There is one God to pray to | Calling people in |

Friends,

Whew! I'm through the bulk of the year's travel. Nothing more til the end of October.

I love travel. And it is exhausting. I'm really looking forward to several weeks at home.

-Liz

God is not fair. God is mercy.

In Matthew 20:1-16, the workers who are hired in the morning, at lunch time, in the afternoon, and in the evening are offered, and accepted, the same promised pay. As the workers leave they are each given what they were promised, but those who started early are upset that they did not get more. They worked many more hours than the others.

And the fact is, it was not fair. I suppose a labor specialist would focus on the fact that each person agreed to the deal, but I sympathize with the early morning workers: the whole scheme was not fair to them. If the story suggests that earth is the vineyard, and the landowner is God, then the story clearly makes the point that God is more concerned with mercy than with fairness.

This is not the story of wealthy people. A denarius, which is the typical day-laborer pay, is about what a person needs to survive in the first century. The economy for the large majority of people was that if they worked, they got a denarius, and a denarius would buy enough food for a day. The days you work, you eat.

This is the same argument we make about many things in our culture. Some who are opposed to forgiving unjust student loan debt is simply this: I paid mine, so you should pay yours. It is more important to be fair than to be merciful. A complaint among homeless adults about the Housing First programs is that people who had been homeless and not successfully treated their mental health or addictions issues were first in line. It was not fair that someone without a job would get subsidized housing before someone with a job. People wanted it to be fair, not merciful.

It is a large part of the immigration argument. There are rules for legal immigration and some (small number of) people follow those rules. It is not fair that some people get to live here by coming outside of the legal process.

What fair the "it should be fair" argument misses is all the ways fairness presumes we start with the same opportunities. Student debt for my $10,000/year school costs is completely different than student debt for $40,000/year school costs. Housing first is meant to serve people who cannot put themselves together, not for those that are capable of working. Most people who immigrated to the US illegally did not actually have a legal path to get here. The workers in Jesus story may have had a sick kid, an injury, or some other reason they could not get to the field for the early start.

Honestly for all of these cases, I'm good with the message of our gospel: God chooses mercy over what is fair.

But this is also a story of who receives how much of God's grace. People who grow up in the faith, and people who turn to faith in midlife, and people who turn to God on their deathbed, the reward is the same for all. One denarius, in this reading, is eternal life. It is full membership in the family of God. It is the reward for coming to full understanding of God's love, even if we have rejected the good news for years.

Which is fine, I certainly believe that.

Except that now, some people who helped us get to the place we are politically are changing their minds. People who are anti-immigrant are finding that an immigrant they know and love is being treated poorly by ICE. People who want forced birth laws are finding they cannot get treatment for an ectopic pregnancy. People who don't want the US to offer international AID are finding that deaths resulted from those choices. People who thought we would stay out of forever wars are finding that promise was not true.

People who were wrong are changing their minds. Deciding that the government we have is not working. And it is so frustrating because all the signs that this government would be ineffective have been there from the beginning. I don't want to say alleluia, welcome to the good news, I want to say where the hell have you been?

I am the worker that arrived in the morning and I have pretty significant judgement of those who didn't make the effort to get to work with me. I know, of course, that the way to change the system is for people who have supported the corrupt system to change their minds and ask for something new. But I can't figure out how they can have been so wrong for so long!

But whatever I want, the good news is clear. I am to welcome those who show up, no matter how late. God offers mercy. God is not fair. We each get one denarius, we each get the Kingdom of God, as each individual makes a choice for better world.

What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? How are you being here in your particular place? Just reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
​

Christians of all stripes pray to the same God. It can make we wonder what prayers does. But it should not keep me from praying.

Ted Talk on how to call people "in" rather than call people "out". The goal is not reprimand, but to help people join with us. (14 minutes)

Please forward this email to others who might be interested. If you got this from someone else, use the button below to subscribe to the free Act! Be Church Now email newsletter.