DUKE UNIVERSITY CHAPEL William H. Willimon, Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry Defining Justice With Jesus September 19, 1999 Matthew 20:1-16 My colleague, Alasdair Macintyre got it right. When you talk about "justice," the real question is whose justice? All accounts of justice are subservient to some social order, some vision of the world, of what ought to be, where we're all headed, of whose in charge. Christians get our accounts of justice from Jesus. Just after telling us that the "first will be last an the last will be first" (an odd sense of justice, that one!) in this morning's gospel Jesus says, a farmer has a job to do. His vineyards are ready for harvest. So he goes downtown and hires some people, agreeing to pay them the usual daily wage. He takes them to the farm. They go to work. End of story. But if you've ever heard Jesus on a roll with stories, you know that his stories hardly ever end when we expect or as we expect. At 10 am, the farmer is back down town. He sees some guys hanging around at the unemployment office. He tells them, "Come to work for me, I'll treat you right." They go. to work in the vineyard. At noon, he is back down town. He finds a couple of people who are so puny, nobody has hired them but he says, what the heck, come to work for me and I'll treat you right. And they say, what the heck, and they go to work. At three in the afternoon, heat of day, he's back downtown. Low and behold, he discovers a couple of guys still hanging out on the corner, sharing a bottle of Ripple. Come to work. I'll give you a just wage. And they do, for where else have they got to go. At five o'clock, one hour before quitting time, he's back downtown. Now there's nobody left worth hiring, but he finds one poor soul. He signs him up, takes him to the grapes, and he works. At the end of the day, all the workers are called in and the farmer tells his foreman to pay everyone the same wage, starting with the man who got there last. There is grumbling, discontent, "Is this anyway to run a farm? Where's the justice?" In a late night dormitory Bible study at Duke, I asked the students, Now what impresses you most about this
parable? First to answer, "Here's a farmer who's never at the farm!" And she was right. What kind of farming is this? He's never at the farm! He's always on the road, back and forth downtown, wearing out his pickup. This farmer seems to be more interested in employment than in grape harvesting. Why was he so determined not to stop until everyone in town was at work on his farm? Were the grapes over ripe? Was there to be rain? We don't know. All we know is that the main action of this story is one the road, back and forth, hiring workers until, at the last, the last really were first. And Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is just like that. Like what? First day of class the professor says, "Now class, this is a course in advanced mathematics. Your entire grade will be based upon your solution of a very difficult mathematical problem. And I want you all to do well. I want everyone to get an A. So I am going to go ahead and giving you the problem. I urge you to begin work on it right away, because it is a real challenge." You do not want to happen again what happened last semester. So you set aside some time every day to do work on the problem. And it is a tough one. But you are somewhat surprised when Jane comes up to you at a party a few weeks later asking, "Didn't that math professor give us something to work on during the first class?" You can hardly believe your ears. Is she is for a big surprise! She hasn't even begun to work on the problem! "Could I come by some time and get the problem?" Jane asks. You are even more surprised when three weeks before the end of the semester, John bumps into you in the cafeteria and says, "Somebody said we were supposed to do something for that math class. I don't seem to have the problem. Could I get it from you? I plan to get started on it soon as I can." There's no way he'll get it finished! Tough luck for him. You can't be responsible for these irresponsible types. Last day of the class. You have been working most of the night before but you have finished the problem. You purchase one of those blue, see through folders to contain your work. Professors love those. You are at the head of the line to proudly hand in your folder. The professor 2
quickly glances at your work, "Good," she says, "good, looks fine. I think you have just earned yourself an A." You are a bit surprised to see Jane in line behind you. She also has her work to hand in, though it is in a red folder. The professor takes her work, glances over it as well. "Good work Jane. See? You are good in math. Look like you got an A." How did she do it? You are about to find out. Jane says to the professor, "Well, you know I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for all those afternoons that you spent with me. I've never had a professor who has been willing to spend four afternoons a week, coaching a student for hours. Thanks. You are a great teacher!" What? Then there's John. His work isn't in a folder. But there is a stack of papers in his greasy little hands. He thrusts it toward the professor. She looks at his papers and says, "John, excellent. You got the problem right, from what I can see. I'm sure you'll get an A." "Well, er, thanks professor. And I want to apologize for what my roommate said when you knocked on our door last night. See, we've never had a professor in the dorm before. What time did you get horne last night? It had to be about dawn. Thanks for all your help on