How many of you
had to learn the hard way that life just isn’t fair?
(If there’s an
easy way, I haven’t heard of it.)
After you learned that, did you hold out hope that at least God is fair, and
heaven should be?
Then how do you
feel about the story Jesus told today?
The kingdom of
heaven is like a businessman who hires day laborers – some first thing in the
morning, at an agreed-upon basic wage, and others throughout the day with a
verbal promise to pay “whatever’s right.”
He hires the last of them a bare hour before the workday ends. Then
he pays them off – latecomers first – at the full day’s wage. No bonus or acknowledgement for the early
birds or hardest workers, which – not surprisingly – leads to complaint and
protest.
Show of hands: fair? not fair?
If this story
doesn’t make you cranky, confused, or just uncomfortable in some way, then
you’re probably not listening seriously.
It certainly
made us uncomfortable when we read this story in our Vestry bible study on
Tuesday, but it got noticeably easier when we began to speculate that this is
Jesus’ assurance that God won’t treat the deathbed conversions and late
bloomers in Christianity any differently than those who’ve been dedicated
followers of Christ all their lives.
Phew.
“It’s a good
thing it’s about salvation and not money,” said Ken Pardue, “because if it’s
about money it’s not fair.”
He’s right.
Except, of
course, that it actually is about
money. And it’s not
meant to be fair.
Jesus talks
about money all the time. More than he
talks about morals, divorce, worship practices, or even sheep. And the money is
never just a metaphor. And it’s almost never
fair.
If this parable
made you uncomfortable, then your gut reaction is absolutely right:
God is not fair.
And expecting
God to be “fair” just sets us up for disappointment. The kingdom of God
Listen to it
again:
A businessman
(you know, stereotypically level-headed, focused on the bottom line) goes out
to hire day laborers. He makes a
sensible contract with some and puts them to work.
Then all day
long, he goes back out looking for people who haven’t found work. Whatever time
he finds them – morning, midday, last minute – he promises to pay them
something appropriate, and sets them to work. Then he publicly
demonstrates that he’s paying the last-minuters a full day’s wage, the same as
his contract with the early birds.
He has to know
he’s going to annoy the first workers.
He has to know
he’s going to shock everyone and that word is going to get around.
He’s not being
fair, and he’s not simply being generous.
He’s being
provocatively, aggressively, generous.
And that’s what the kingdom of heaven is
like: In-your-face generosity to those who definitely don’t earn it.
That’s
definitely what God is like. Our scripture
is filled with human wrestling with God’s benefits to the unworthy. And righteous
complaint about good things happening to “bad people” is as familiar to you and
me today as it would be to Jesus first disciples in Jerusalem under Roman occupation.
Ken Pardue and
the Vestry were right about something that matters in this story – it tells us
something about salvation that we can be glad about. It’s well worth remembering that God is
proactively generous to those of us who don’t earn our own salvation (Me, for
example. Maybe you?)
But it will also
be worth remembering that God doesn’t hesitate to demonstrate that generosity
when it’s unfair to us, too.
It’s not fair
that my adorable foster nephew and niece become such a holy, joyful,
life-giving part of our family – and then get abruptly
pulled away to live with biological parents after their foster family has spent
love, sweat, tears and years on them.
Giving loving,
healthy, grace-filled children to their biological parents who come late to
nurturing is wonderfully, aggressively, generous on God’s part, and God doesn’t hide that
provocation from the all-day laborers like my sister-in-law, when the parting
breaks her heart.
God is like
that. Heaven is like that.
Illogical,
sometimes heart-wrenching, generous acts of God that just aren’t fair.
And God is
inviting us to find a way to love it, because the reign of God on earth is
going to be full of it.
In fact, I think
that provocative generosity might even be our
job – yours and mine – in the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
Think about it.
What would it be
like to give out second chances to people who didn’t earn them?
To give from your treasure – time, labor, love, money and hard-won skill – to people who don’t especially deserve it?
To give from your treasure – time, labor, love, money and hard-won skill – to people who don’t especially deserve it?
And to do it as
visibly as you can. (Yep, that’s the
part that makes me most nervous. It
might upset those people who’ve earned or waited for or expected my attention
and skill, and that’s never fun.)
Most of us
gathered here aren’t small business owners with the opportunity to overpay our employees
on a regular basis.
But you can over-tip a restaurant server who’s
clearly having a rough day and didn’t give you their best.
You can give
time and heart, by going over to the PADS parking lot or the library on a
Tuesday or Wednesday and listening – really listening, nothing else – to the
story and life of someone who is probably buried under all the negative assumptions
made about the homeless.
You might defend
some generally disrespected group that’s done nothing for you – used-car
salesmen, prostitutes, Congress – in a conversation, and plant a more forgiving
and understanding spirit among your friends or family.
You can find
other ways to be irrationally generous. The
opportunities abound – our world is full of people who don’t seem to have
earned love or grace or daily bread.
So try it, at
least once. Really try it, take the risk of provocative generosity, and see
what it’s like to live, for a moment at least, in the kingdom of God
It will never be
fair.
But we’ll never
earn it, either.
So irrational, aggressive generosity may just be the best way to go.
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