IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S JUST NOT FAIR!

            Those words, and others like them, are pretty common around our house - as they are in most homes with children. Kids have a healthy concern for justice. So do adults. When Tyler was two, I wrote a song for him. After all, I had written one for Caitlin, and what’s fair is fair, right? In that song I put into words my changing understanding of love - how I no longer saw it as a pie which can be cut in only so many ways. The more pieces there are, the smaller each portion. My new awareness, as a father of two, was that the same God who multiplied the loaves & fishes, is able to enlarge the pie....

            Well, now I am a father of three. My youngest is almost three years old, and I have yet to be inspired to write a song for him. What’s fair is fair, right? Somehow, the loaves and fishes don’t seem to fit the times. My pie is enlarged, alright (pat belly), but it seems as if there is only so much of me to go around. Worse yet, this "going around" has to be absolutely fair, or else a minor riot ensues. And, as everybody has a slightly different sense of justice, family life becomes like a courtroom where pandemonium reigns. All-too-easily I jump into the role of judge, and hand down the law as I deem fit. A parent’s prerogative ... perhaps. I don’t think I succeed very often at doing justice in my own home.

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            Leviticus, chapter 25, presents a vision for doing justice in the "home" of Israel. Every 50 years, God’s children were called to do right by one another; not that they were allowed to lie and cheat the rest of the time. But, every 50 years, they were literally to make amends for the injustices of the other 49. The dream was that everyone should have a piece of the pie, that every family should have enough land for a vine and fig tree on which to live in peace and unafraid. When, for whatever reason, folks had to sell their piece of the pie, a provision was made for them to get it back in the year of Jubilee.

            It was sort of a radical idea, making sure that land didn’t keep accumulating in fewer and fewer hands, that people would always have a place to call home, provided they waited long enough. It was a great vision, part of the law of Moses. Unfortunately, as far as we know, it was never lived out. There never was practiced an actual "year of Jubilee" as prescribed in Leviticus 25. Logistically, one can understand why. How would you have liked to be the one in charge of administering this year? Besides, it’s easy to find loopholes in any law. Not only that, but beneath it all was the assumption that if you go back far enough, everybody has a place, a family homestead, to which to return. Question is, how far back do you go?

            That’s been the issue between Palestinians and Israelites in our century. Who was there first? To whom, then, does the land belong? How far back do you go? At some point, all peoples, including that wandering band that Moses led, were migrants. Justice can be such an elusive thing, can’t it? You think you’ve got a handle on it, and then it seems to slip through your fingers. Maybe that’s why Leviticus 25 was never really put into practice. There were too many unanswered questions. Even so, it is vitally important that we do the right thing, that justice be done. After all, fair is fair, right? God’s children have a healthy concern for justice. Even when we don’t fully understand it.

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            Enter those twelve disciples Jesus led who, in order to follow him, set aside their livelihoods, their land, their families. One could say that they risked their future. For the sake of Christ, they put in jeopardy the dream. You know, a plot of land on which to plant "a vine and fig tree," (as the song goes) and there "to live in peace and unafraid," and at the end of life dying, not on some battlefield, but in your own bed, with your shoes off and your grand-kids all around you. Is that dream of peace and justice all that different from our own? The details may be altered, but the hope is the same, isn’t it?

            The disciples risked that dream when they laid down their tools and followed this man from Galilee. For God was weaving a greater dream, a dream of peace and justice, through his son. To follow Jesus involves a cost. The original disciples laid aside their future as they had known it up to that point. The same is true for us today, no matter how much sugar we put on it. Though the gifts of the kingdom are far greater than our imagination, Discipleship is measured not by getting, but by giving. The twelve who set forth with Jesus knew that. Hopefully so do we. Didn’t Jesus say something to the effect that "the last shall be first, and the first shall be last"?

            That’s a hard one to understand. On the surface we can nod and say "Amen". We can read into it the costliness of our calling, what we may have set aside to follow Jesus, the attitude of the servant of Christ who places him or herself at the end of the line that others might go first. In this saying of Jesus we then hear the Justice of God. The last shall be first. We will receive our just rewards. That’s a promise. But it’s not quite that simple, is it?

            I don’t mean to shock you, but this morning’s parable should disturb us. It gives a different twist to what Jesus meant by "the first shall be last, and the last first." It opens a window in our understanding of God’s justice. And, to be honest, we’re not sure if what blows in is a breath of fresh air, or a hurricane force wind. Listen again to this picture of the kingdom of heaven.

            "Early one morning a landowner went out to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last & then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day & the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?’"

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            I’m not sure if I like that story, how about you? I guarantee that if you act that one out in the marketplace, your employees will be on strike before the week is out. And I can tell you exactly what my kids would say if I tried to bring it home:

            "That’s not fair!" I hear it all the time.

            "Daddy, I ate everything on my plate. How come Mitchell doesn’t have to? How come he still gets desert?"

            "Well, because he’s 2 and you’re 8."

            "That’s not fair!" It’s not, is it?

            Now, how about if we apply this story to our walk with Jesus. Is it fair that we, who have chosen the route of service to Christ, should receive the same reward as someone who lived a hell-bound life, up until the last moment, and then put in an hour in God’s vineyard? What’s the reward, then, for being a disciple? Where’s the incentive? Why go to all the trouble, when a last minute conversion gets the same result? Where’s the justice? This parable should disturb us!

            Of course, when we look at it this way, it means that we see ourselves as those who spent all day at work. Did it ever occur to us that we might rather be like those who started only an hour before quitting time? That would make for an altogether different way of responding, wouldn’t it? Jesus told parables that itch us, so that when we scratch, a bit of God’s kingdom might get under our skin. That’s the way with this story. It itches us. It doesn’t seem fair, even though a fair wage is given equally to all. In the end, everyone gets an equal piece of the pie. But like wool, this story itches. Are you scratching?

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            Last week I invited us to consider the possibility of entering into a year of Jubilee as a congregation. Not in the legalistic sense, mind you. But taking to heart what the Jubilee is all about. Forgiveness was our first focus, how it means addressing and then releasing the past, that with open hands a shout of joy to God might erupt. Today’s Jubilee theme scratches the same itch, for justice is related to forgiveness, isn’t it? It’s usually an injustice done us that we struggle to forgive, right? Sometimes it’s a matter of one kid getting more than we did, or getting the same as we did, especially when we believe we deserved more. Children have a healthy concern for justice, you know. And deep down, we’re all still children.

            To proclaim a Jubilee means to become more open to a greater dream, a larger justice; something worth the risk of becoming a disciple, knowing that for it many have risked more than we have, and many less. Sometimes our concern for what’s fair can get in the way of what’s right. After all, God’s vineyard is mighty big. Bigger than we are, that’s for sure. Proclaiming a Jubilee year means focusing on doing what’s right, even when it may not seem what’s most fair - for the sake of something greater than us....

            Do we really understand God’s justice? No. Can’t say that I really do. For all our calculations about how things ought to be ordered in this world, there is always a larger picture. As God said through the prophet Isaiah,

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