It's Not About Fairness; It's About Life

(Matthew 20.1-15)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 28, 2008

Jesus said to his disciples, "The kingdom of heaven is like the owner of an estate who went out at dawn to hire workers for the vineyard. After reaching an agreement with them for the usual daily wage, the owner sent them out to the vineyard.
"About mid-morning, the owner came out and saw others standing around the marketplace without work, and said to them, 'You go along to my vineyard and I will pay you whatever is fair.' At that they left.
"Around noon and again in the mid-afternoon, the owner came out and did the same. Finally, going out late in the afternoon, the owner found still others standing around and said to them, 'Why have you been standing here idle all day?'
"'No one hired us,' they replied.
'You go to my vineyard, too.'
"When evening came, the owner said to the overseer, 'Call the workers and give them their pay, but begin with the last group and end with the first.' When those hired late in the afternoon came up, they received a full day's pay, and when the first group appeared they assumed they would get more. Yet they all received the same daily wage.
"Thereupon they complained to the owner, 'This last group did only an hour's work, but you've put them on the same basis as those who worked a full day in the scorching heat.'
"'My friends,' said the owner to those who voiced this complaint, 'I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, didn't you? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this worker who was hired last the same pay as you. I'm free to do as I please with my money, aren't I? Or are you envious because I am generous?'" (The Inclusive New Testament, c Priest's for Equality,1994)

I try to imagine myself as one of the disciples listening to Jesus tell this story. Maybe Jesus wants us to focus on the owner's generosity. But the only thing I want to say at the end is, "That's no fair!" I mean, all of us disciples have worked in that beastly Mediterranean sun. Why should the people who worked one hour get paid the same as the people who worked all day? And why does the owner make sure that the people who worked all day see the people who worked just one hour get paid the same amount they do? It's like the owner's setting them up to feel cheated. Maybe Jesus wants us to see the owner as generous and full of grace. But I think all of us will come away from that story hearing the message that life is unfair.

You hear it in school playgrounds, in homes, in any setting where kids are present. "That's not fair!" "You're not playing fair!" And though most of us adults might not use those exact words or that exact tone of voice, we feel the same way. We're raised in this country to believe life is fair. If I work hard, if I play by the rules, I'll get what I deserve. I'll be treated fairly.

There's only one problem. And we know it. Life isn't fair. And God isn't fair either. Many people stop believing in God when a tragedy happens. Because we think God should have prevented it. But where does this belief come from? The Bible is filled with stories of unfairness. In the story of Job, God makes a deal with Satan. God brags about how faithful Job is. And then God lets Satan do whatever he wants to Job except kill him. Satan drives Job to anguish and despair. No fairness here.

On the other hand, the Bible is filled with stories about people who break God's laws. If life were fair, these sinners would be punished. But instead God showers them with love. Take the Adam and Eve story. God tells the first couple, You can eat anything you want here . . . except the fruit of this one particular tree. Eat that, and you die (Gen. 2.17). So of course they eat that fruit. Their eyes are opened. They realize they're naked. They feel ashamed. If life were fair, Adam and Eve would receive the punishment God had promised them. But fairness is not a big part of how God operates. God knows their nakedness makes them feel ashamed. So before God sends Adam and Eve out of the Garden, God makes clothes for them (Gen. 3.21). Instead of treating them fairly, God restores their dignity.
And where in the Gospels do we see any sign of Jesus being treated fairly? So as his followers, why do we expect anything different?

I know God never promises life will be fair. But I know I still expect life to be fair. And maybe you do, too.

What happens when we live our lives expecting life to be fair, and realize it isn't?

One thing we can do is become be-gooders. We can become people who try to be really, really good. In the hope that if we're good enough, people will love us. If we're good enough, we'll get what want. We'll get what we think we deserve.

Or we can feel like we've been treated so unfairly that we become a victim. We feel like we never get the breaks other people do. We feel misunderstood, discriminated against, and lonely.

When Peter and I started looking for a church job in 1991, we knew we had to be really, really good. Churches like yours had done the hard and holy work of becoming Open and Affirming. But in 1991, no church of any denomination had ever hired a gay couple as pastors. We knew pastor search committees weren't exactly going to be lining up to call us.

We got lots of rejections. I mean, LOTS of rejections. Over a hundred of them. We even got rejected from churches we didn't apply to! It was like a pre-emptive strike. Somehow search committees found out we were applying. So they were kind enough to let us know we didn't need to expend any energy applying to them.

For a while, all those rejections inspired us to work even harder. They inspired us to keep being be-gooders. We believed if we were nice enough, and flexible enough, and open enough, and willing enough to put up with anything, some church would hire us. That's what we deserved for being so good. That's what was fair.

And being be-gooders almost worked.

In the summer of 1992, a search committee of a UCC church in Columbus, Ohio, became really interested in us. I was excited. I'd lived in Columbus for three years after college, and still had very good friends there. My parents live 90 miles from there. I was really excited. Peter and I put everything we had into that call.

