Today’s Gospel story is tailor-made to challenge the American demand for fairness. Americans are very serious about a commitment to see that everyone is treated fairly. We demand fair elections, fair prices, fair evaluations and fair pay for work done. That’s the American way!
The laborers who worked the 12-hour shift in the vineyard received no more than those who worked for just one hour. Not fair! However, this story is not about fairness. The God of the vineyard workers does not stand blindfolded holding the scales of justice in an attempt to be fair. Rather his goal is to insure that human needs are addressed. What a different perspective than one which asserts: “I deserve more than others!” The God of this Gospel is the God of extravagance, who allows his heart, his grace and his love to triumph over fairness.
In 21st Century America, we are far more comfortable with fairness than with extravagance. Extravagance has been defined as: “on the wild side, carefree, almost careless. Someone who is extravagant would probably spend too much, whose cup of generosity would probably be sloshing over and running down the sides.” Today the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” [Isaiah 55:9]
The kind of extravagance reflected in today’s Gospel challenges us to love a little too much, forgive a little too much, tolerate a little too much, and give just a little too much. That activity might get us labeled as someone who is “a little too much.” Yet, before we shy away from---too much, we would do well to reflect upon the nature of God’s love. The character of God’s love is lavished on the unworthy, the unlikely, and the unfit---on you and me! Divine love annoys those of us who have yet to realize our own need for it or who have had a lapse of memory, forgetting the countless times we ourselves have been so lavished.
Our problem with this Gospel story is that we tend to imagine God in human terms operating by human standards. Too often we tend to impose on God the often used quid-pro-quo approach. We believe that performance determines its own reward. That’s the American way, but that is not God’s way! Defining justice as a numbers game illustrates how little we can rely on human perception to reflect how God works. A key for us may be the response given to the grumbling laborer, “Are you envious because I am generous?” And he may have reminded the laborer, “You know that if I pay each laborer based on his hours worked, many would not have enough money to feed their families.” Our Gospel pushes us from the envious world of comparison into the abundant world of God’s goodness.
God’s view is so well stated by spiritual writer Alice Camille, “Divine justice is so perfectly interwoven with divine mercy that the two cannot be separated, like the tunic soldiers once threw dice for at the foot of the cross. To God’s way of thinking, as far as we can tell, mercy is the ultimate fairness when dealing with finite, mortal, imperfect creation.” If we are asked to measure our American demand for fairness against that view, we have a difficult task ahead. Today we can rejoice because we know that God is not fair! He is extravagant. ----Deacon Wilson Shierk