It's Not Fair! Matthew 20:1 - 16

There is a building on the campus where I work that has inscriptions running around all sides and forming a band on the frieze. It is the inscription above the front entrance that seems to garner the most attention. It states, in King James English:"Is it not lawful to do what I will with mine own?" It cites the passage from which that verse is taken, Matthew 20:15. The department contained within that building is Government and Law, so one might try to surmise the connection of the inscription with the goings on within. Campus lore has it that the donor was criticized for building such an extravagant building during the height of the depression. So, the scripture passage was not a word of wisdom to the students who would pass through the portals of the building, but a defense of one man's desire to be generous to his Alma Mater.
This week, the lectionary gives us a choice of the story where God forgives Nineveh, which really ticks off Jonah. After all, the people of Nineveh were among the worst of the worst, and God's forgiving that bunch must mean that God is liable to forgive anyone who turns to God. The parable of the vineyard owner in Matthew irritates many students mightily. They rail against the unfairness of the story, and the way in which the workers who arrived at daybreak were hoodwinked into working a full day for...oops, a full day's wages. OK, so they are angry that the workers who arrived at 5:00 PM were given a full day's wages. The vineyard owner's decision to do what he would with that which was his drives people crazy. It does not fit our economic or justice system.
I recall a chapel service while I was in divinity school. The preacher was a fellow student who was working on a quarter of clinical pastoral education; she worked many hours per week as a chaplain on the wards of the huge medical center that is at the heart of my Alma Mater's campus. She told us that there were days when she could not help but say to God, "This is not fair!" when she came upon a young person with a terminal illness, or an older person who was in constant pain. She told us that it occurred to her one day that it is we who draw a box in the dirt and proclaim that anything that falls inside the perimeter of the box counts as fair, and all that falls outside of the box is unfair. She then realized that she was the one defining what is both fair and unfair, not God. Perhaps therein lies the answer.