The church in which I grew up in Davenport, IA, was your fairly standard church. We were positioned about halfway down a hill. This made us the ideal location during the winter months. After a good snowfall it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood was in our church parking lot and sledding down our hill.
When I was a teenager, the church called Pastor Bill VanPatten to come and lead us. He and his wife Sue were such an amazing couple. They were actually a big factor in my wife and me becoming foster parents. Being foster parents themselves, they always had kids at their house even though their kids were grown and moved out.
God had called them to minister to delinquent, teenage girls, which is no easy task. Pastor Bill would often make reference to the girls in his home during his sermons. One thing that seemed to come up repeatedly was their cry for fairness. He and Sue would inevitably do something the girls didn’t like, and their cry was always the same, “That’s not fair!” Having had him as a pastor for a few years, the whole congregation immediately knew his response to that objection. As soon as those words left their mouths he would respond, “Life is fair only one week a year, and it takes place up the hill. After that week, they pack up, and it’s not fair anymore.”
I know it’s corny, but it always seemed to get a chuckle out of the church people who knew and understood about life. Life isn’t fair. Fortunately for us, we serve a great and powerful God. There used to be a professor at Nazarene Bible College that had a saying. He’d say, “God is good, God is fair. To some men he gave brains and to others hair.” Obviously he was on the follicly challenged end of that equation, but this week I began to think on this little poem and began to wonder. Is God really fair?
In teaching his followers about God, Jesus told them a parable which is found in Matthew 20. Again, a parable is a short story in which Jesus would use common everyday things to explain a spiritual truth. This was his way of teaching the people, and each parable, while it may explain a couple different things, had one main point that was to be taken from it. In Matthew 20:17 Jesus begins teaching the people with one of these parables. It was a scenario they would all have been familiar with.
This would have been a common scene in those days. If you’re a farmer, you know quite well that during harvest season it’s all hands on deck. It’s a race against the clock.
It was no different in these days. When the time came to harvest the grapes, it was essential that they were harvested quickly. The grape harvest ripened towards the end of September, and the fall rains were not long after. If the vineyards were not harvested before the rain, the harvest was ruined. So it was that a field owner would hire as many people as possible to harvest his vineyard.
In those days as well, it was common for working class men to stand in the marketplace and wait to be hired. Landowners knew that if they needed workers they could be found in the marketplace. Especially during harvest, they would go down to the market and take whatever workers they could find, even if it was only for an hour.
The landowner’s offer here was quite fair. In those days the workday started at 6AM and continued until 6PM. The commonly expected pay for a day’s work was one denarius. It wasn’t going to make you rich, but it would put food on your table and was commonly considered to be fair.
We see that when the landowner first goes out at 6AM, he offers the workers the going rate for a day’s work. He then goes out again at 9AM, noon, 3PM, and again at 5PM. Again, these workers weren’t slacking or being lazy. They were waiting for work in the place where the landowners knew where to find them. For each of these workers the landowner tells them, “I will pay you whatever is right.”
The expectation was that if working a full day earned you a day’s wages, one denarius, then starting the day at 9AM would earn you 3/4ths of a day’s wages. Starting the day at noon would earn you half of a day’s wages. Following that logic, those hired at 5PM, one hour before the end of the workday, expected a fair pay to be 1/12th of a day’s wages. Nobody would expect their employer to pay them for a full day’s work if they only worked for an hour. This is what was expected when the landowner stated, “I will pay you whatever is right.”
Looking at the end of the parable in Matthew 20:8-16, many of us can relate. As those hired at 5PM came to receive their pay, they were surprised to have received, not 1/12th of a day’s wages but a full day’s wages. That’s twelve times what they deserved. Likewise, those that came at noon also received a full day’s wages, twice what they deserved. This caused those that had been hired first to expect that they would receive something more. Surely if the landowner had given these men more than they deserved, those that had worked the whole day would receive more as well.
However, when it came time for them to be paid, they received one denarius just like everyone else. Upon this, they did what any self-respecting employee would do and filed a grievance with the Human Resources representative. No, they did what most of us would do and began to grumble and complain. When the landowner heard of their complaints he goes to them and tells them, “‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?”
by Rembrandt
Upon receiving their wages for the day these men cried out, “It’s not fair,” even though they had received exactly what they had agreed upon. They told the landowner that they would work a day’s work for a day’s wages, but when they saw others getting the same pay for less work, it was suddenly unfair.
Upon hearing this parable, we like to take the moral high ground and say that these men had no right to complain. However, many times we find ourselves in the same boat as these men without realizing it.
Clearly this parable is meant to symbolize God’s saving grace for those that believe in him. I’ll be the first to confess that I celebrate whenever someone comes to the altar and repents of their sin. When God forgives that person and they become a new creation, the church and the angels both celebrate.
However, we’ve all been there too when someone who has lived a horrible life receives the same forgiveness and the same eternal life. We don’t want to accept it. We don’t want it to be true that they have received the same forgiveness and adoption into the Kingdom of Heaven that we have. Much like the brother of the prodigal son, we detest the person. Especially when it’s a deathbed conversion, we grumble and complain that it’s not fair. We’ve been faithfully attending church and tithing for years, and here this person is just going to say I’m sorry and get the same reward that we’ve worked our whole lives for.
Much like these workers, we grumble and complain when we feel that God isn’t fair, but the truth is, God isn’t fair. That’s the whole reason any of us are here. We come to church and enjoy our savior, but it’s not because he’s fair. God is many things (and there may be times when he’s fair), but chiefly God is just and God is gracious.
We must be careful when we cry out for justice and that we get what we deserve, because the truth is that we don’t deserve the forgiveness that God offers. We can decry that unfairness that God freely bestows his forgiveness upon the murderer who repents upon his deathbed, but the truth is that it was unfair when God forgave us as well. We don’t deserve it. We never have, and we never will. Much like with the landowner, God’s grace and forgiveness are his own to give, and he can give out his grace to whomever he wants.
The truth is that many times we are jealous and envious of those who lived a life of sin and still find God’s grace and forgiveness. We look at them longing to have had their carefree life when all the while they’re looking back at us with the same envy and jealousy. They look at us and bemoan the time they spent away from God and privilege we’ve had to spend our whole lives serving him. Why do we want that life anyway? Are our lives with God so lacking in joy that we long for the sinful lifestyle? If so, I dare say we’re doing something wrong.
When it comes down to it, God is just, and he is gracious, but he is not fair. He gives to each of us that which we do not deserve. He has offered to mankind the opportunity to become princes and princesses in his kingdom. We certainly don’t deserve that. The world may be fair for only one week each year, but our God is gracious and loving all year around and for all eternity. I wouldn’t have it any other way.