I don’t know if families
still do this today, but when I was growing up my parents assigned chores to my
sisters and me. We had to do things like
clean the dishes, take out the trash, clean our rooms, and any other number of
things I can’t remember. As I recall,
getting me to do my chores was itself a chore, so my parents added a little
leverage called an “allowance.” If we
did our chores during the week we received money. I recall my first allowance was 10 cents a
week, which may not seem like much, but if I could get two pennies from my
mother I had enough money to buy a comic book.
While having many benefits, the chore/allowance system created at least
one problem – my sisters and I fought over whose chores were too hard or too
easy and whose allowance was too big or too small based on our assigned
tasks. At its heart, it was battle was about
fairness.
Fairness is very
important to us. If you listen to talk
radio or watch cable news programs, you will hear a lot of talk about
fairness. What is a fair hourly
wage? Is our tax system fair? Does our legal system treat all people
fairly? The reason we argue about it is
because, as with beauty, fairness is in the eye of the beholder. Whereas justice is rooted in higher,
universally accepted principles, fairness is something open to debate.
Arthur Dorbin, who teaches applied ethics at Hofstra University, says
there are three different ways to approach fairness. The first is sameness. It is fair when
everything is equal. No one gets special
treatment and no one has to bear an extra burden. A second way to look at fairness is deservedness. It is fair that you get what you earn and deserve. If you do your chores you get your
allowance. If you don’t do your chores,
you don’t get your allowance. If you do
extra chores, you get a bigger allowance.
The third notion of fairness is based on need. It is fair for those
who have more to give more than those who have little because we are linked by
our common humanity and have a responsibility to care of one another. It is not fair for one person to have
abundance while another is in want.
Because it can be grounded in sameness, deservedness, or need, fairness
can be something of a moving target. When
I was a child and our family sat down at the dinner table, was it fair my
father’s plate had more food on it than mine?
If fairness means sameness, no.
We should all have the exact same amount of food. If fairness means deservedness, yes. He worked to earn the money that bought the
food, I didn’t. If fairness means need,
yes. He was an adult, I was a
child. He needed more food than I did.
When the school board meets to make a budget, should it (A) spend the
same amount of money on each child, (B) put more resources into gifted and
advanced programs benefiting students who deserve it, or (C) allocate the most
resources to the students with the greatest need? What is fair?
A sales company with ten employees ends the year with a $100,000
profit. What is a fair way to divide
it? Should each employee get $10,000 –
sameness? Or should each receive a bonus
based on his or her percentage of the total sales – deservedness? Or, let’s say one employ has incurred $50,000
in medical expenses because a family member has undergone cancer
treatment. Should he get half the profit
while the other nine divide the rest – need?
These different examples illustrate why there is so much debate about
fairness in our society.
This morning we listen to Jesus telling a story raising questions of
fairness. While the landowner is just when
he pays the all-day workers the wage to which they agreed, they don’t think it
is fair those who work less get paid the same.
Sameness doesn’t seem fair to them.
They deserve more than those who did not work as long.
Here is a small detail to notice in the story. The owner negotiates the terms of pay only
with the initial workers. The rate will
be the “usual daily wage.” This seems
fair to both parties. Each time the
owner returns to the market place, he sees people “standing idle” and sends
them to work with the promise he will pay them “whatever is right.” I submit the owner’s sense of fairness is
based on need. Each worker needs a daily
wage to survive. And even more, each worker
needs to move from idleness to productivity.
Arthur C. Brooks writes
this in his book The Conservative Heart:
There
is a widening divide in this country… but it isn’t the gap in income per
se. It is the gap in dignity. At root, to have dignity means to be worthy
of respect… We sense our own dignity most clearly when we have tangible signs
that our lives are creating value in the world.
This means ordinary work is a key driver of dignity for most
people. Whether the outside world sees a
job as extraordinarily unique or completely mundane is mostly irrelevant. “All labor that uplifts humanity” taught Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “has dignity and importance.” Inversely, nothing is more destructive of
people’s sense of dignity than idleness and the suspicion that one’s life is
superfluous.
Work is not
punishment. It is one of the primary
things we do to give us a sense of our value and worth. Those standing idle in the marketplace don’t
need a handout, they need an opportunity; for their self-esteem as well as to
meet their material needs.
We understand that while
Jesus tells a story about workers, he is not necessarily giving a lecture on
labor practices. He is describing how God’s
abundant love, mercy, forgiveness and blessing is the same for everyone, but
some people think this is not fair. Some
people believe they are better than others and thus deserve more from God. Some people hold we are a Christian nation
and have earned God’s favor, while others fear we are no longer a Christian
nation and will no longer receive God’s blessing. Through this parable Jesus is telling us God
loves each person and God loves every nation.
So, as an example, every North Korean is as precious to God as every
American. This is kind of challenge
today’s parable lays before us.
The story has a lot in
common with the parable of the Prodigal Son.
Both have someone being grumpy at the end of the working day. You may recall I told you once the word prodigal has two meanings. The first is “spending money or resources
freely and recklessly.” The prodigal son
was wasteful and imprudent. The second
meaning is “having or giving something on a lavish scale.” Thus, it is entirely appropriate to talk of
the prodigal father whose love and forgiveness is well beyond generous.
This is the same kind of
person we meet in the landowner in today’s parable. He is fair because he gives to each as each
person needs, not as each person deserves.
We ask God to answer our prayers “not as we ask in our ignorance, nor as
we deserve in our sinfulness, but as you know and love us in your Son Jesus Christ.” Our prayer is not, “Dear God, treat us all
the same.” And it is not, “Dear God,
treat me as I deserve.” Our prayer is,
Oh God, see me for who I am and have mercy on me. Please meet me where I am, love me, and stay
with me.” We want God’s fairness to be
grounded in our need.
So what does this say
about how we advocate for fairness in our family, in our church, in our
community, in our society, and in our world?
