It’s not fair! I’ve said it. My kids have said it. We’ve all said it at one time or another. We all seem to have an innate feeling for what is and what isn’t fair. Researchers teach that it goes deeper then that. Fairness isn’t just a human trait. We can find it in the animals as well. Check out the attached video about equal pay for monkeys. Fairness plays large in yesterday’s Gospel reading as well. Matthew 20:1-16 The parable of the landowner who hires workers at different times during the day. The workers who were hired early in the day were promised the usual day’s wage. Workers who were hired later were told that they would be paid “whatever was right”. In other words, they were promised they would be treated fairly. Come the end of the day the landowner begins by paying the workers who were hired last. They receive the regular day’s wage. Likewise those who were hired at at noon and at 9:00 received a full day’s wage. Finally those who worked the entire day come forward, expecting to receive much more. After all, they had worked much longer then those latecomers. But they also receive the regular day’s wage. It isn’t fair! Another word for fairness is justice; getting what you deserve. If you work hard for many hours, you deserve more then the person who only works for an hour or two late in the day. But the landowner isn’t concerned with justice. I would even say that he isn’t concerned with mercy. If justice is getting what you deserve (good or bad), then mercy is not getting what you deserve. The defendant that is allowed to plead guilty to a lesser crime doesn’t receive justice, but receives mercy instead. But the landowner isn’t working on the level of ether justice or mercy. He is working on the level of grace. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. In the case of the landowner, the workers receive a higher wage then they could expect (with the exception of those who worked the full day and who happen to be the ones who are stuck in a fairness mindset). In the case of God we all receive what we don’t deserve: forgiveness, salvation, love, grace upon grace. None of it is earned, but God gives it to us anyway. Peace, Ward+
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:00:02 +0000
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