It's not fair! I agree with Peter and Andrew (we have just watched the Ted & Lee skit on this parable) that it is just not fair! It makes no sense at all! No one in their right mind can think like this! What would happen if you paid the guy who picks peaches from noon to three the same as the one who picked all day, beginning at 6 a.m.? What if a teacher who got called in to sub just for the last class of the day got paid the same as the regular teacher? No, it is just not fair!
I come from a family where fairness is very important, it is a high value. My parents were very scrupulous about being fair with their children. No one should have any undue advantage over anyone else. Regularly, when I am with my parents, I hear something like ``We're just not sure that we have been fair regarding…'' That everyone receives the same, that no one is seen as the ``favorite,'' these are important valuesand I doubt that my family strikes you as, in any way, unusual.
It's going on in our home now too. What did we do for Elijah? What about Joseph? How about Jordan? Are we being fair?
I think we can all agree that fairness has its rightful place. It makes sense, doesn't it, to treat your children in a fair and equitable way. So maybe, if we can generally affirm that in life as we know it being fair is a good thing, then maybe somehow we are missing the point if all we can think about is that the people who began working at 5 p.m. got paid the same as those who worked all day. Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast disaster I have never been poor in my life but when I was young I learned to know what poverty was. No one explicitly taught me about it but I could feel it, and I could smell it. It was right there when the bus I was riding to school stopped at the ``Mexican Colony,'' as we called it, and then over at Smith Corner. Staring out the bus window I saw the dirt roads, pocked with ruts that filled with water after a good rain. And then there was the odor, or was that just my imagination, but it would hit me when a little boy sat down beside me.
I know poverty is right here but it came stampeding into all our homes these past weeks whenever we see these terrible images coming from the Gulf Coast. There they were, thousands upon thousands of people, most of them black, sitting on cots in the Superdome, standing on freeways, looking out the top floor windows of waterlogged homes, waving from rooftops, sitting on the sidewalk while holding a baby in their arms.
Then the reports. These people had no running water. The toilets aren't functioning. There are no showers. People are reduced to living in their own bodily waste and filth. There was very little food.
There is a buffer zone between a comfortable, reasonable existence, and abject suffering and poverty. The more that zone is filled with insurance policies, viable credit cards, a bank account, land, some family connections, a computer, a functioning vehicle, a working phone, a regular job, some modicum of hope, education, a functional community, and some good fortunethe more these kinds of things are in place, the better we can withstand misfortune. But for people in New Orleans the buffer zone was thin in the first place, and though the rain falls on the just and the unjust, the rich and the poor, when the rains fell in New Orleans, and the flood waters rose, and then as the day broke and the helicopters flew overhead, and the cameras rolled, it was plain for all to see the hard, cold reality of desperation and poverty in incredible numbers right on the streets of America.
All those people, staggering through dirty water, sitting and waiting, their heads buried in their hands, their arms weak and outstretched. How can you help but say, it is just not fair! It is just not fair! It is not right that some folks have, and some folks don't, and that's just the way it is. That may be the way it is, but it just is not fair.
And there is no running from it. We've got some serious problems right here at home. And I am sure that if we turned off our radios, TVs, and favorite internet sites, and instead took a long bike ride around town and out into the country side as well, we'd know that the problem of poverty is no stranger to Reedley, California.
I'm not particularly interested in assigning blame for what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. There is plenty of that to go around. And of course, hind-site is 20-20. It seems to me that there has been a toxic stew of ineptitude, greed, and lack of foresight at the national, state, and local levels for some time. And then there are a host of environmental issues that have not risen to the top of anyone in power's priority list. Though there had been accurate warnings offered years in advance, the collective political courage and financial will needed to prevent a disaster was not summoned. And in the end it is those with the least to begin with who suffer the most, which pay the greatest price.