the work." There are rnurrnurings of injustice in your heart. What is this? Is this any way to run a math class? You are incensed. "What's the problem?" asks the professor. "Didn't I make clear, at the beginning of this class, that I wanted all of you to make an A. You got an A, the others also got an A. What's the problem?" You look at your A. But somehow it doesn't feel like an A now that everyone has one, what with this professor and her midnight forays into the dorms and her spoon feeding everyone else. "Look at it this way," she says to you, "I'm a teacher. I teach. I want everyone to learn. They needed a bit of an extra nudge, you didn't. Why do you begrudge my generosity? Well what is right? The farmer tells the laborers "he'll do what's right." I'll tell you what's right for us, a blindfolded woman, holding scales she can't see, atop our courthouse. Scales in one hand, bloody sword in the other. That's Justitia. Impartial, impassive, uninvolved, blind Justice. Lance Ito. Let's see now, you made the highest score, oh, then you get to go to the head of the class. Let's see, you 3
have accumulated the most money, then you get the most opportunity. Dispassionate, just following the rules, objectivity. That's justice. We must be fair, which we define as we must be disinterested, impartial, nondiscriminatory, blind. Don't tell me your history, that doesn't count as we are deciding on you, just the facts, the objective facts. Yet wasn't it interesting, at one point something like 60% of all African-Americans thought OJ was innocent, and something like 60% of all white Americans thought he was guilty? And we were all looking at the same facts! Yet Jesus depicts a world where there is a new fact passionate, pushy, relentless involvement, and reaching out, and invitation. Here is justice, not blind and dispassionate, but in the invitation, "Come, I'll give you what's right." And just for fun, to show them how extravagant we are, let's pay the last, first. So we gathered for worship last Sunday, sang the hymns right, read the scripture right, prayed, preached. But something was missing. It was like we were talking to ourselves, like it was just us. Then I remembered this parable and I said to myself, "Oh, that's right, the Holy Spirit sent his regrets. Not here today. He's on the road. He's not here in the vineyard with the saved, he's downtown looking for the lost. Remember Matthew 20!" I don't think we Christians appreciate how weird Jesus was in what he said, and who he despised, whom he blessed, and how he died: She came up to me at the end of the service saying, "I was really troubled by the service today." She was wearing a Duke blue usher's robe. "Where do you get these stories that you tell in your talk?" she asked. "Stories? I guess I get them from growing up in South Carolina," I said. "Well I was really bothered by the one today," she said. "I just don't think that's anyway to treat people. I mean, if you work longer than other people, you should get paid more." "Wait a minute," I said. "That's not my story, that's from Matthew." "Matthew?" she asked. "It's in the Bible," I said. "Why are you ushering here?" I asked. 4
A "Well that tall guy over there, I'm dating him. And he needed somebody to usher today so he called me and here I am," she said. "Next question," I said, "what is your religious background?" "We went to church some when I was a kid, but I'm not anything really," she said. "Well let me tell you something. Just for your information. There is a sense in which you are the only person who got the story this morning. You found it offensive to your notion of justice. Right? Outrageous. Right? Well, just for your information, the man who told that story was later murdered for telling it. You got it. It really is an offensive, outrageous story. You got it." Last year the number of Americans in jail went over one million. The biggest, most impressive new building in downtown Durham is the city jail. We don't call it "race war," but if it were happening in Johannesburg, we would. Bertold Brecht said that sometimes the only difference between people who run banks and people who rob banks is that some of them have on black suits. Or as Paul put it, "ALL fall short of the goodness of God." Sorry, some are born well, and some are born not so well. And whether or not you will be in jail or not seems to be linked to whether or not you had a daddy at home, or you could read by the time you were thirteen but we don't call it illiteracy or poverty, we call it crime. There's no blindfolded, colorblind, impartial justice. The woman over the courthouse is a lie. In a consumer society, where people are judged by their accumulations, why are we surprised that there is widespread thievery? In a world where Presidents, when they want to stand up and do something good for the world have no other way to do it than with a bomb, am I shocked that some kid bombs a school library? In a state where the teachers educational association supports a lottery and casino gambling as the answer to school funding problems, why am I surprised that kid comes in with a gun and expects to get something for nothing? Christians have the burden of believing that our God did not stay aloof, blindfolded to human misery, sword and scales in hand. Our God came back to us, even when we tried, convicted, and executed him, he came back to us. Though we would love to give up on certain people, we can't, because we have stories about a God who doesn't, who keeps burning the pavement back and forth downtown, 5
relentlessly determined not to knock off work until everyone is done right. 6