It’s not fair! And it turns out even babies know when things are not fair.
Ira Glass on This American Life tells the story about the tattle phone some preschool teachers installed in their classroom. They got tired of adjudicating injustices all the time. After the phone was in, the next kid who came to say that their friend had just growled at them for no reason – “Tell it to the phone.”
When the child picked up the phone, a recording came on and said – “Hey there, you’ve reached the tattle phone. OK, tell me what happened after the beep. Tell me the whole story.”
The phone got constant use. Eli told me a lie. Seamus isn’t sharing with me. Nathan farted in my face and didn’t say excuse me.
Apparently, just telling the story was enough. Because the kids would tell the tattle phone, then go back to playing – many times with the same person they had just complained about.
My point in telling you this story is what you can see anytime you are around young children – even at a very young age, we are exquisitely attuned to what’s fair.
Where does this come from? Is it learned or is it hardwired? To find out, the researchers Brosnan and de Waal designed an experiment using capuchin monkeys and later gave a TED talk on what happens when you pay monkeys unequally.
They put pairs of monkeys in adjacent cages where they could see each other, and trained to take turns giving small granite rocks to their human handler. Each time a monkey relinquished a rock, she would receive a piece of cucumber as a reward.
Capuchins love cucumbers, so both monkeys played the game of handing over their rocks and receiving a cucumber with enthusiasm.
But then, the handler changed things up. After a few fair and even exchanges, the handler rewarded the first monkey with a chunk of cucumber as usual, but gave the second monkey a grape — in the monkey world a grape is the equivalent of fine wine or caviar.
Seeing that the game had changed for the better, the first monkey perked up, and very eagerly handed over another rock, expecting to receive a grape, too. But no — the handler gave her another piece of cucumber. To make things worse, the handler then gave the second monkey another grape for free!
The first monkey hurled the cucumber at the handler. She banged on the bars and threw her rocks in every direction. She made furious gestures at her grape-eating companion.
Friends, this is not far from what I have seen with my own children and grandchildren – and I bet you have too. We want things to be fair.
But if anyone is going to get it better – honestly, we want that to be us.
So when God asks Jonah: Is it right for you to be angry that I’m compassionate with these evil people? His answer is yes. It is right to be angry. They have done really bad things. They should be punished.
Plus, I have not done really bad things. I should be rewarded. And if not in this life, surely in the next.
It turns out though that God is far more concerned with what is needed and not so much with what is fair.
Yes, the Assyrians are violent and wicked, they are also more. They are a “great city”, God says, but they “don’t know their right hand from their left.” They are a lost and broken people – and they have listened to what Jonah had to say. Now the question is not what they deserve, but what they need. And what they need is compassion and better leadership.
It’s a bit humorous with Jonah as he throws a tantrum and sits under a tree waiting for God to come to his senses and strike the Assyrians down, and then God shows him compassion as well. It’s a very well told story.
But it’s not so funny when it comes to the vineyard laborers. This one hits closer to home as we can hear echoes of the fight for fair pay – so it puts our hackles up a bit more.
But what if the concern here is about something far more fundamentally human-and that is for everyone to be included, to belong – and for everyone to have enough.
What if the vineyard is a stand in for the field of relationally, as Cynthia Bourgeault puts it. And that God’s primary concern is that of extending the invitation to come be part of that relational field – to belong and to have what is needed. Isn’t that fundamental to what we want, really? To belong? To be invited in? To have enough?
And at our best, we want that for others as well. We can outgrow the tattle phone, we can grow out of looking into other people’s bowls to verify that we have more, and instead check to make sure that they have enough.
It turns out that a denarii, which was the pay the vineyard workers all received, is subsistence pay – it’s enough for the needs of the day. Enough for the day. Give us, this day, our daily bread.
There is no room for envy – honestly, in the mess we are in, with climate change and a tottering democracy, there is no room for envy – we cannot afford it. What we can do is live more and more in this relational field we call the kingdom of heaven where God’s values reign – compassion, generosity, making room for people to change, and welcoming latecomers without prejudice.
A friend just told me she regretted her last presidential vote. Having to preach on this parable helped me refrain from grinding my teeth, helped me refrain from saying I told you so, helped me open my arms and my heart even wider and say, “tell me more.”
May we follow Jesus and lead our lives with kindness, compassion, generosity and welcome. Life isn’t fair, and the truth is that God may not be fair either. Instead, God overflows with grace and abundance, ensuring that everyone belonging, and everyone has enough.
