By Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

God is Not Fair

Matthew 20:1-16
The Passage http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Matthew+20:1-16&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

How many of you have seen the brilliant sketch that opened Saturday Night Live a week ago? It has actors portraying Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton together at a podium to speak against sexism in American politics. Hilary tries to stay on topic, but soon her resentment that one so much less experienced and qualified has come from nowhere to be so much closer to the White House takes over. (If you haven't seen it, google 'Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin' and enjoy).

Senator Clinton may well be feeling this kind of shock and resentment - and I would be surprised if she were the only one. What about Senator Biden, Barak Obama's running mate? Unless he is a man of perfect equanimity, he has to be thinking 'how did this pipsqueak with three years experience in the senate and no legislative record jump the queue in such a breathtaking fashion!?' One suspects that, should Obama win, the heat of Senator Biden's resentment will be mild compared to that of Senator McCain.

Well, nobody claims that the arena of politics is fair. Given the events of the week, nobody can claim that the arena of economics is fair either. The massive bailout of financial institutions has been stunning. As Alan Greenspan said, this kind of systemic adjustment happens perhaps once in a century. But, from a certain perspective, it is business as usual. While countless middle or lower income Americans were allowed to lose their homes and life savings in the sub-prime mortgage crisis, now Wall Street and its investors are being given a safety net. Perhaps it is the right choice. Perhaps it had to be. But let's not pretend it is fair.

And, while we may be amazed at the magnitude of last week's events, we cannot be surprised to discover unfairness in the arena of economics. That is the nature of the 'realm of mammon.' Apparently, it is also the nature of the realm of God. Certainly that is what Jesus' parable of the vineyard, which we heard earlier, seems to be saying. Jesus claims that the reign of heaven (kingdom of heaven) is like this: a landowner goes out in early morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He offers them one denarius, the usual wage for a day's labour. They work the long day in the hot sun. Workers are also hired at nine, noon, and an hour before the end of the work day. When the latter group is paid the full denarius, the workers who have sweated all day see their hopes rise - 'surely we will receive more!' But those hopes are dashed and they turn bitter, now deeply dissatisfied with earnings they were originally happy to secure. The landowner scoffs at this bitterness, asking why he should not be generous to the ones hired late. The last line of the parable is wonderfully translated in the King James Version, 'Is thine eye evil because I am good?'

What is going on here? What is Jesus trying to say? That God is fickle? That God picks favourites? We have to be careful. Jesus parables are neither object lessons nor morality plays. They are not structured like Aesop's fables. They are more akin to Buddhist koans, meant to blow the mind so that the hearer will perceive a new reality. To penetrate the parables, it helps to remember their original audience. Jesus' peasant listeners in Palestine were living lives made miserable by the dictates of the Roman Empire, which was economic as much as political or military. Already impoverished, they were taxed at backbreaking rates, causing many to lose everything. That would have been the case of the day labourers toiling at the vineyard. Having no remaining land to cultivate themselves, they were at the mercy of the wealthy who could hire whom they wanted for as long as they wanted, no strings attached. People with options do not hang around for such work.

Jesus' parables were told to assert a contrary reality, which lay hidden behind the veil of tears of the normal human condition. A reality that he believed gestated within and among his listeners. We have long called this reality the kingdom of heaven, but are turning to the alternate translation, 'the reign of heaven.' To evoke perception of this reality, Jesus employed trickery, shock, and even the giving of offence. With the parable of the vineyard, he seems to be turning to the latter technique. Given the nature of their lives, Jesus' listeners would be carrying no small amount of anger and resentment. Jesus seems to be boring into this resentment, provoking its release.

Of course, one does not have to be a peasant in first century Palestine to carry resentment. We know the taste all too well, don't we? In the late 80s and the early 90s I had a couple of friends who worked on Wall Street. They worked for one of the largest investment banks and research firms, rising to senior positions at a young age. I visited them many times, performing their marriage in the Hamptons and baptising their first child. I enjoyed their hospitality, experiencing places and pleasures that I could never have afforded on the meagre salary that my eight years of university and theological college had earned me. One of my visits came at the new year. We were at table, enjoying fine wine and food when one of my hosts related the size of his Christmas bonus. It amounted to years of my salary. My response was visceral and powerful. I can still remember the heat flushing deeply through my skin, the wine in my mouth turning instantly to bile, my eyes shifting away from my friends. But that is the wrong way to put it; they were no longer my friends. A great space had opened between us. It never closed.

Somebody once said that resenting another is like taking poison oneself and expecting the other to fall sick. But we take this poison, don't we? And not just when someone has received a boon that we believe she does not deserve. We swallow the pill of resentment when another - a lover, a parent, a colleague - fails to meet our needs. We swallow the venom when our good work goes unrecognized, when our dreams are dashed.

This poison flows in our veins much more than we care to admit, and I'll be so bold as to say that our many attempts to make the world a fairer place are spurred in no small part by it. Let's put ourselves in the place of the workers in the vineyard for a moment, shall we. What would we do in response to this situation?

I know what the workers would do if they were a collection of United Church ministers. We would form support groups that would hear and legitimise our endless complaints. We would preach prophetic sermons about it, borrowing the words of Jeremiah, and Isaiah, and Amos. Then those among us with management skills would organise us, unionise us; and we would set minimum and maximum wages. We would advocate for the systemic application of our notion of fairness and call it social justice. And so it might be.

But here's the rub. God doesn't give a whit for our notions of fairness. 'The rain falls on the just and the unjust.' If we take the parable of the vineyard seriously, we have to consider the possibility that God doesn't give a damn about our notions of social justice. There is something that trumps fairness: grace. God's wild grace that breaks into life where it will in the way that it will.

Hold too tightly to your notions of fairness and you will develop eyes too jaundiced to see grace. ''Is thine eye evil because I am good?' Demand life on your terms, and those terms will become chains.

In recent decades, a shrillness has arisen within the United Church (and other mainline churches), especially, I have noticed, among those of us in the social justice wing of the church. We try so darn hard to make life more fair, but we are not rewarded for these efforts. Why, God? Why do you pour Spirit into the evangelical churches, the Pentecostal churches, making them grow as we shrink? We resent this, God. Did you not call us to this work?

All that comes back is a question: 'Is thine eye evil because I am good?' 'Who fills most of the pews of evangelical and charismatic churches? The poor. Do you resent my pouring of Spirit upon them?' 'Is thine eye evil because I am good?' 'Have you not noticed the turning of these churches to justice seeking? Are you resentful of those who come to this work behind you, receiving my latest blessing?' 'Is thine eye evil because I am good?'

Of course it's not only the lefty justice types like me who can have jaundiced eyes. There are men bitter about the steepness of the corporate ladder in these days of employment equity. There are the traditionalists bitter because life as they know it is being washed away. There are …

God calls to all of us, saying, 'Surrender! Surrender your clinging to notions of how life should be.' Those who heed the call will find two things. They will find that life here in God's creation is verily oozing grace, bursting with it. They will also find a new self, a self free enough to feast on it.