envious

What’s fair? I remember when my boyhood sense of justice was offended and I complained to my dad, he’d say, “You’d better hope you never get what’s fair.” I’d like to say he was making a profound theological statement but I suspect he was simply pointing out that I was probably ahead of the game in getting good things I didn’t deserve and avoiding bad ones I had coming.

Still, it’s a thing we all struggle with: what’s fair?

In Matthew 20 Jesus tells of a landowner who hires harvesters throughout the day, as he finds them. At the end of the day, they all get paid the same thing, prompting a lot of grumbling by the ones who’d worked longer. We get that, don’t we? They’d provided a lot more value to the farmer, but weren’t getting any more than men who’d worked a fraction as long. We agree, that isn’t fair.

But Jesus sees it differently. Jesus ended his story this way, in verses 13-15: “‘But he answered one of them, “I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”’”

Giving everyone the same thing was generous, but we have a problem with generosity. We only think generosity is fair when we get it. When someone else gets it, it isn’t fair anymore. I remember a family who argued against a tuition break for larger families because they only had two kids. Even though they were paying the exact same amount as the previous year, they were so incensed that someone else might have a better deal that they blocked the break for the families with a lot of kids in school.

Are we like that when it comes to grace? Do we ever think that new Christians need to pay their dues? Do we resent the ones who partied hard and seemingly had fun their whole lives and then, late in the game, claimed the same abundant mercy that (in our warped understanding) kept our noses to the grindstone our whole lives?

Are we OK with the that the drunks and adulterers and liars and cheats and thieves all have access to the same grace we do? In fact, would we be OK if Jesus saved Sadam Hussein or the Christchurch shooter in the end, if they would be in heaven with us?

That’s a hard question. Maybe we still don’t understand what’s fair.