It's not fair!

My granddaughter, Ava, is about 19 months old now and more and more intelligible words can be heard.  However she has yet to learn that four-letter word that strikes terror into a young parent's heart.  That word is "fair."  The problem is that in a two-year-old's egotistical world, fairness is "If it's not mine, it's not fair."

As the toddler reaches pre-school, we try to inject a sense of sharing with others into our child's concept of fairness.  I'll call this the "one for you, one for me" school of fairness.

Finally, as our child grows us, we try to instill a more sophisticated, quid-pro-quo sense of fairness.  We teach that if you work hard, if you follow the rules, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you will get rewarded.  And the rewards tend to be proportionate to the effort.  "An honest day's wage for an honest day's work," "You worked hard, you earned it."  

We're quite proud of this civilized approach.  In fact, one might call this concept "the American way."  While far from perfect, America has long epitomized the "land of opportunity", the road to social mobility, better than perhaps any other culture in the history of the world.

It is a fairly small leap to carry this concept from the material realm to the spiritual realm.  If I work hard, if I say the right prayers, if I obey the commandments, I earn my heavenly reward.  In fact, we often comingle the material and spiritual worlds together, assuming that our path to spiritual success is marked by our well-earned success and growing wealth here on earth.

Then we hear Jesus in this morning's Gospel.  (Mt 20:1-16)

Our valued sense of fairness isn’t at all important to Jesus.  He tells us bluntly, this is not what “the kingdom of heaven is like.”  Jesus does not want us to settle for human fairness in divvying up our finite goods.  He calls us to divine mercy and unlimited, infinite, super-generous divine love.  And each one of is promised precisely the same share of God’s love – infinite love for everyone!  No matter what we’ve done or failed to do.  We cannot earn more; we cannot earn less; we need only accept God’s generosity.  It is pure gift.

In a sense, the kingdom of God’s concept of fairness is more like nursery school than like our grown-up, adult world.  We teach our three- and four-year-olds to share with others since they obviously haven't done anything to warrant all of the toys that they have.  The toys have simply been given to them.  Similarly, God's love is generously given to us. 

We earn nothing, yet we have everything.  Having everything, we need nothing.  Needing nothing, we can share this superabundance of love with others.  We look at others not as competitors for the finite goods of this world, not as opponents whom we must overcome through hard work, but as other children of God who are loved by God and cared for by God, precisely as we ourselves are loved and cared for by God.

We look on others not as an inconvenience, a drag on society, a scourge that needs purged, but as a gift from God, one for whom the hope of eternal life shines as brightly as we pray that it shines in ourselves, as one whose right to life comes not from human laws or institutions, but from God's very hand.

As Christians, fairness is stewardship.

As Christians, fairness is preference for the poor.

As Christians, fairness is unconditional love.