THE CHALLENGE OF FAIRNESS

September 18, 2011
Pentecost 14
Exodus 16:2-15
Matthew 20:1-16

(prayer)
The prophet Micah says that God requires humility, compassion and justice from us (Micah 6:8). We usually speak of justice as how we might respond to what someone has done.


Justice is about setting things right based on some action done or spoken or enabled by someone (or some group, or some entity or corporation or institution, etc.).

Part of this is our criminal justice system, which compares the actions of this person (or group or entity or corporation or institution, etc.) to societal standards enshrined in the written and common law and upheld by the constitution. We have developed patterns of what our society has declared “Just”. Public opinion clearly dictates that we don’t have universal agreement on what is just within our criminal justice systems. // I notice that the Leduc County’s Prayer Breakfast is coming up in less than two weeks (Oct 1st) and that Rev Don Schiemann is the guest speaker. You may recall that Rev Schiemann’s son Peter was one of the RCMP officers killed by James Roszko near Mayerthorpe six years ago. The poster for the breakfast says that Rev Schiemann “continues to lobby, along with other victim’s groups, for changes to the justice system to restore peace and public safety in our country.” [if you want to go to the County’s Prayer Breakfast, you can tickets from the County Office by this Friday, the 23rd.] It is a hot topic in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion: ‘just’ how well is justice served?

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We also use the word Justice to speak of how well people live relative to each other. Church organizations have always led the society in advocating and action so that we all are encouraged to see that all people are able to live in dignity and equality.

One of the founding partner denominations of the United Church of Canada was the Methodist Church of Canada. Methodists were champions of The Social Gospel – Social Justice is still one of the hallmarks of how the United Church is known in Canada and in the world.

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Jesus lived a compassion for the outcast and forgotten – Jesus’ followers are people of justice.

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One way or another Justice is all about Fairness. We want all involved to be treated with honest fairness. As we heard in the reading from Matthew, chapter twenty today – it appears that (for Jesus) fairness has more to do what people need rather than what they have done: fairness/justice has more to do with what people need rather than what they have done!

Because we usually tend to focus on what has been done, this new perspective can cause some problems for us. How will our desire for Justice and Fairness be motivated - by the needs of those involved or simply a reaction based on the actions that have occurred?

That’s the Challenge of Fairness.

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When Moses led the Hebrew people away from their slavery in Egypt, they ventured out into the Sinai wilderness. People quickly realized that, in a strange way, slavery had its advantages: sure you have no real control of your life, but you did have a settled place to live; you had access to food – at least enough food to make you a useful indentured servant of the Pharaoh and his kingdom. Out in the wilderness beyond the Red Sea, home was where you pitched your tent and food was what you managed to scavenge or kill. And water was an exceedingly valuable resource – increasingly in this wilderness, it was harder and harder to find.

Today, we read from Exodus chapter 16, but the story in chapter 17 is connected as well. The specific reading today was Moses’ and God’s attempt to deal with the people’s grumbling about a lack of food. We didn’t read it, but chapter 17 is very similar, but the issue is the need for water: remember they brought with them many livestock who needed water as well!

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In both chapters 16 and 17, the pattern is the same. The people complain that they don’t have the food (or water) they need. They begin to look back on life in Egypt, where they had enough to eat (and drink). Moses takes the message to God, who comes up with a novel way for the people to have what they need. It wasn’t going to be the ‘fleshpots’ and fresh ‘bread’ of Egypt, but it would meet the need.

With the morning dew, an edible, flacky bread like substance would be found on the desert shrubbery – this (so-called) manna could be gathered before it melted away in the heat of the day. In the evening, birds (quails) seem to always rest near their camp – they could easily hunt meat for supper. As far as the need for water went from chapter 17, God showed Moses the location of (what must have been) an underground stream. All that was needed was for Moses to smash away the calcifications with his staff to release a steady flow of drinkable water.

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The needs of the day were met, nothing more. If someone tried to hoard or store up some of the delicate manna, they found that it would spoil by the second day. It was (as Jesus would pray centuries later)...literally, God giving them daily bread!

The solution to the people’s problem was to provide what was fair – all that they needed for the day.

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That is not really very different from the gospel story of the labourers in the vineyard. I wonder what the people at SUN-TV or FOX news think about this parable.

The landowner needs workers for the vineyard. The normal practice was for labourers and employers to find each other in the village square right after sunrise in the morning. This landowner hires a number of workers in the morning for a days work. The agreed upon pay is a denarius – the normal day labourers wage – enough to provide that workers family with a day’s worth of food, etc.

