Non-Labor Day

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fairness, Labor Day, pandemic, responsibility, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, workers

I have often thought that the holiday we celebrate today is named incorrectly because it sounds like just the opposite of what the intention is. The truth is that this holiday truly was initiated to protest unfair and unsafe working conditions for adults and even young children toward the end of the 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution. There were many violent events in different cities that led to the idea of a “workingmen’s holiday” until Congress passed an act making Labor Day a law, signed by President Grover Cleveland on June 28, 1894.

Many of us have memories of history lessons in high school where names and terms like Eugene Debs, the Pullman Railway strike, or the Haymarket Riot of 1886 strike a chord. The story is often not as clear as the title, however, and the struggle for fairness practices overlooked as we eat our picnic foods and celebrate the end of the summer vacation season.

This year is different. There should be no large gatherings in parks or on beaches. We cannot celebrate in the same way because businesses are closing down and many more people find themselves unemployed by the day. The situation will not change until the virus which is ravaging the world is conquered. That will not happen until all people come to understand that we are each responsible for the health of all of us. Our “work” now is to care enough for the whole to discipline ourselves, to follow the instructions set out by health officials while waiting for a vaccine to be conceived and approved to end the pandemic.

My prayer for this day is that we will all come to recognize that this “work” is necessarily shared by all of us and it will be a united effort or we will fail. I am reminded of a song. We know it. It goes like this:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…

Envious?

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fairness, generosity, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There’s a great lesson in today’s gospel. We may need to dig deep for the total honesty needed to admit how we would feel in the situation, even if the feeling was just a twinge. If that were the case we would know that we were at least on the right path. It’s one of those lessons that we need to really encounter – not just to read about – in order to know for sure how we would feel, but even speculating on it begins the process of self-scrutiny.

The story is the parable of the workers in the vineyard, where some were hired in the early morning and worked all day. Some found work only for the last work-hour before quitting time. When it was time to collect wages at the end of the day and those who had worked all day got the same amount of money that those who worked just one hour were paid, there was lots of consternation and grumbling because the first people who got their pay were the last hired and they got the agreed upon wage. The natural conclusion would have been that those who had worked all day would get more…Not so! They got the agreed-upon wage.

How would you feel if you had toiled all day in the sun picking grapes and expected a bonus because you knew that those who had been hired last got what you had agreed upon in the morning? We could argue that the actions of the vineyard owner were not “fair” but would lose the argument if we had already known and agreed on the amount coming to us.

Think about it this way however. What if you had a family and were standing around in the hot sun all day begging God to let someone hire you so you could buy food for tomorrow for your children? Or what if you had looked and looked for work and this was the only job available and just for an hour? Does that help?

How ever we look at it, we ought to ask ourselves the question that the owner of the vineyard asked the discontented workers: Are you envious because I am generous? And don’t just theorize…Dig deep for how you would feel. Then consider how blessed we are to have a generous God who knows what is best for us to help us grow into our best selves.

What’s Fair?

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fair, fairness, generosity, generous, God's way, Gospel, Jesus, justice, Philippians, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vineyard, worker

The parables of Jesus often find us scratching our heads or grumbling about the outcome of the stories. This weekend’s gospel is one of the more familiar distressing examples. It’s that perplexing story of the workers in the vineyard who were paid what had been agreed upon at the beginning of the day. Fine, right? No, not really, since those who had been hired just an hour before the end of the workday, because no one had offered them work until then, got the same pay as those who had worked all day.

How are we able to make this a story of justice? It’s impossible really, but here’s where the reading from Isaiah comes in: “My thoughts are not your thoughts”, God says, “nor are my ways your ways.” We think everything should be fair. The person who cuts the pie must do so judiciously so that no one gets a bigger piece than anyone else. But sometimes some of the people don’t even get a bite, never mind a smaller piece! The workers who had been hired for the last hour were also probably standing out in the hot sun, hoping for someone to come and hire them so they could feed their family that day. And so God’s way prevailed.

