IT'S NOT FAIR!

A SERMON FOR SEPTUAGESESIMA SUNDAY

One of the first complaints a child learns to make is familiar to all parents.  “It’s not fair!”  And indeed, often it isn’t.  Children seem to have a very heightened sense of what is fair and what isn’t.  They usually view it from the perspective of the victim.  “I’m not being treated as well as so-and-so,” “This sibling gets favored, but you always pick on me.”  And so on.  Children, of course, have not yet been exposed to years of such unfair treatment.  They haven’t yet developed the tolerance for situations where others are favored over them; or the cynicism that comes with being habitually disrespected.  It’s refreshing sometimes to see things from the perspective of a simple child, especially when it’s a question of justice and what’s fair.  We should try it more often perhaps.

We adults, though, never quite lose that sense of unfairness, especially when we see ourselves as the victim of that unfairness.  The parable in today’s Gospel, however, reminds us that what we might see as unfair sometimes is not unfair.  Here we have a householder who is trying to manage the workers in his vineyard.  When he pays the laborer who shows up close to quitting time the same amount as those who have worked all day long, who have “borne the burden and heat of the day,” the union bosses erupt at the injustice of it all.  They’re so outraged you’d think they’re ready to call everyone out on strike.

But the householder responds to their complaints.  He says, “Here, look!  What am I doing that’s so wrong?  I told these guys I’d pay them a penny a day, and by golly I paid them a penny a day.  What’s it to you if I gave everyone a penny, even if they showed up late looking for a job?” 

Our instinctive reaction, as conservatives, probably tends to side with the hardworking folks who had spent the day in the vineyard, and not with the folks who had been “standing idle in the marketplace.”  Surely, these lazy guys aren’t entitled to the same wage as the real laborers?  But we would be wrong, and for one simple reason: they weren’t standing around idle in the marketplace because they felt entitled to being paid for nothing.  These weren’t welfare recipients who stay at home all day, demanding the government feed, clothe, house, educate and medicate them for nothing, just because they deserve it.  No.  The reason they aren’t working is because they can’t find a job.  “Why stand ye here all the day idle?”  “Because no man hath hired us.”  That’s the reason they’re in the marketplace.  They’re trying to find work, but haven’t been able to.

And so when the householder pays them the full day’s wage, he is performing a true act of charity.  These unemployed have bills to pay, children to feed, homes to maintain; and it’s not for lack of trying that they haven’t been able to find work.

So if we find ourselves sympathizing with the complainers in today’s Gospel, we should perhaps re-examine our own way of thinking.  It doesn’t mean we should believe in entitlements, that real welfare bums are entitled to the same income as those who work hard all day for a living.   It’s not that those out-of-work men who showed up at the last minute were entitled to that charity.  If the householder had shown only justice and no mercy, he would have paid them by the hour, whatever Bernie Sanders decides is the minimum wage this week, and sent them on their way.  On the other hand, if he had shown mercy and no justice, he wouldn’t have bothered hiring them at all—he would have just put them all on food stamps indefinitely, and turned them all into welfare bums.

Whether our own personal tendency is towards justice or towards mercy, we must always remember that God is infinitely just and infinitely merciful.  Whichever way we might happen to lean, we’re never going to achieve that perfect balance between these two perfect attributes of God.  And so, we are called upon by our Lord in today’s Gospel to be careful.  We mustn’t let our natural tendency towards one or the other push us either way into an unbalanced view of the world.  If we are overly sentimental, the goody-two-shoe type, maybe verging towards being liberal or even progressive, we have to rein in our tendencies to give everybody everything they want.  Because it simply isn’t fair to give taxpayer money to people who stay in bed all day, watching Jerry Springer while they drink their beer and munch on their cheez-its.  Meanwhile, though, and this is where it’s more tempting for us conservatives, we mustn’t withhold financial help to those who are in genuine need.  And that might need a little re-thinking on our part…

I’ll give you a for-instance.  Should illegal immigrants receive free healthcare?  Now that’s a huge question, and it has an equally complex answer that we haven’t time for here.  Suffice it to say that while they’re certainly not entitled to it, and while our justice-leaning tendency would be inclined to deny it to them,  mercy must also be considered.  If an illegal immigrant’s child is involved in a traffic accident, for example, are we going to let that child just die in the street?  Of course not, nobody would advocate such a cold-hearted thing.  But think it through: there must be some line somewhere beyond which we should not go, but up to which we must go.  Find that line, and you find the will of God.

“Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” asks the householder.  When God shows mercy on a sinner, who are we to complain because maybe we were not so favored?  Remember the brother of the Prodigal Son—he complained bitterly to his father, who had killed the fatted cow when the prodigal returned home, something he had never done for the “good son” who had stayed home all those years.  The father explained his actions to the son, just as the householder in today’s Gospel explained his payroll system to the workers.  Neither of them needed to make this explanation, and neither does God need to explain his justice and his mercy to us.  And yet he has explained it.  He explains it through the father of the Prodigal Son, and he explains it through today’s householder.  It’s up to us to learn the lesson.

The last shall be first, and the first last.  One other way of thinking about that profound little phrase, is that the just shall be merciful, and the merciful just.  Don’t limit yourself to being only one or the other.  Whatever your natural inclination, make sure you push yourselves a little now and again in the opposite direction.  Otherwise, when many are called and few chosen, and you find yourselves on the unchosen list, don’t complain that “It’s not fair!” few chosen, and you find yourselves on the unchosen list, don’t complain that “It’s not fair!”