"is God Fair?"

“Is God Fair?”

Matthew 20:1-16

Plenty of people work hard but never get what they feel they deserve.

Plenty of people are incredibly decent human beings but always seem to get the short end of the stick.

How many of us, as children, were cautioned with the self-evident truth that “life’s not fair?”

It’s a hard lesson, but it’s one we have all learned, usually before we got out of kindergarten.

As adults, we are surrounded by evidence that life is not fair.

In our ten to twenty-year-old cars, we drive past multi-million-dollar homes with pristine lawns and ridiculously expensive sports cars parked in the driveway.

We see people throwing money around as if it were confetti, while others struggle to pay the doctor’s bills, keep food on the table, and even a roof over their heads.

We see those who flaunt the law yet get off scot-free, and we see others who are innocent yet are punished unjustly.

Life just is not fair.

(pause)

Now, let’s be honest.

When we were reading the parable for this morning, did our hearts leap for joy?

Were we thrilled when we heard that the workers who’d worked hard all day in the hot sun were going to get the same pay as those who worked only one hour?

This parable runs against the grain of one of our most deeply cherished values: the value of hard work and just reward.

The more you work and the more productive you are, the more you ought to get paid.

I don’t know many people who disagree with that, do you?

And this is the complaint of the people in the parable who worked all day: “Those who were hired last worked only one hour, and you have made THEM equal to US who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”

This parable gives rise to one of the most primitive cries we had in childhood, when one sibling gets something that we wanted, the one who feels cheated screams: “But that’s not fair!”

But before we dismiss this parable and put it back on the shelf marked: “Bible passages not to be taken seriously,” let’s consider the possibility that there is something to be learned here after-all and that what’s going on in this parable is nothing less than a battle between human justice and God’s justice—a battle between our will and God’s will—and that, even though we say, “We just want to get what we deserve,” what we most want and need is something much, much greater!!!

The story is told of Yogi Berra, a professional baseball player who played 18 seasons with the New York Yankees.

When the Yankees were at their peak and were negotiating contracts for the next year, a group of reporters interviewed players as they came out of the owner’s office, and one of them asked Yogi Berra about the terms of his contract.

Berra said, “I’m going to play baseball again next year for the Yankees, and would you believe it, they’re gonna pay me besides!”

If the workers who’d worked all day had this attitude about their work, they wouldn’t have resented the people who got to work only one hour.

Another problem with the disgruntled workers in this parable is that they lack a healthy sense of gratitude.

Think about it.

Have you ever been out of work?

Have you ever applied for a job and gotten turned down?

It’s no fun, is it?

Can you remember how grateful you were when you got a call offering you a job that you needed really badly?

What happens to that feeling of gratitude once you’re on the job for a while and the “new” wears off?

Isn’t that when we start to complain and find fault?

Those who are grateful to be employed have little to complain about.

It’s when gratitude gives way to the routine that we become disgruntled, and start to envy those who seem to have it better.

There’s something else about gratitude: It keeps us humble when we stop and consider those who are less fortunate.

You know the old saying, “I complained because I had no shoes until I met someone who had no feet.”

The same holds true for those of us who are able to buy groceries and pay our bills.

There are lots of people who can’t do these things.

The more we realize how blessed we are, the more we are able to look upon the less fortunate with compassion rather than resentment.

This brings up an interesting aspect of this parable to consider.

Those who were hired to work at five-O’clock had been left standing around all day worrying about how they were going to feed themselves and their families.