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
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