The scripture lesson is found
here.
“Life is unfair.” So said President John. Kennedy in 1962 when he called up reserve units that had already done a tour of duty in Vietnam and sent them back; he wanted to avoid sending regular army for fear of the appearance that the war was escalating. Those reservists cried “foul.”
I have pondered Kennedy’s response to those reservists my entire life. Kennedy said, “There is always inequality in life. Some soldiers are killed in war, and others never leave the country. Life is unfair.”
In more than 20 years as a pastor, every conversation with a person in distress has had a subtext, “Why has this happened to me? Is God a part of this? If so, why? If God knows, why does God allow it? Why am I alone on this?”
Is God a part of the unfairness in life? The third verse in Psalm 60 is not very comforting on this point, which is probably why Psalm 60 is never assigned for reading on Sundays. “Thou has shewed thy people hard things, O God,” reads the King James Version, “thou has made us to drink the wine of astonishment.”
The wine of astonishment! Haven’t we all drunk of it, some more than others? I can still remember my mother calling me one bright beautiful day. She had been to the doctor, and had expected the report that she now had lived cancer-free for 25 years. “He told me that the cancer is back, and through my body,” she said. “I’m stunned, no, I’m reeling like I had too much to drink.”
If the Psalmist is right, can we keep our faith in a God that intentionally pours out from a seemingly unending bottle this wine of astonishment? That would be the ultimate unfairness.
We all live with different astonishments. Here are some I’ve heard of just in the past few days: a four year old drowned when his life jacket broke; his older sister put it on him, and didn’t notice the clasp was broken. After several miscarriages, a mother is joyfully pregnant, but her husband has left her for another. Hurricane Ike has destroyed the family fishing business. A home has been lost to foreclosure; Parkinson’s diagnosed; the loneliness that drains joy has returned with another birthday.
For me, it would be too much that God knows, and stays silent, or somehow pours this bitter wine. With all the unfairness in life, that would be the ultimate unfairness that would drive my faith away.
I don’t like lose-lose theology, which runs on the logic, “if something bad happens, it is either judgment by God, or God’s strengthening you with a hardship.” When I hear, “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle,” I can only pray that God doesn’t hold my persevering strength in high regard.
Over a lifetime, we cobble together our faith in God. It’s like building a house. We use our child-like wonder in the beauty and joy of life. As adults, we search our emotions, ponder the nature of faith, suspend our intellects, or cajole them to fit around the idea of a creator at the center of such a vast universe. Through our mature lives, the house may stand, but it is sometimes listing, battered often by the tides of unfairness that ebb and flow through a lifetime.
The greatest threat to a shaky faith is the unfairness we see. We must make peace with the unfairness.
Jesus delves into unfairness—or perceived unfairness—in the parable of the Landowner and the Laborers.
A landowner goes out and hires workers at six in the morning, and tells them he’ll pay a fair day’s wage. At nine, noon and three, he finds others that labor not in any vineyard, hires them with the assurance that he’ll pay them what is right (a different assurance than was given to the early hires).
At 5 PM, the story adds a subtle detail. “He went out and found others standing around.” If I hear the tone right, the landowner sees these ne’er-do-wells as lazy, unmotivated and maybe looking for a free ride. They reply, “Because no one has hired us.”
In a response that adumbrates God’s inclusive love, a love that transforms, the landowner makes clear that there is always more room in the vineyard: “You also go to the vineyard.”
Imagine someone that plays the lottery every week and never wins. In disgust, he takes a week off. His neighbor, who is unpleasant, odiferous and loud, buys a lottery ticket for the first time that week, and wins the big jackpot.
A silly illustration, yes, but I hope it makes the point. When we have been hard at a task for a long time, we seethe when something comes easily to a newcomer. A believer who has lived a life, in Paul’s words, “worthy of the gospel” sucks it up when the notoriously evil or immoral one is welcomed fully into the life of grace and mercy with a late-in-life confession. It may seem unfair.
But, as the parable drives home, what we perceive as unfairness is fairness to God.
When the laborers are paid, the story gets clever, because in Jesus’ telling, the workers hired at the end of the day are going get paid first, and the workers hired at the beginning of the day are going to get paid last. Now, this is how Jesus gets us thinking. We are to start thinking like the workers at the end of the line, who have been working all day, who are to be paid last.
“Hey look,” we say from the end of the line, our brow sweating, our back aching, “those guys who just got hired an hour ago, they just got a day’s wage! That’s what the owner promised us, a day’s wage!”
“Well, that means he going to pay us more, I am sure of it.” And the line moves up a little, and the late afternoon crew gets paid.
“They’re getting the day’s wage; that landowner is going to pay us double, maybe triple.” And the line moves up some more, and the noontime hires get the same day wage, whetting the appetite even more of the early morning hires and then they are at the pay table.
The landowner reaches into the pay box and hands us our wage. We look at greedily, hoping it’s four more times the daily wage, and when we count it, we find it’s only a day’s wage, the same the afternoon and evening hire get paid.
In the parable, the objection of the all-day laborers is telling: “You have made the ones who worked one hour equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and scorching heat.”
Unfair? No. The response of the landowner reveals God’s abundant and inclusive love, mercy and forgiveness: “I choose to give this last the same that I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”
And then there is some chastisement for those who think that God runs a meritocracy, or gives gold stars for long service: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
God isn’t unfair, but generous. And when we assign to God responsibility for the unfairnesses of life, we blaspheme God’s generosity.