All Saints, Blackheath
16 August 1998
Trinity X
Natural Justice
Philippians 1: 1-11
Matthew 20: 1-16
One phrase which we seem to have heard a lot about quite recently is contained in the two words "Natural Justice".
People use it and appeal to it when they feel hard done-by. It's the adult version of that well-known childish whine "Mummy! That's not fair!"
Let's note in passing that the fact that such a cry is childish is neither a reason for dismissing it out of hand or accepting it uncritically. Children sometimes show remarkably astute insight into the real nature of what is confronting them; but at the same time the fact that they are children suggests that they lack the depth of experience necessary to distinguish right from wrong in any but the most simple cases.
Certainly the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard runs quite contrary to the grain of what most people think of as Natural Justice. If those who have worked twelve hours are to be paid no more than those who have laboured only one hour then the National Union of Vineyard Workers will no doubt have something to say about it!
And quite rightly so. That's the Union's job: to see that those they represent get a fair deal.
However, because the complaint of the disaffected workers lies at the very heart of the parable which Jesus told, and was not some peripheral detail that might be ascribed to a later editor, as is sometimes the case with the New Testament, we have to fact the fact that the way God looks at things, and the way we see them "by nature" (that is, using our own intellects apart from what God has revealed to us about himself) may, from time to time yield very different and contradictory results.
This fact should remind us in its turn that the faith which we believe and profess, the Catholic Faith which comes to us from the Apostles and is enshrined in Creeds and Articles and Formularies, is a revealed faith.
So whilst we can get to know a little, very little, about God by studying the natural world; and whilst we can get to know a little more by studying his ultimate creation in his own image, man in other words, and ourselves in particular; and whilst we can learn something about God's will from the sense of right and wrong which most people have shared to a very large extent from the earliest times -- Natural Justice in other words -- all these sources of information pale into insignificance beside what God has revealed to us about himself.
This revelation, faithfully recorded in the scriptures of Old and New Testament, clarified and interpreted by the prophets of God's Chosen People, and incorporated into their culture and art, was only finally revealed, perfectly and personally in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, begotten of the Father before all worlds but incarnate fo us in the womb of Mary his mother. Born, living, dying, rising and ascending for us men and for our salvation over the course of some 30 years at the beginning of our present era in an obscure province of the Roman Empire.
This truth about God, which we call the Incarnation, contains within itself a sufficient number of surprises (or stumbling-blocks as the bible calls them) to warn us that any ideas we may have gotten about God from our study of Nature, even human nature and particularly our own human nature, may well be in need of correction. The likelihood, after all, of being plumb right and reaching the truth about an infinite and perfect God by looking at ourselves (who are neither perfect, nor infinite: at least I speak for myself) is negligible.
The greatest saints, after all, have said at the end of their lives that they still know next to nothing about God himself, despite the fact that they've spent most of their lives in communion with him: so it's hardly surprising, is it if we discover that our notions of Natural Justice and childish cries like "It's not fair!" don't get us very far in discovering the truth about God.
For the very point that Jesus makes in this parable is that there is only one "chief end" of Man, and that is God himself. "Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee" said St Augustine; and the Shorter Catechism defines the Chief end of man as being "to glorify God and enjoy him for ever".
So the fact that, as Jesus said, "the first shall be last and the last first" is not some kind of elaborate semantic con-trick being played on unfortunate vineyard workers to deprive them of their rights, but a statement of what must logically be the case in the light of what God has revealed about himself to us. God is one and indivisible. He cannot give ten percent of himself to one man, and thirty percent to another and eighty percent to a third on the grounds that they have somehow "merited" it. It's either all or nothing. As someone said in another context "there's no damn merit about it!"
Those who had borne the burden and heat of the day were, of course, at liberty to refuse their reward and throw his denarius back into their employer's fact and stomp off in a rage growling "it's not fair!" That goes for God's gift, too. Indeed Hell is probably full of people who spend all eternity complaining the God has short-changed them. "It's not fair!" is a cry which, though it may begin in the nursery certainly doesn't end at the grave.
If we want to go to Hell, then, there's no surer way of getting there than by insisting that God should give us our (supposed) "Natural Rights". For apart from the free grace which he offers us through the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our only "rights" are those of death and judgement.
Do you remember the words of the Baptism service?:
Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin and... none can enter into the kingdom of God except he be... born anew of Water and the Holy Ghost... I beseech you to call upon God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ that of his bounteous mercy he will grant to this Child that thing which by nature he cannot have
The late twentieth-century church has gone so far down the line of trying to make things easier for people to accept that we've ended up by replacing theologically revealed truth with nursery soundbytes and slogans like "natural justice" and "it's not fair!"
As a result we have produced a whole generation of Christian illiteracy, even amongst seasoned churchgoers, through which people fondly imagine that they can accurately discern the Mind of the Maker by gazing steadfastly into their own.
However, we may rest assured that, like the disgruntled labourers in the vineyard discovered at the end of the day, those who put their faith in natural justice rather than trusting in the open-handedness of the Lord of the Vineyard are certain to be in for a nasty shock when it comes to the end of the day!