we are meant to look at the world with different standards of judgment than those that operate in the world.
It is not a matter of who is getting what “fair share.”
We are all part of a community where God is not only fair and just, but incredibly generous. That is God’s prerogative, and God’s way.
Once we get that idea into our heads, difficult though it may be, we will begin to find genuine joy in the good fortune that comes to us all — both those who have been at work through the heat of the day as well as those who only arrived in the last hour.