Sermon Preached on September 19, 2005

⁶ Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. ⁷ But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. ⁸ When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

⁹ But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."

¹⁰ But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

³"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' ⁵So they went.

"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. ⁶About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

⁷" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

⁸"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'

⁹"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

¹³"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

“Whoever Told You Life Was Fair?”

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

The other day, I was surfing the internet and came across a column entitled “Momilies” – short for “mom’s homilies” – and it contained a long list of sayings you have probably either heard from one of your parents or, as a parent, you have said to your children. See if any of these sound familiar…

- Don't make me come in there.

- If your friend sticks his hand in a fire, would you do that, too?

- Why do you think they call it work?

- This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you.

- Always wear clean underwear, you never know when you will be in an accident.

- Someday you’ll thank me for this.

- Someday I hope you have a child just like you.

- Whoever told you life was fair?

Kids, especially young ones, have an acute sense of what’s fair and what isn’t. If you give a 10-year old one big piece of cake, and a four-year old two small pieces of cake equaling the one big piece, the four year old will object. No matter how hard you try to explain that two smalls equal one big, there will be protests that it’s just not fair.

Fairness is something adults expect, too, and we bristle when we think we have gotten the short end of the stick. If you’ve ever had a boss who was less capable than you were, or discovered that a person with less experience was making more money, or if you’ve ever been passed over for promotion in favor of someone who was less qualified, than you know the feeling. It just isn’t fair.

And that’s the reaction of the laborers in the vineyards in Jesus’ parable. The landowner promises the workers who go out early in the morning a day’s pay. To those who go out later in the morning, the landowner promises to pay “whatever is right.” There are also laborers who go out at noon and work half the day, and some who go out at three and work the half the afternoon. And then there are laborers who go out at 5:00, and they only work an hour or two.

Now, our sense of fairness would say that the ones who worked the most hours would earn the most money. But in the parable, at the end of the day, each of the laborers is given a full day’s pay, even the ones who started working at five o’clock. The first ones hired protest when they receive the agreed-upon wage, and they grumble not because they have been cheated – they haven’t; rather, they grumble because of the landowner’s generosity towards the late-comers, who worked a mere hour. They have hardly broken a sweat, but they also receive a full day’s wage. And the landowner doesn't improve matters when he responds, "Can't I do what I choose with what belongs to me? Are you envious because I am generous? Why do you begrudge my generosity?"

We can certainly understand why those first-hired workers grumble. After all, we live in a country where the legal minimum hourly wage is legislated and where we examine our pay stubs to make sure the government isn’t taking out more taxes than it ought. Shouldn't we work for what we get, and get what we work for? Yes, we would grumble, too; in fact, it seems so unfair, that if it were us, we’d probably get downright angry.

In our Old Testament lesson this morning, Jonah IS angry. He has gone to the sinful people of Nineveh and told them God wants them to repent of their sins. And, indeed, they do listen to him, repenting of their sins and turning away from their sinful actions.

But is Jonah happy? No. Jonah is jealous and disappointed and angry at God. He was actually looking forward to God giving the Ninevites what Jonah thinks they deserve for their sinful actions. But instead, God forgives them and gives them a fresh start. Jonah is jealous that God has forgiven the Ninevites; it offends his sense of fairness, so he yells at God and stomps off in a tizzy, planting himself out in the middle of nowhere to pout. But even though Jonah is disappointed and jealous and angry at God, does God turn away from him? No, God provides shelter for Jonah, but he takes the great sheltering bush for granted. When God takes the bush away, Jonah starts complaining again.

Finally God tells him, “Jonah, you only knew the shelter of the bush for a day and a night. I have known the people of Nineveh since I created them. You didn’t create the bush. But I created the people. I choose to love all people.”

God loves all people – the good ones, the bad ones, even the ones who don’t love God back. It just doesn’t seem fair. And you know what? It isn’t.

God isn’t fair, because God is a God of grace. Grace is the unmerited, utterly unconditional, completely free, no-strings-attached, cannot-be-earned gift of God’s love.

Every other faith tradition is based on people having to do something to earn God’s favor. Whether it’s using a prayer wheel, or going on pilgrimages, or giving alms to the poor, or avoiding certain foods, or performing a certain number of good deeds, or praying at a certain time in a certain position each day, or going through a cycle of reincarnations – follow this way of life, these traditions say, and you stand a good chance of gaining favor with God and eventually achieving salvation.

But Jesus tells us, through teachings such as this morning’s parable, that God’s love is for everyone; we can’t earn it, and we don’t deserve it. We can spurn it; we can run from it, we can hold it at arm’s length; we can even try to kill it. But God loves us, no matter what.

And that makes grace downright counter-cultural. It throws out our measurements of fairness, our understanding of a meritocracy where you earn things based on your achievements. Our world might be pretty clear on who’s deserving and who isn’t; who belongs and who doesn’t, who’s up and who’s down, who’s our equal and who isn’t. But that’s not the way it is in God’s world.

God loves the happy and the angry; the generous and the jealous; the do-gooders and the no-gooders. God loves those we love, and God loves those we have a hard time loving. God forgives and frees us from our mistakes of the past, enabling us to start over and over and over again. There is no sinner, no outcast, no unworthy person, no one who falls beyond the reach of God’s gracious love. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do that will make God love us less.

In spite of our anger, jealousy, or disappointment with the way life may treat us and those we love; in spite of our blunderings, our many flaws and faults; in spite of what we do or fail to do to deserve it; in spite of everything, God continues to bless us with infinite, unconditional, boundless love.

The fact of the matter is: God is not fair! Rather, God is generous and gracious. God does not judge people as we often judge each other. From the most enterprising to the least motivated; from the saint to the scoundrel; from the one who has worked “long and hard in the vineyard of the Lord” to the one who shows up just in time to help put the tools away – we are all treated with the same grace-filled compassion and generosity.

Is life fair? It isn’t, and for that we might be sorry.

Is God fair? No again, and for that, let us all say, “Thanks be to God!” Amen.