That's not fair!

How many times have you heard someone say, “That’s not fair!” It could have been a kid who didn’t get as much dessert as a sibling, or another who felt the punishment didn’t match the crime.

But it’s not just children that complain about things not being fair. Adults are adept at comparing their lives with others and complaining about life not being fair. Someone is passed over for promotion and complains the boss is not fair. Someone else wants to marry, attends the weddings of many friends, but never finds the right one, and laments that life is not fair. I think we have the idea that life should be fair, and that God should manage things so that we are treated fair.

We want what’s fair when it seems right to us, but really fair is what is right to God.

What is fair? Webster lists 17 definitions for fair. Among them, open, frank, honest, equal, just, equitable.”

But what if the situation calls for something different? What if fair is not really fair? Who is to decide what is fair?

In today’s Scripture text Jesus turned our idea of fair on its head. After an exchange with the “rich young ruler” Jesus told his disciples, “Many who are first will be last. And many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30 CEB).

He then explained with a story about a man who early one morning went to hire laborers to work in his vineyard. He went to the place at the market where day laborers gather in the morning hoping to get a job for the day. These were men at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum, with no steady employment, hoping for work for the day. They lived a day at a time in a miserable hand-to-mouth existence.

The guy hired a few for the day, promising the standard minimum wage for day laborers. For frame of reference let’s say that amounts to about $50. He would settle with them at the end of the day. When he left the market others were still standing there, probably thinking “that’s not fair.”

Our vineyard owner returned to the market several times that day. At nine, at noon, at three, and at five he found men standing there who had not found work for the day. Each time he sent a few into the vineyard, promising to pay them what was “fair.”

At quitting time, around six, he ordered the men paid “the wage,” the $50 minimum payment for day laborers. He specifically directed that the last ones hired should be paid first. They were each paid the standard $50. Then those hired at three, at noon, and at nine. The men who had worked a full day saw all this before they too were paid the promised $50.

“That’s not fair!” they grumble. They thought they should get more because they had worked all day.

“What’s the problem,” the boss asked. “Didn’t I pay you what I promised? Are you resentful because I am generous?”

We want what is fair when it benefits us, but fair is what seems right to God.

Life is not fair. Things happen that favor one and disadvantage another. Some are wealthy, others impoverished. Some get all the breaks, others never get a break. Some enjoy wonderful health, others are chronically ill. Some succeed and live their dreams, others languish in a debilitating nightmare. It’s not fair.

But the emphasis in this story is on the master who returned repeatedly to the market to find more laborers. He didn’t send the overseer as was customary, he went himself. And each time he hired others in a move of compassion for those poor guys caught in the endless grind of hopelessness, still hoping to earn a little money to take home that evening.

Our boss paid everyone a day’s wage because he thought it was fair that the poor guys who had no other job would have something to take home that night.

What is fair in the kingdom is not necessarily our idea of what is fair. We want what is fair when it benefits us, but fair is what seems right to God.

Our embassy of the kingdom, called the church, is here to extend God’s brand of fair to the world around us. To those caught in endless despair and hopelessness we are called to bring the mercy and grace of God to them, to embody the compassionate Jesus, to return to the marketplace again and again to find those who need God.

In other words, we don’t exist for ourselves. We are not here to pat ourselves on the back, bless ourselves, or entertain ourselves. We are here to head to the marketplace to find the hopeless and offer them the hope only Jesus Christ can bring. Because in the kingdom the last are first, and the first are last.

That’s fair.

Matthew 20:1-16 (Proper 20 A)