It's Not Fair - A Proper 20 Matthew 20: 1-16

If I’m not mistaken, all of us here have either worked for or are working for a living. With apologies for not getting your job titles correct, and to name just a few, we have a school teacher, an opera singer (or two), a social worker, and a former concierge. All of these jobs require a great deal of work, and they all can involve other people. There are teachers’ aids, other performers and understudies, other social workers who form pairs or teams, and an assistant to help deal with all the issues that come across the concierge desk.

What happens if one day you show up and go through the day, do your job, but without the presence of your partner or backup? Where could this person or persons be? And then, they wander in just around quitting time. Think how you would feel? Annoyed? To say the least. And then, to make matters worse, the boss or the conductor warmly greets this individual, expressing pleasure that they have shown up - and that’s it. There is no reprimand, no being “called on the carpet”, no penalty, just the warm welcome. It’s enough to anger everyone, except the boss and the latecomer.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

There is something quite fragile about humans; our fragility shows up when we baptize babies and ask their families to protect them from evil and for the community gathered to look after them. At baptism, each of us had people promise to look after us as we grew into the person God imagined us to be in the midst of our communities. Each of us is born with the love and hope of God implanted in our hearts; unfortunately, we are born into a fragile and broken world. This is the world of the parable: good and fragile people doing their best, wondering why some got more for doing less.

There are a lot of ways to address The Parable of the Vineyard Workers. Sometimes focus is directed to the anger and resentment of the people who showed up earlier in the day, sometimes the focus is on why the latecomers showed up at five, and at other times we hear about how grace is given freely to all simply because they showed up.

Living in community, we inevitably have experiences that allow us to identify with the workers in today’s Gospel story, even if our situations were not as serious as economic and social injustice. We may well remember parents who gave up a great deal of time and energy coaching youth sports leagues or teaching Sunday School or leading scout troops, helping children of other able parents who did not volunteer to do their fair share.

How many of us with siblings recall growing up feeling we had to do more than others in the family? How many first-borns eventually complain that their parents let younger brothers and sisters have more liberty than they had at the same age? Isn’t it true that one of the first things we learn in life is to develop a view of what seems fair and what does not? So, the parable appeals to this sense of justice, but also plays on our weakness – that we believe there is such a thing as “fair”.

One of the first things we learn from today’s Gospel reading is that Jesus didn’t care much about fairness or unfairness in the way we tend to think about it. He was not concerned about the ethics of business or labor management relations or who got to what place first. Through the story in today’s Gospel, Jesus turns our normal views upside down, shaking them out, so we can more clearly see the truth of God’s values. He challenges our religious assumptions, affirming a radical understanding of God and our relationship with God that upsets our conventional theological views and the tenets of popular psychology.

Jesus succeeds in shocking us, as He always wishes to, out of our common misunderstandings of God, by affirming a deeper insight into the character and purposes of God. He wants to shake us out of our usual self-understanding by opening us to a deeper awareness of ourselves, and by doing so, to transform us more into the image of God.

Jesus wants us to experience this parable as a way to learn what lies beyond viewing the events as simply unfair or fair, and to catch a glimpse of the utter limitless generosity of God. He wants us to understand that the worth of human beings is not measured by how much we earn in pay, or how well we perform, or by any of our usual measures – status, popularity, social achievement, productivity, wealth, physical appearance.

Jesus wants us to know that our worth as human beings is absolutely affirmed by God, who guarantees our value as human beings – not because of anything we have done or can do – but because of God’s creative and life-affirming love for us. Jesus wants us to know that in the face of our limited, worldly understanding of what is fair and what is unfair, God works with a different reality, in a different direction, and by different standards.

God gives us chances to realize our potential – each in our unique way, restricted, of course, by our own limitations, but empowered by our individual talents and gifts.

Jesus wants us to know the overwhelming reality of God’s love in this world. He especially wants us to recognize the power and presence of God in the life of each and every one of us. Jesus wants us to know that God calls us to respond positively to what He has given us. He wants us to work in His vineyard with happy hearts and willing bodies.

Jesus wants us to know that working and serving in God’s world is a great privilege and opportunity. The reward for our service is the joy of knowing that we are part of a great adventure that gives meaning to our lives. The reward for serving others is found in knowing that we are part of a Christian process of laboring to leave the world a little better than when we entered it.

In telling this parable of the laborers in the vineyard – the ones who worked different amounts for the same pay – Jesus wants us to know that God would have us concentrate on our own spiritual condition, not spending time and energy considering everybody else’s spiritual condition, and to accept our ultimate worth and our ultimate purpose without comparing our contributions to those of others.

Today’s parable may be called The Parable of the Vineyard Workers, but it is also a parable about how much we are loved. In it, Jesus turns one of our normal, worldly views upside down. In so doing, according to our faith, He actually places those values right-side up. Today’s parable teaches that life is from God’s point of view, not a matter of fairness or unfairness. It is not a matter of deserving or undeserving. It is all about love.

Through today’s parable, Jesus reminds us that whatever we have is, after all, a gift from God. Whatever we have is more than we deserve. God is overwhelmingly generous and deeply loving. He “chooses to give to the last the same as He gives to you.” And for us, it is enough that we have the profound privilege of laboring and serving in God’s vineyard.

Let us pray:

Almighty and everliving God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers, and help us to be ever open to Your love. Help us to keep our focus, not on what we want and think is fair, but on Your generousity and unconditional love. Help us to live in accordance with Your will, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.