God Is Not Fair!

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been quoted as saying that there are too many lawyers in the United States.  When asked why, he responded, “Lawyers don’t dig ditches or build buildings.  When a society requires such a large number of its best minds to conduct the unproductive enterprise of the law, something is wrong with the legal system.”   That comment made me pause.  Is there something wrong with our legal system… or is there something wrong with us?    We are the ones, after all, who support these lawyers and the work that they do.  We are the ones who run crying to the courthouse each time we feel that we have been treated unfairly.  Despite the pithy quote, “Life is not fair,” we still expect life to treat us fairly… and we seek whatever recourse we can find whenever we believe that life has not treated us fairly.   Are we any different than the laborers in the vineyard?

I love this story… for all that it reveals about God… and yet, I will freely admit that it is one of the most irritating stories in the entire Bible!  This rich guy owns a vineyard and he needs some day labor to do some routine work in that vineyard.  We don’t know what kind of work… and apparently, it is not important to the story.  We have figured out that it is unskilled labor, because this guy will hire just about anybody to do the job, without even asking for a resume.  He wants to get the job done quickly, so he gets out there at the crack of dawn to look for some people to do the work.

I don’t know how it worked in Ancient Palestine, but when I lived in Austin, anyone who wanted work gathered on the corner of Caesar Chavez and Interstate Highway 35, waiting for those who needed work done to pick them up and take them to a worksite for the day.  Employers would drive by in their pickup trucks, roll down their windows, and verbally recruit workers to work for the day.  Workers would climb into the back of the employer’s truck and go to work.  At the end of the day… or the end of the job… the employer would pay the workers in cash and bring them back to the pickup point.  It was a great system… when it worked… but it was riddled with abuse… but that’s another story for another day.   In this parable, it sounds like the system worked in much the same way, except that the workers had to find their own way to the vineyard.

So, let’s say that I am the owner of the vineyard and that y’all are prospective workers.  I pull my truck up next to you and roll down my window, tell you about the work in my vineyard and we agree on the pay that you will receive for the work that you do.  In a heartbeat, you go from unemployed to employed… and at a wage that you, yourself, have negotiated.  Energized and content, you head off to work.

There is a lot of work that must be done, so a couple of hours later, I head out to find some more workers.  They show up for work and work hard in the vineyard for hours.  I still need workers so I head out again and recruit some more.  They get there after lunch and work hard all afternoon.  In mid-afternoon, I find more workers who show up to work that day as well.  They put in several hours of hard work that day.  In late afternoon, I find a couple more workers who manage to squeeze in an hour of work before the sun goes down and it is too dark to continue. 

Hot… sweaty… and tired, y’all show up to get paid.  You happen to be in line behind one of the guys who got there at noon and he is behind one of the guys that got there an hour ago.  You watch as my assistant pays the guy that got there an hour ago two hundred and forty dollars.  Holy Cow!  That’s great!  Two hundred and forty dollars for one hour’s work?  Wow!   Then, the guy in front of you gets paid the same two hundred and forty bucks.  Well, that’s not quite as good, but it is still a nice chunk of change for six hours of work.  Then, it’s your turn.  You get paid the same two hundred and forty dollars… exactly what I told you I would pay you for a day’s work.  Wait a minute!!  That’s only twenty bucks an hour!  But isn’t two hundred and forty dollars what I agreed to pay you before you began work?  Well, yeah… but this other guy got two hundred and forty dollars and he’s only been here half the day… and that other guy got two hundred and forty bucks and he only worked for an hour.  So, what’s the problem?   Well, it’s not fair!  You worked more hours, you claim, and you worked during the heat of the day!  You should get more than they got.  But you received the payment that we agreed upon, I say.  But… but… I can’t do that, you protest.  It’s not right!  It’s just flat un-American!  It’s not that you are envious… you claim… but it’s bad business practice to pay different wages for the same work.  I’ll go bankrupt doing that, you claim.  But can’t I do what I want to do with my own money, I ask?

