Sunday 20 September 2020

It's not fair! Trinity 15

Audio version here

 Jonah 3.10-4.11, Psalm 145.1-8, Matthew 20.1-6

 

“It’s not fair!” I wonder how often we’ve heard, or said, those words. Children are especially keen on fairness, in my experience, and will squabble over almost anything… “He’s got a bigger slice of cake than me. She always gets to press the button at the zebra crossing…” But adults can be just as sensitive and just as unreasonable, especially if we’re feeling a bit insecure for some reason.

 

I’ve noticed the language of “It’s not fair” quite a bit during this coronavirus. “Why is someone else’s favourite activity permitted but mine isn’t?” “Why are we in lockdown, while the people in the next postcode aren’t” “Why a rule of six, not seven, or eight, or some other random number which suits my family situation better?” In our heads we may understand that it’s not personal, these are public health decisions, but it doesn’t feel like that in our hearts. We feel like we’re being punished, or that someone’s making a value judgement about us, that we don’t matter as much as the next person. It’s not fair!

 

Of course, there are legitimate questions to be asked about government decisions. Balancing all the risks is a very imprecise art, but if we start feeling personally targeted, crying out “it’s not fair” in anxious anger, it’s usually a sign that at least some of the problem is within us, not the fault of those we’re angry with.

 

It’s the same cry we hear in today’s Gospel story, a story that’s puzzled and infuriated people ever since Jesus told it.  We can surely sympathise with those workers in the vineyard who’d slaved all day in the heat of the sun, only to find that the people who’d worked for just an hour got paid the same as they did. “It’s not fair” cry the first set of workers. Of course they do! And yet, Jesus’ story challenges us to look at the situation from a radically different angle. Those who’ve worked all day aren’t getting any less than they were promised. Logically it shouldn’t be any skin off their noses that the other workers get the same. But it doesn’t feel like that. They take this as a slight on them, a devaluing not only of their labours, but of themselves. It’s no accident that we use words that come from the world of finance, like worth and value, to measure our personal standing in the pecking order of the world. We talk about our sense of “self-worth”. We “value” those who are dear to us. They are “treasured” – like gold and silver and precious jewels. The language of money is often used as shorthand for how much people matter.

 

This parable forces us to confront that assumption. What would the world be like, it asks, if we didn’t think like this?

 

Ironically the key to understanding Jesus’ story lies in the coin with which each of these workers is paid. In the original Greek, and in many translations since, we are told its value. It is a denarius. The version we heard today deliberately translates it in a looser, rather more descriptive way, though. Instead we are told that it’s “the usual daily wage”. A denarius was what an ordinary person would expect to be paid for a day’s work- the living wage, if you like. It was enough to keep a person going for the day. That’s the point the story is making. This landowner isn’t interested in creating a hierarchy of worth among his workers. All he wants to make sure is that each has enough for their needs at the end of the day, so they can survive till the next day. Those who weren’t hired till the end of the day still need to eat. Paying them any less than the living wage would mean they went hungry and ultimately, that’s a life or death matter.

 

This landowner’s pay policy may seem controversial, but it’s consistent with the message of the rest of the Bible. When the Israelites wandered in the desert after they’d escaped from slavery in Egypt, God fed them with manna, which appeared miraculously each morning. Everyone was told to gather enough for that day, but no more than that. If they did try to gather more, they found that what they’d hoarded was full of worms the next morning, except on the eve of the Sabbath, when they could gather twice as much, so they wouldn’t have to work on the day of rest. Jewish law insisted that farmers shouldn’t reap their fields right up to the edges, so that the landless poor could glean enough for their needs. It might not have seemed fair to the farmers concerned, but it allowed those without land to survive. It declared them to be of “worth to their society, ” – there’s that money word again – even though they might have seemed “worthless” to many.

 

Jesus’ parable isn’t just about physical survival and material provisions, of course – though it is about those things, and we shouldn’t spiritualise them away. But it’s also about the time and energy he expended – there’s another financial word – on people who many thought didn’t deserve his attention; Gentiles, the poor, women, the sick and outcast. He treated them as people of value to God, part of God’s family, called to his work and its rewards.  He invested in them – more money language - because their views, their lives, counted just as much as anyone else’s in the divine economy, even if they seemed like Johnny-come-latelies who didn’t know the niceties of religious law or one end of the Bible from the other. Jesus offered everyone the love of God, because everyone needed that love. It is daily bread that keeps our spirits alive.  And because God’s love is infinite, lavishing it on one person doesn’t mean there will ever be any less for anyone else. 

 

Knowing that we are infinitely valued, loved with a love that can’t run out, sets us free to live the lives God means us to, free from the anxiety that we might be abandoned, forgotten, without the support we need to see us through the trials of life. It gives us the security we need – or salvation if you want to give it it’s theological name – so that we don’t need to grasp or hoard, but can live with generosity to others. God’s love isn’t rationed, because it doesn’t need to be. We don’t need to deny it to others because God can love other people without loving us any less.  That’s the lesson Jonah struggled to take in, as he watched God forgive his enemies, the hated Ninevites, who’d oppressed and enslaved his people. That’s why he ran away from his calling at first, only to end up thrown overboard and swallowed by a big fish. Now God has forgiven the Ninevites, he’s consumed with anger. “It’s not fair” that they are loved by God, he howls. It takes a rather ridiculous episode with a plant that grows up only to shrivel again, to show him his own pettiness.

 

It’s not fair! We cry, and no, life often isn’t. We don’t always get what we deserve – of good or ill. But God’s love for us is never less than infinite, and he can afford to be infinitely generous, not only to us, but to others too. If we can learn to trust that, we might not need to cling to our status, what we think of as our entitlements. If we can learn to trust that, we might be able to allow  others to have and to enjoy what they need too, food, shelter, a place in the world, and the eternal the love and security that is God’s gift to them. Amen

No comments:

Post a Comment