So what is fair? Does it always mean everyone gets the exact same treatment or remuneration for the same circumstance? Or could it be that each person, being a unique reflection of the divine, should be considered individually according to need? We have been amazingly generous as a country over the past several weeks, reaching out to those affected by hurricanes or fires. People have given their time, their talent and their treasure to assure that anyone in need can receive as much help as can be given.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, all the time, we might be willing to fling open our hearts to those in need without stinting – as if everyone had a right to as much as everyone else? Isn’t that how we would always want God to treat us? Paul’s last line to the Philippians today calls them to “conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel.” Perhaps we ought to try to remember that challenge ourselves as we listen to Jesus in the gospel today asking us, “Are you envious because I am generous?”

Me, Envious?

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a place of abundance, comparison, competition, fairness, God is love, Jesus, Matthew, new paradigm, parable, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vineyard

Today we have that great but difficult parable of the workers in the vineyard. (MT 20:1-16) The ones who have worked all day are last in line to get their pay and see those who have been only working for an hour getting what they themselves had been promised for the whole day’s work. It seems they are excited wondering how much more they will get than the agreed upon amount. What a surprise when they receive exactly what they were promised in the beginning! They are, to say the least, not happy. Exclamations like, “It’s not fair!” come to mind. Once again Jesus is trying to wake people up to a different way of living. The core of the lesson is in the landowner’s question to the disgruntled workers: Are you envious because I am generous?

Are we happy at the good fortune of others or are we always comparing whose piece of pie is bigger or who got the most notice for the job we did together? This is truly a hard saying for those of us for whom this flies in the face of the work ethic with which we were raised. But it’s time for a new paradigm! If we come to recognize that all is gift in our lives, we won’t be spending time on “tit-for-tat” living or evaluation of whether or not everything is fair. If we come from a place of abundance in our living rather than from scarcity we will quickly learn that life is not a competition but, as one of my housemates sees it, a huge sandbox where we all learn to play together sharing everything with anyone in need. If we live in the conviction that God is Love, we will find ourselves embraced in a universe of care where we understand that whatever we have, as long as we have God, our lives are always enough.

What’s Fair?

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fairness, generosity, generous, Jesus, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vineyard, workers

I’ve often heard the sentence, “All’s fair in love and war.” I can’t say that I ever thought about it much but this morning I wonder how that could be true in war. There are so many atrocities happening now in the world in places where “war” is being played out while not even declared as such. Is even “the rule of law” in conflict even fair? And what about love? People bandy that term around and often use it as a reason to take advantage or manipulate someone as if s/he were property. Real love, the example of which Jesus came to give us, is never like that. Real love is poured out in generosity spilling over the loved one in waves that never ebb. It’s manifested in all sorts of ways, mundane and heroic.

This morning Jesus is talking about generosity (MT 20:1-16) in a story that “hits us where it hurts” – in the pocketbook. It’s the parable about the workers in the vineyard who’ve been working all day and who, upon seeing those who only worked an hour because no one had hired them for the day, are expecting more than the agreed upon wage that they saw was paid to the latecomers. Imagine (or just read about) their reactions when they received just what they had agreed upon in the morning – the same amount that the latecomers had received. Jesus is trying to teach lessons about both justice and love here. He gave the early birds the fair wage that they had agreed upon and had there not been those others who showed up (were invited) at the last hour everyone would have gone home happy. The question that Jesus asks them as they grumbled is one we might ask when we are faced with what sometimes seems unfair:

Are you envious because I am generous?

I think we’re invited this morning to think about God’s preference for generosity over fairness in the way we treat others. Fairness is definitely better than stinginess but sometimes giving just a little bit more is good for the giver as well as the receiver. Going out of ourselves (not just with money, of course) can be a letting go of ego that opens our hearts and minds, changing our world just a little bit more each time.