That's Not Fair! (Matthew 20.1-16, Parable of the Workers)

 Let’s talk about fairness. What does fairness mean? What does it look like?

When I was growing up we had enough, but not a lot, or at least not a lot by the standards of other people, and perhaps quite a lot by other people’s standards. We didn’t starve, but our house was small. Although we did own our house, which made us better off than many. However, I remember going one winter without heating and hot water because we couldn’t afford to get the boiler fixed.

Life is unfair and one of the things we try to do as humans is something called ‘causality’, where we try to seek meaning in everything that happens to us. ‘It all happens for a reason’. I’m not sure I believe in that, I think there are some things that just happen, because that’s the nature of life. Someone stubbing their toe, or winning the lottery, I don’t think God, or some kind of force guides that. Some things are just part of existence and creation. Other things are not just facts of life, they are created and made that way by us, or rather those who control our society and our way of life.

There are 171 Billionaires in the UK. Just to put that into perspective a billon is a thousand million pounds. Imagine what you could do with one thousand million pounds? You could spend a million pounds every year of your life, and still have lots left over. You could probably give a million pounds to every person you love, and still have a lot left. They'd have enough money for the rest of their lives. Isn’t that just an inconceivable amount of money. That’s only slightly less than a clergy person earns.

These are figures from 2021, so take them as illustrative. The average salary in the UK was £23,760 before tax.[1] Rounding that up to £24,000, to earn a billion pounds would take about 41.6,000 years.[2] Now 2023-41,0000 is -38,981. So if someone on an average salary in this country wanted to earn a billion pounds, they would’ve had to start work (spending nothing) in the year 38,981BC.

The oldest cave paintings in the world date to c.39,000BC.[3] It’s staggering the amount of wealth that is being hoarded by the rich, 41.6k years worth of labour for just one billion pounds. Add to that figure that there are 171 one of them, some of them multi-billionaires. It’s utterly gross.

How has this happened? One problem is that we are act as if we are all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. We’re encouraged to side with the rich and the powerful, rather than those who are much closer to us. The harsh reality is that most of us are two to three bad months from homelessness and destitution.

Life is unfair.

There’s a deeper problem and an emptiness that many people have in their lives, even if they are well off, it’s what I call a ‘superiority complex’. Or the myth of the deserving and underserving poor.

It goes something like this: “I am entitled to this, because I am better than them. Because I have more than them, that makes me a superior person. I am wealthy because I Have earned everything I have. I deserve everything I have.”

If we take our self-worth from our material wealth, from what we earn, what we can buy, then when we see other people have got some of the things that we have, we can see this as unfair.

An example of this is when people foam at the mouth with outrage when people with less than them have got things that they have. People on benefits have a computer, or a smartphone or a TV, as if that’s not just a perfectly ordinary thing to have. It’s triggering to those who believe in deserving and undeserving people.

It’s impossible to live without a smartphone or a computer nowadays, you can’t really access anything or benefits without the internet, and even then you need a phone. Most jobs are listed online, It would be unbelievably difficult to apply for anything without a computer, or smart phone.   

And there’s another deeper question, what do we attach value to? If we only value what goods we have then that leads into all sorts of bad behaviour. Jealousy, resentment, they can all be sprung from this.

Fundamentally why shouldn’t poor people have nice things? Why just because they’re poor should they have to suffer and claw their way up? Why? Why do billionaires deserve to hold on to everything they have without question? Is it because some people need to feel superior? Is it because without this clawing they would realise that they’re not better than them? That circumstance, ability and just plain luck have a much greater factor in life?

In our parable the landowner is mirroring society in some ways, but responds to life in God’s way.

Life is unfair, but the Kingdom doesn’t play by our rules, let me explain.

One Denarii was a good wage for a day’s work, it’s a fair wage, what we’d call a living wage nowadays. Many earned less than that.

The various workers represent different people. There’s those who work from the beginning, the people who get started later,

 and then the people at the end of the day, out of no fault of their own turn up to work. They haven’t been lazy, they’re a victim of circumstance. In those days many hung around in the marketplaces waiting for work, some were called others were not, pure luck, or whether you looked stronger or weaker. Many of these workers who were called at the end of the day were perhaps weaker than the ones chosen at the beginning.

“So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These 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.’

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

The first workers are responding like those who believe in the myth of deserving and undeserving poor. Why do they get something I didn’t? Why should be helped? There’s no sense of their own fragility, or what they have in common with the others.

God doesn’t owe us anything, as entitled as might feel, God gives far more than we can ever receive. Every reward is essentially an act of grace. If the last are first, it is only in the eyes of those that expect more. If we expect more because of who we are, or how much we earn, or how much we’ve done, we will be disappointed.

It is their disappointment that makes it seem that the others had preferential treatment. In a time of underemployment they should have been thankful that they had had a full day’s work. The landowner hasn’t cheated anyone, he has paid the wage that he agreed to.

God's great gifts, simply because they are God's, are distributed, not because they are earned, but because She is gracious.

In the kingdom of God, the driving force is not merit and ability, as in the world but grace.

Grace is ludicrously generous and ludicrously unfair, but it’s also incredibly fair at the same time.

We’re not rewarded in the way we are now. In the Kingdom It is the least that matter the most, it is the poor and the downtrodden that will be lifted up. God’s grace is against all notions that the rirch, the powerful and the prominent are the entitled ones, and will continue to be in the Kingdom of God.

Grace isn’t earned, it’s given. That’s the point. The justice of the Kingdom of God is that no matter who we are, how much we have or haven’t done, how little or large our purse is, all of us have a place, and all of us are loved.

We need to get over our superiority complex, because life isn’t fair, and it’s certainly not fair towards the poor and those in need. We don’t deserve to have more than they deserve to be downtrodden and poor.

God’s kingdom values charge us to work for a world where things are fairer, because God treats us fairly, we all receive grace, why wouldn’t we want that for our fellow human beings?

Why wouldn’t we want all people to be educated, loved, valued and given what they need to look after themselves and their families without having to struggle? Why would we want to continue making people grasp and claw for everything they need? When the harvest is good, build a bigger table, not higher walls.

There is plenty for all of us, and through this parable God is challenging all of us to look at what we have, to move against our own sense of entitlement and resentment, and see firstly the gifts that God has given us, and secondly how we can love and help our neighbour and our society to be a fairer place.

It begins with us, it begins with our divine right for justice.