"Called to More: the God Who Isn't Fair"

A God Who Isn't Fair, But Is Good

Jonah 3:10–4:11  |  Matthew 20:1–16

September 20, 2026 · 17th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

This blog post was generated by AI based on the sermon manuscript and reviewed by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing. It is not the sermon manuscript itself and may differ from what was preached.

So what are we to do with a God who isn't fair? Or we could ask it the other way around: what is a God who isn't fair to do with us? This week's scriptures, a landowner who pays everyone the same and a prophet sulking under a withered bush, invite us to wrestle with exactly that.

The Quiz That Made a Hundred

When I was a religion major at Presbyterian College, I had a beloved professor named Peter Hobbie. He is one of the reasons I became a pastor, and one of the people who taught me to love the Bible all over again. In every class, he gave a quiz on the last day of the week, and he always graded it on a curve. If the highest score was a 95, that 95 became a hundred, and everybody else got bumped up the same amount. My 85 miraculously, graciously became a 90.

So one week we decided to test his fairness. If we all refused to take the quiz, the highest score would be zero, and a zero curved up to a hundred means everyone makes a hundred. We plotted all week. When the day came, Hobbie handed out the quizzes and we sat there with our pencils down, glancing around the room to make sure nobody would chicken out. He let us squirm a while. Then he said, "Congratulations, you all just made a hundred. I'm very proud of you for organizing and sticking with one another." And then he added:

"This will work exactly once."

Even in that happy ending, there was probably a student who felt a little cheated, someone who had spent the week studying anyway. That person still got a hundred, so there wasn't much to complain about. But it just didn't feel fair.

The Pot-Stirring Landowner

I think of the landowner in Jesus' parable as a pot-stirrer. He hires workers at dawn, again at nine, at noon, at three, and even at five o'clock. Then, when evening comes, he pays the last workers first. If he had paid the early birds first, they would have strolled off none the wiser. But this landowner wanted to make a scene. He wanted the all-day workers to see exactly what happened, and boy, did they throw a pity party. "You have made them equal to us!" How very dare you.

The landowner's answer is the line that stops us short:

"Are you envious because I am generous?"Matthew 20:15

Jonah's Pity Party

The lectionary pairs this parable with Jonah, another story about someone who threw the pity party of all pity parties. God called Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh. Jonah ran, spent three days in the belly of a fish (not a whale, for the record), and finally made it out and did what God asked. Then he sat back, ready for the fireworks. And God had the audacity to change his mind.

Jonah was so angry he asked to die. God raised up a bush to shade him, and Jonah was delighted. The next day God sent a worm to destroy the bush, and Jonah was angry enough to die all over again. It's funny stuff, honestly. God is messing with Jonah, gently making a point: you care about a bush you never planted, so shouldn't I care about a city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand people, and even the animals? I suspect that's why these two passages were put side by side. Sometimes we simply don't know what to do with a God who isn't fair.

Not Fair, But Good

Picture Lady Justice: scales in her hand, blindfold over her eyes. That's our image of fairness in a court of law, and I'm not saying it's a bad one. But when we think about God, we often try to turn God into a blindfolded Lady Justice, weighing everything out evenly. That is not the God we meet in the vineyard or in Jonah.

Instead of finding a God who is fair, we find a God who is good.

Here's something I learned about that last line of the parable. In the Greek, it's closer to "Is your eye evil because I am good?" To be envious is to have an evil eye, to see the world the way the unforgiving servant in last week's parable did. Remember him? He was forgiven a bazillion dollars, then walked out and threw a fellow servant in prison over fifty cents. Here at Guilford Park, we worship a God who is good. That can be genuinely offensive at times. I wrestle with it too.

Working in the Same Vineyard

When we give our money, our time, and our talents, and when all of us pitch in together, we are investing in the kingdom of a God who isn't fair but is good. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the vineyard. It doesn't matter whether you're older or younger, whether you vote one way or the other, or where you come from. We are all working in the same vineyard, and it is going to take all of us to do the work God is calling us to do.

Questions for Reflection

1. When was the last time you thought, "That's just not fair"? What did that feeling reveal about what you expected from God, or from others?
2. Have you ever been the one who received far more than you earned? How did it feel, and what did you do with it?
3. Where might you be looking at someone else's blessing with an "evil eye"? What would it look like to see it as goodness instead?
4. What do you do with a God who isn't fair? What makes that so hard to sit with?
5. How can you lean into a God who is good this week, and how might you share that goodness with someone else?