That all makes sense to pretty much everyone.

But as the day went on, the landowner needed more workers – he returned at 9am and noon, 3pm and 5pm. “Go into the vineyard and I’ll pay you what is right.”

At 6pm the work day ended and they all lined up to be paid, starting with those who had worked the shortest shifts. To their surprise, they received a full denarius. Even though, no one hired them until the last part of the day, they received what they and their family needed.

As the other workers watched the paymaster, and noticed the money given to those who had only worked one hour and expected that they were in for a huge payday – maybe as much as 12 denarii for those who worked the whole day!

But no, they all got one denarius – the daily wage, enough for their needs.

You see, it had nothing to do with what they earned, it was what they needed. How could the final workers who were hired at 5pm be expected to feed their families with 1/12th of a denarius?

To have enough to eat is a basic need. It can’t be rationed further; it is a baseline. The promise made by the landowner in Jesus’ parable was that each person ‘would be paid what is right’. Jesus’ message is that it is fair - it is just - it is right - to make sure that we all have enough for each day! The fairness is based on the need, not what the person has done.

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Over the past several months, the world has become increasingly aware of the great need for aid in eastern Africa. It is an area that is prone to drought and is also fraught with political turmoil that draws resources away from the basic needs of the people to the desires of militias and dictators.

Some people are tired of helping Ethiopia – didn’t rock stars solve that problem with all-star records (we are the world...feed the world; let them know it’s Christmas time again) and star-studded simultaneous concerts in the 1980s?

These people keep fighting amongst themselves and wasting what they do have on guns and mines, if we help feed them, we’re just part of the problem, aren’t we?

The old axiom that ‘if you give someone a fish, they eat for a day, teach them to fish, they eat for a lifetime’ is certainly true. But if the most immediate need is today’s meal, a denarius is needed. The hungry must survive today if we are help them learn to fish.

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Jesus’ parable and the experience of Moses and the Israelites speak directly to the issue of daily hunger. And yet, the issues of fairness reach so much broader.

Even a fairness based on need is challenging because (in most situations) there are competing needs. And one of the ways people try to sort through those competing needs is to begin to consider the actions. We add a level of judgement into the mix. We begin to judge a person’s worth. And so often, when we do this, judgement leads to a hoarding of resources that could be shared – a fear of wasting it on ‘the un-worthy’.

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The Challenge of Fairness is to try and block judgement out of the picture. To see the basic “need” as the only motivator. The vineyard-owner asked the 5pm labourers: “why are you not working? “Because no one has hired us!”

We might be tempted to ask “Why?” again. Why are you unemployable – did you sleep in; are you un-skilled; were you wasting your day away with some other activities? What did you do wrong that caused you still to be looking for work with only one hour left in the day?

We might be tempted to move the conversation to the topic of “what did you do?”, but the landowner doesn’t go there. The labourers are taken into the vineyard and they work what they are able. And they are given what “is right” – what they need.

The vineyard owner is a metaphor for God. This kind of ‘needs-based-fairness’ is a characteristic of the Realm of God: the Kingdom of Heaven (as Matthew puts it).

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Part of the role of the followers of Jesus (in his day and in ours) is to give people glimpses of the Kingdom of God.

When it comes to the level of basic need, fairness means that all are included – no one is left alone. Judgement has no place in fairness discussions when it comes to the things we all need.

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This is why the modern social gospel is concerned with:

 situations that threaten the environment of the world we share: the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof...

 conditions of poverty and famine and drought that expect people to live without the nourishment to truly allow them to live;

 systems that treat the wellbeing of people as a commodity to be bought and sold.

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Certainly, there are situations where, the person in need works against their own best interests. In those cases, efforts may need to include motivation and transformation.

The Challenge of Fairness is to know when we are behind the line, where judgement has no place; where the need of the moment must trump the lesson for the time to come.

Think of it this way: if someone doesn’t have enough, we’ve got work to do!

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Moses and Aaron ultimately endured the complaining and grumbling of the people, because they had a real life-sustaining need.

The generosity of the landowner in Jesus’ story highlighted his understanding of the normal lives of those who laboured in his vineyard. Understanding the needs of the others who share this world is key to understanding Fairness from a gospel perspective.

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May God be with is in our struggle to understand how we can best live out the Kingdom of God on earth.

Let us pray...

Holy and Just God,

Give us the patience to understand the needs of both neighbour and stranger alike. Help us to care as Jesus did.

AMEN



#194MV “Bread of Life, Feed My Soul”