It's Not Fair!

"It's not fair!"  You don't actually find the words in the text, but they would certainly make an excellent sidebar to the story the Lord told.  A landowner needed people to work on his farm.  He went to the place where the day laborers gathered and hired a group, telling them he would pay them the standard rate.  At various times during the day he returned to the manpower facility and hired more workers.  There was no contract, he simply told them, "whatever is right I will give you."  The workers had to trust him to do right.  The last batch of workers he hired showed up at the farm just one hour before quitting time.  
At the end of the day the employer lined up his workers.  He first paid those who had only worked an hour.  They must have been overjoyed when they received a full-day's pay.  The average day-laborer of the time lived a hand to mouth existence.  What they could earn in a day was sufficient to support life for a day.  These men, because no one had hired them in the morning, faced the prospect of a hungry night, but here it was: a whole day's pay!  Those who had worked all day, observing that the workers who had barely broken a sweat were paid a day's wage, naturally figured that they would be paid more.  No wonder when they were paid the same they "grumbled at the land owner."   
You read it for yourself.  It is a story of grace.  What the workers took home was not determined by how hard or long they worked, but by the graciousness of the landowner.  "Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?"
Inherent in the concept of grace is unfairness-or at least the perception thereof.  If you are getting more than you earned that is wonderful.  If you perceive that you are not getting a fair shake . . .
People look at a passage of scripture like John 3:16
, the passage we are looking at this Sunday morning at CBC, with its "whosoever believeth," and say "That's not fair.  You mean to tell me that this person with all the bad things-really bad things-they have done can be forgiven just by their believing?"   Yes, that is what I mean.  It appears to me that is what Jesus meant when he told the thief on the cross "Today you will be with me in Paradise."  (Luke 23:43) Or what Paul said to the Philippian jailer in reply to his question about salvation, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, and your household."  (Acts 16:31)
It's not fair, but it is wonderful.
Stay tuned.

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