Maybe there is some glimmer of hope in the way that this disaster has placed the national spotlight squarely, at least for a time, on the problem of poverty in America. It is a time when we have some faces, to associate with numbers like these, that last year over a million more people fell into poverty, that 37 million people are living in poverty in the United States, that almost 46 million people live without health insurance and that almost 18 % of all children in the United States live in poverty. We shine the bright light on poverty now but in the ordinary time of the past four years (if anything can be called ``ordinary'' about this post 9/11, war in Afghanistan and Iraq time) the poverty rate has gone up while at the same time tax cuts benefiting the wealthiest in our society have been passed. The outpouring of concern for the poor, and the desire to help, and the general sense that ``this just can't be'' is very evident now. But when we get back to the ordinary times, will any of that good will translate into tons of caring hands, reordered priorities, a commitment to ``the least of these,'' effective programs, all backed by the political and financial will to make it happen?
The parable of the workers in the field The fanciful story Jesus told of the workers in the field is a kingdom parable. It describes this incredibly different world that we are invited into, that we are told to ``come and see,'' and to make the decision that, ``this I choose to embrace.'' It is a new order where the typical expectations of life as we have always known it are withdrawn, and a new way is unfurled, right before our eyes.
It is a place where we set to the side our natural penchant to complain and critique. What goes through our minds when we see able-bodied young men standing idly on the corner?'' The landowner discovers, near the end of the day, a group doing just that. And he asks the question ``why are you standing here idle all day?'' It's an accurate question, perhaps, but the context suggests it's without the bite we might put on it. The tone, the hint, right between the lines, that you are a freeloader, or that ``your people are like that.'' That stuff is off the table. Instead it's here, there's a vineyard over there. Get to work. And in an hour you'll get your pay.
And then they all get the same pay. The first and the last, they all get the same. The landowner is not showing favoritism towards one group over another, rather the point is more his desire to exercise his generous heart, and wanting everyone to receive on the basis of their needs, and not because of their merits. Being good for a long time, being faithful for a long time, being honest for a long time, being charitable for a long time, practicing peace for a long timeall these things are good and must be encouraged, but they don't make us fundamentally more deserving.
It is like this. Everyone deserves a ride out of town before the levees break. Everyone deserves a bowl of soup, some bread, and at least a sofa to sleep on while the rain falls outside. And everyone deserves a place to go to the bathroom, and a towel to wash your face with. That's fair. Everyone should have enough.
And if questions come to mind like: ``well, he was abusing his body for a long time;'' or ``she's been sleeping around so what do you expect;'' or ``if he'd just get off his butt and try for once;'' or ``she's been told a thousand times if she's been told once so what do you expect?''we have to remember that we are dealing with Jesus here, that our world has been revolutionized and turned upside-down, that everyone is deserving of God's favor, and ours as well.
An invitation to live generously It is interesting that in the parable the owner pays those who came last first. It seems like he could have avoided a few problems by simply paying first those who came first. Then the hard-working dawn to dusk laborers would take off, and they wouldn't even need to know that those who only checked in at 5 p.m. got paid the same. But maybe there is something important for them to see and us too.
In the parable the all-day workers are invited to see this jaw-dropping, it-makes-no-sense, generosity. And we get to see it too. Of course it is important to show up on time, to be ready to go at the break of dawn, to put in a good day's workbut in God's economy these things don't make anyone more deserving of God's favor.
And we are called, in a similar way, as citizens of God's kingdom, to cultivate a generosity of heart and spirit that causes us to get beyond the questions of merit to the more fundamental understanding that this person is a fellow child of God, a person deserving of God's and my unending kindness.
Maybe the best practical examples of what it can look like are right in our bulletin this morning. We can give lavishly to the efforts in the Gulf Coast by MCC and MDS. MDS would remind us that we can offer our own hands to the on-going work near San Diego, and we have the opportunity to help through MDS right here in Reedley by helping with the construction of Guilla's house.
May God fill our hearts with a love for God's kingdom that is so deep that we respond to the world beyond our walls with a daring and even, sometimes, reckless generosity.