We are not talking about American business practices here. And we are not talking about sound financial procedures.  We are talking about the generosity of a God who meets each of us where we are… and deals with our needs on a case-by-case basis… not an impartial and impersonal machine that dispenses funds by a preset formula.  What we think about this story and God’s generosity depends upon where we stand in this story.  The workers who arrived at dawn and worked all day grumble that they were not paid more… but the ones who arrived late in the day are overwhelmed by the owner’s generosity.  Look at it this way for a different perspective:  We all have bills to pay… for rent… utilities… food… clothing… medicine… and so on.  At the end of the day… in this parable… we have all received enough to pay those bills… even if some of us worked longer than others for that money.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like that.  We all arrive at the gate owing the same debt… for we all have sinned and fallen short of the Kingdom of Heaven.  But God has paid the debt for us and we are all welcomed into the Kingdom.  For some, the debt may be greater than for others… and for those with a large debt, God’s generosity is overwhelming.  But the bottom line is simply this: We have all received the full measure of God’s grace… whether the debt is large or small… and we are all welcomed into God’s presence.

At the end of the day, should any of us be jealous of another because his or her sins were “worse” than ours… yet we all received the same grace?  At the end of the day, should any one of us be angry with another because we were in church every Sunday and they came whenever they wanted to come?   Should we be frustrated because we took more casseroles to the sick than they did… or spent more time clearing brush on a church work day than they did… or spent more time in daily devotions… or studying our Bibles… than they did?  No.  We should rejoice for each other that… at the end of the day… we all have the privilege of standing in God’s presence… for it was not the work that we did, but the grace of God that brought us to that place.   It was not our hard work that paid the price… it was the blood of Jesus that erased the debt.

I find that how we feel about this story depends not only upon where we stand in the story… but where our loved ones stand as well.  If our child is the prodigal son, we long for the father’s forgiveness for that child.  If our husband or wife is the one who has no relationship with God, we want the vineyard’s hours to be lengthened so that our loved one has the opportunity to get to the gate before it closes at the end of the day.  And, if the one we love slips in just before closing, it’s OK if the master wants to pay him or her the same daily wage that we have received.  It’s not us or those we love that we want the master to discriminate against… it’s all those “other people”… the ones that are usually faceless and nameless… the “unwashed hordes” of sinners in this world… unless we can think of a particular person who is especially “undeserving”… or at least less deserving than our child… our husband… our wife… our friend… the one we love.

What I have learned about those “unwashed hordes”… the faceless and nameless people whose sins should not be forgiven… is this: my attitude about them and the grace they deserve changes after I have met them and heard their story.  You see, I have always been a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-like-I-did” kind of a person… willing to counsel folks to gain access to resources they need to better themselves or their situation… and eager to encourage them to do their best.  Then, I learn of the “Hurricane Katrina’s” that hit them, but missed me… or the “Mommy Dearest” in their lives that I never had in mine… or the “Forest Gump” they cared for that I never had responsibility for… or the “War of the Roses” that decimated their lives… and I suddenly realize that those “unwashed hordes” are ordinary people… like you and me… who have the same hopes and dreams that we do… who struggle against the unexpected storms of life that blow them off-course as we do… who long for nothing more than a warm bed to sleep in at night… a safe harbor from the storms of life… loving arms to hold them and a voice that whispers words of love… and grace… a God who is generous beyond measure. 

OK.  It took them longer to get to the vineyard to begin work.  Does it really matter?  Does it matter who is first… or last… or somewhere in the middle?  Or does it just matter than we all finished the race… even if, for some, the finish line had to be moved to include them?   What would happen if, one year, all fifty of the young women who competed in the “Miss America” pageant became “Miss America”?   Would the world come to an end?  Wouldn’t we have forty-nine more ambassadors of goodwill that year than we normally have?  Couldn’t they accomplish fifty times as much as the one individual who is normally crowned?  How amazing would that be?

We are all workers in God’s vineyard.  Some of us arrived early.  Some of us arrived later.  Some have still not made it to the vineyard… but we can help them get there.  Isn’t that the point of “Bring-a-Friend-to-Church” Sunday next week?  God’s grace is freely given to all… not to be compared to grace that others have received… not to be horded for ourselves… but that we all might rejoice in God’s overwhelming generosity and God’s amazing grace!    For that is what God’s grace is. It’s amazing!  Not fair… but simply amazing!    Amen.

Matthew 20:1-16