But the congregation voted us down. And what they said they didn't like about us was that we were gay. We led worship on the Sunday the congregation was going to vote on us. I stood at the door of the church welcoming people. And about every fourth person who came in refused to shake his hand. When I called the children forward for the children's sermon, none of the parents let their kids come forward.

So after the congregation voted no on our call, Peter and I flew back to our home in Chicago. Having tried to be so good. Having believed that if we were good enough, God would reward us by giving us what we'd worked so hard to get. That was only fair, right?

After that, we stopped trying to be be-gooders. We were way too angry and hurt for that. So we went to another place people go when they expect fairness and don't get it. We became victims. If you've felt like a victim at any time, you know what it's like.

There can be a certain pleasure in seeing yourself as a victim. No one likes me. No one understands me. We concluded the world hates gay people. The Christian church, especially, hates gay people. We shut down. We stopped going to church for awhile because it was too painful. We didn't want to be in the pew. We wanted to be up in front leading worship.

It would have been so easy for us to get stuck in being victims. But as we held onto our being victims in our clenched hands, we realized we were dying.

If you and I let go of the need for life to be fair, what might we receive? If we unclench the hands that cling to being be-gooders and being victims, and open our hands to God, what might God place in them?

If we let go of our need for fairness, we make room for life. New possibilities, new beginnings. We make room for life.

Writing six years ago, a monk describes this process:
Every moment is more brightly precious than we can possibly understand. . . . We did not bargain for most of what we get in this life, but life itself is worth holding onto, and worth valuing. It is a great loss if we greet every day with clenched hands stuffed with our own devices. We will never know what is out there waiting for us if we don't extend an empty hand to the world and wait for the wonder to happen (Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt, Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love, Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2002, p. xxxvii).

Writing almost 800 years ago, the Muslim poet Rumi also invites us to imagine the life that comes from unclenched moments.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

This is what Jesus is talking about when he says, "I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10.10. It's what Paul is talking about when he writes, "I am convinced that nothing in all creation nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8.39).

The monk, Rumi, Jesus, Paul: they're all trying to tell us, It's not about fairness. It's about life. So unclench your hands. Receive life. Live!

A couple months after being voted down by the church in Columbus, Peter and I began to do this. I can only talk about it as the mystery of God's grace. Because something shifted. We began to open our hands. And Jesus began to lift from us the being good and the being victim we'd been clutching to. As he lifted these from us, our hands were emptied of our deadening need for life to be fair.
And we felt something new placed in them. We knew we needed to keep applying to churches. We still wanted to be pastors. But we didn't need to try to get a job at all costs. Now we heard God calling us to knock at the doors of the Church. And force those pastor search committee members to read our application. And wrestle honestly with their fears and hopes. We felt our job was to force those search committees to talk faithfully about whether calling a gay couple as pastors is anything like what being Open and Affirming means to the church they love.

When we let go of our need for fairness, what God gave us was life. It was incredibly empowering and strengthening. Life in the form of a new call to knock at church doors. And see what happened.

Not long after Christ freed us for life, a letter from a church search committee landed in our open hands. It was a rejection letter. But it wasn't like the hundred others that still lived in the top drawer of our filing cabinet. It didn't say, "We're sorry that your gifts don't match our needs." This rejection letter started with the words, "Your application brought our search process to a halt." The letter went on to say the committee thought Peter and I were almost exactly what they were looking for. Then they wrote, "With sadness, we confess that the sin of homophobia remains in us. So we cannot consider you any further." And they blessed us on our search.

It's not about fairness. It's about life. Open-handed, lying down in the grass, abundant, nothing-can-separate-us-from-the-love-of-God life. It's not about expecting fairness. It's about expecting the Creator's power and Christ's love and the Holy Spirit's breath to be with us always, no matter what life brings. Always God calls us out into that open field. To open our hands to new life.

Yesterday, during my spiritual direction with Sheila the motorcycle-riding former nun, we got onto the subject of dreams. What frees us to dream and what limits our dreaming. Sheila is usually pretty calm and cool. But yesterday it was like she was on fire. She started to preach. She said, "God only invites us to life. Look at scripture. Never, ever, ever, ever are we invited to death. Sometimes we choose death. But God never calls us there. What God always wants for us is life. What God always wants is for us to open ourselves to life."

So much is possible when we live with open hands. So much is possible when we let Christ free us from the prison of expecting the world and life and God to be fair. "We did not bargain for most of what we get in this life, but life itself is worth holding onto, and worth valuing. It is a great loss if we greet every day with clenched hands stuffed with our own devices. We will never know what is out there waiting for us if we don't extend an empty hand to the world and wait for the wonder to happen" (from Homan and Pratt, cited above).

May wonder land in our open hands . . . and take our lives where we never thought to go. Amen.