God Isn’t Fair

Sermon

Before I read today’s scripture lesson, I want to remind you of something you already know:

Jesus is not an economist.

This is a story about the kingdom of God, not about how a person should run a business.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

(Prayer)

So again, Jesus is not an economist; when he told this parable, John Maynard Keynes would not be born for another 1,850 years and Milton Friedman, not for another 1,879 years. All the same, most of us would say that this is a terrible parable, completely unfair in its treatment of those who labor for their daily bread.

But just as Jesus is not an economist, he is a teller of stories and a teller of parables. And parables, as we might remember, aren’t what they seem. Or as biblical scholar Tom Long puts it, “Just as we get into [the parable], a trap door opens and we fall to a deeper level of mystery. We serve a teacher whose favorite way to teach is in riddles.” (https://chqdaily.com/2016/08/morning-worship-column-lazarus-a-messenger-of-god-for-those-with-eyes-to-see/)

So riddle me this, Jesus: what on earth are we supposed to gain from this parable whose main message, at least on the surface, seems to be that in the kingdom of God, nothing is fair?

I’ve had a bit more time with this parable than most of you have this week, and I’ve fallen through a few of those trapdoors as I’ve worked on the riddle, so let me share with you some of what I may have learned.

The first thing is that God isn’t fair, but God is just and God is generous.

The second is that in the kingdom of God, in the commonwealth of heaven, what matters is that everyone receives their daily bread, no more, no less.

And the third thing is that in the kingdom of God, in the commonwealth of heaven, all members of the community are valued and essential.

So let’s unpack that.

God isn’t fair. That is clear enough from this parable and from just about every teaching in the Bible. The good don’t always get what they deserve, and neither do the evil. God isn’t Santa Claus, rewarding some with AirPods and candy and others with lumps of coal. By our standards, God has no sense of who deserves what.

But… God is just, especially if we think of God’s desire that all receive what they need for the day. It goes back to the Exodus story, when God provided manna in the wilderness for those traveling Hebrew people. Each morning the manna appeared, enough for the day. It could not be hoarded or saved for a rainy day. God made sure the people had enough.

Jesus taught in that prayer that we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And so just as God provides daily bread, in this parable the landowner provides a daily wage, regardless of the hours spent working.

I know, I know. It’s not fair to those who put in twelve hours of laboring in a hot and sweaty vineyard that those who showed up an hour before closing time got the same amount. But everyone received what they needed. Jesus isn’t talking about economics; he’s talking about the commonwealth of heaven, and things are different there. Jesus is talking about the ideal of how a community lives together and cares for one another.

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber shares her understanding of what this kingdom is. She writes, “The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it’s the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above.” (Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint)

Or maybe the commonwealth of heaven is like a grove of aspen trees.

I hope some of you have read the marvelous book The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the original German. Wohlleben is a forester and shares his learnings about the communities created in forests. He starts describing a grove of aspen trees, and he writes, “A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old.” (p. 4)

“When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be.” (p. 16) This collaboration and mutual support happens in undisturbed forests. But sometimes foresters have thought that the trees would grow better and faster if they thin the trees out. If they kill or remove some trees, there would be more sunshine for each of the remaining trees, right? With fewer trees, there would be more water for each individual tree that was still alive.

But, according to the author, when foresters remove trees, they disrupt the underground communication system from root to root between the trees. The collaborative nature of life together is disrupted if not totally broken. As more trees die in the forest (or foresters kill or remove them), more trees are left to fend for themselves as the sun shines through gaps in the leaf canopy and dries up the forest floor and the wind of storms gets deeper into the forest and creates greater stress on the trunks and branches, sometimes uprooting trees.

Weaker trees, cut off from support by stronger trees, are then more vulnerable to insects, disease, and fungi. More disease takes hold in the forest, and more trees become vulnerable, even the strong trees. The strong trees, Wohlleben says, “are fit and grow better, but they aren’t particularly long-lived. This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.” (pp. 16-17) (my thanks to my friend Nanette Sawyer for her paraphrase of Wohlleben’s words)

What does this hidden life of aspen trees say about the parable and about us?

When we read or hear the parable, it might be our very human tendency to say, “Those lazy end-of-day folks, they don’t deserve their pay, or at the very least, they deserve only a fraction of what the hard-working, day-long folks receive.” And maybe in economics, that is true. But this parable is not about economics. It’s about the commonwealth of heaven.

Note that Jesus never characterizes the workers – no one is termed “industrious” or “lazy.” Some people show up for work at dawn, some at 9, some at noon or 3, and some at dusk. We have no idea what was going on in their lives that made them available for work at those different hours. What we do know is that they all worked, and they all received what they needed for that day.

So it might be for us. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during this pandemic, it’s that I can’t think too far into the future. “One day at a time” has become a very helpful motto for me. And “one day at a time” is a variation of that prayer we say, “give us this day our daily bread.”

There are a few things implied in our receiving daily bread. One is that what I need for the day won’t be what you need for the day. My daily bread may be a slice and yours may be a whole loaf. God makes sure we have what we need.

For some, it will be good news that they will finally, finally receive their daily bread. For others, there will be grief because they’ve been receiving more than daily bread for a long, long time.

But what it all comes down to is this: in the commonwealth of heaven, everyone has a place – those you or I might judge as weak or strong; those you or I might judge as industrious or lazy. God does not judge the way we do; God knows no such terms. I see someone who worked one hour and got paid a day’s wage and think, trickster. God sees that person and thinks, my beloved child.

Friends, life isn’t fair. The saints among us sometimes get stale bread and murky water, while the sinners eat, drink, and are merry till all is a blur. Sometimes the saint ends up on an icon or holds a Nobel prize. Sometimes the sinner lands in jail. That’s life here on earth.

The good news for all of us, for us sinners and saints, is that God sees us,
with all our needs and all our wants,
with our desperation for daily bread
and recognition
and a few days off from smoke or pandemic or loneliness.
God sees us and offers all of us daily grace, daily hope, and daily love.