TRINITY 15 Yr A 2017
St David’s Eucharist
‘It’s not fair! I was playing with the car and Jonny took it off me. It’s not fair!’ ‘Mummy, Jane’s got more sweeties than I have. It’s not fair!’
One of the things we gradually have to learn and cope with as we grow up is that life just isn’t fair. But at the same time children’s response to perceived unfairness of treatment also tells us something about how deep-seated our sense of fairness is as human beings: it’s there from a very early age. My experience of grandchildren at the table is that they watch each other like hawks to make sure that they all have equal portions of everything.
But equality is not the same as fairness . Liberty, Equality, Fraternity are famously the guiding principles of the secular French state. However, as George Orwell observed in I think Animal Farm ‘All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.’ President Macron, I’m sure, sees himself as somewhat more equal than his average concitoyen.
Why should pop stars or footballers be paid egregious sums of money whilst surgeons or nurses or teachers or even the Prime Minister are paid a fraction of their salaries?
There have been a number of questions asked recently about the pay of the BBC’s key performers, revealing an inequality in the salaries of men and women doing broadly similar work.
Simply put, I think we probably all recognise that there are inequalities between human beings with different gifts and abilities, but we begin to baulk when the inequalities result in unfairness of treatment or privilege in such a way that others are denied their proper rights or dignity as human beings. Inequalities are not necessarily unjust. Unfairness always is, because unfairness is not to do with equality but with justice.
This, it seems to me, is the situation described by Jesus in the parable we’ve just heard. The labourers in the vineyard have not all done an equal amount of work. Some have borne the heat and the burden of the day whilst others have only worked for an hour. When it comes to payment they expect the pay to reflect the amount of work they’ve done and when it doesn’t happen they become angry and protest.
But as the landowner points out, whilst he may have paid them unequally he has not been unfair to them individually. He pays them what they all agreed to at the beginning of the day – a proper day’s wage.
He has treated them unequally but not unjustly. The perception of unfairness comes from seeing others getting more than them for doing less. ‘Are you envious because I am generous?’
The problem here is not unfairness but attitudes towards perceived inequalities. And I think this lies at the heart of all today’s readings. There is something here about attitudes to the differences we experience in life: there are questions of perspective. The landowner looks at the situation very differently from the labourers. The focus of the story is on how people respond to such differences. Sometimes in life the last come first and the first last; it’s how you respond that seems to be the question here.
So the related story from the OT is the one we heard from the very end of Jonah – the whole book isreally an extended parable. He, you remember, tried to evade God’s call to him to go and preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. We meet him now, having done that but being thoroughly peeved with God for his generosity to them in forgiving them and not destroying their city.
God had not given them their just desserts but had instead been generously merciful – as indeed he had been with Jonah whom he saved from drowning by getting a whale to swallow him and then spew him up on a beach.
This seemingly strange ending is in fact all of a piece with the main purpose of the story, which is to illustrate how we all too readily miss the wider perspective of things in life. We see them from a necessarily narrower perspective than God.
That failure of vision can lead to envy, as we saw in Jesus’ parable, or to anger, as illustrated by the ending of Jonah. Jonah is only concerned with how things affect him – the repentance of the people of Nineveh or the shade of a plant.
God, though, sees differently. He sees all of the people in the city – a vast metropolis in ancient times – but not just the people, the animals who are there too. God’s view is wide and comprehensive. In its context this is a story to remind the Jews that God cares for Gentiles too; they are also his creation.
This story takes us one step further in our thinking about fairness. For here God’s action goes beyond justice, beyond what is strictly fair – indeed this is what irritates Jonah perhaps most – God’s justice requires repentance but when it materialises he responds with generous mercy. Here is unmerited forgiveness because there are no penalties.
As Christians came to realise this touches the true nature of God, God’s very heart. God’s love for all his creation leads to forgiveness: justice runs out in mercy. God goes beyond what is required by fairness. So Jesus comes to show that same love in his life and ministry. But what happens? He is treated unjustly. What happens to him is neither just nor fair. He is innocent of all charges against him; far from getting his just desserts and freedom he is mercilessly crucified and killed.
So what does that tell us, who follow him, about fairness and justice? How should we respond when bad things happen to good people?When bad things happen to us? That’s what Paul is talking about to the Philippians.
What he is suggesting – and it stems from his own experience (he’s writing this from captivity) – is that for Christians unfair suffering isn’t just something to be borne with a kind of stiff upper lip, as the Stoics of the time might have said, but with a sense of that very suffering joining us with Christ in his suffering.
More than that, we can be confident that such suffering, borne in a truly Christian spirit, will end in our eventual salvation. For we have – an entirely unmerited – assurance that we are loved by God and have a place in heaven with Christ. Bearing suffering and injustice like that, says Paul, is not simply a Christian attitude, it actually proclaims the heart of the gospel, which is that nothing can separate us from the love of God shown to us in Jesus Christ.
So maybe it comes down to this. When we see inequality leading to injustice we have a responsibility as Christians to do what we can to remedy it. Such a desire has inspired many of the great Christian social reformers. But when unfairness and injustice come to us personally, the manner of our coping with it, the perspective we take on it will proclaim – or not – our confidence in the promises of Christ.
There’s a wise prayer attributed to St Benedict: I leave it with you to think about – and perhaps to pray it.
God, give me courage to change the things I can, grace to bear the things I cannot and wisdom to know the difference.
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