Community Parson: Fair is good: but God is not fair

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Fair is good: but God is not fair

Proper 20-A; Sept. 20, 2014

Exodus 16:2-15

Psalm 105

Philippians 1:21-20

Matthew 20:1-16

God is the only Landlord

To whom our rents are due.

God made the earth for everyone

And not for just a few.

The four parts of creation --

Earth, water, air, and fire --

God made and ranked and stationed

For everyone's desire.[i]

The text of our prayer after communion comes from the Iona Community. In it, we ask God for the ability to live fully to the glory of God, and that we do that within the two natures of our lives in God: “both as inhabitants of earth, and citizens of the commonwealth of heaven.” In the commonwealth of heaven, God is indeed the only landlord – it is God’s earth we inhabit, and God’s earth is filled with God’s glory – God’s earth fairly sparkles with divinity. God’s blessings are freely given and available to all.

Iona is an island in Scotland, and hasn’t Scotland been all over the news this week. The vote for Scottish independence goes back to something that happened 300 years ago – around the same time the English colonies here in North American were beginning to agitate for our separation from the same imperial power. From what I can tell the pro-independence Scots (and many of the others, too) wanted their homeland to be more of a commonwealth, a place where resources were distributed more equitably, and where they had more of a say in where those resources went. It sounds like many Scots want to decide for themselves where the manna drops, and who determines just what is a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”

But it seems like from the story from Exodus, and from the parable from Matthew, that fairness is not God’s concern. Even the mean and grumbly Israelites get all the manna they can eat. Even the shirker ne’er-do-well gets as much in his wages as the virtuous worker who has born the heat of the day. In “the commonwealth of heaven” we do not get to call the shots. We don’t get a vote for independence and income redistribution. We get what God gives us, and miraculously, it is all that we could ever want for, and more.

I think this parable of the landlord ranks right up there with the parable of the prodigal son for the teachings of Jesus that make the most people mad. This is just not fair, and for those of us for whom the world mostly works the way we want it to, we want it to be fair. Fair is good.

But: God does not give the workers, or the grumbling Israelites, what is fair. God gives them what they need. God is the only landlord – or vineyard owner. It is God’s commonwealth in which we hold our citizenship, God’s earth we inhabit, God’s house in which we dwell.

Yesterday I attended the Diocesan Anti-Racism training, the first to be held here since the General Convention voted in the year 2000 that all of us should, and would, deal with what we called “the sin of racism.” There is so much to learn about how being white privileges us in all parts of our lives, about how the very structures of “business as usual” keep the American descendants of African slaves structurally impoverished, kept in a lesser level of citizenship, always a day late and a dollar short of achieving full participation in our society. About how this is not merely “prejudice” but about disadvantage institutionalized over generations. If we play fair, by the rules, racism ensures that there will always be people late to the game, working one hour to our eleven, and it will always be wrong for them to get the same wages that we do.

It is scandalous that God, apparently, does not play fair. That God, apparently, wants to short-change us out of our hard-earned goods. Indeed, why work at all, if Mr. X down the street gets as much for an hour as I do for “bearing the burden of the day and the scorching heat?”

But there is something funny about generosity: the more you give away, the more you have. The vineyard in the parable, the manna from heaven, the love parents have for each of their 6 children: the measure of anything really important is that it is not a zero sum game. Mr. X’s gain is not my loss.

And a good thing too. Not a moment too soon. I might want to think of myself as that virtuous “bear the burden of the day” worker. But let’s be honest: aren’t there things we all forget? Connections we fail to make? Aren’t we always a day late and a dollar short to the commonwealth of heaven? And when we get there, isn’t there always enough to go around?

[i] Tune: Wir Pflugen und wir streuen "We plough the fields and scatter" (MIDI): A grand old Anglo-Catholic Socialist hymn, based on Charles Dalmon's "St George for Merrie England". Ken Leech has revised this version.

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.