Is God Fair?

We wrapped up our Bible study series on the parables of Jesus last week – a great chance to read and explore the stories Jesus tells to teach about the ways of God. We found certain themes repeating themselves over and over again: God’s ways are not our ways. God’s justice isn’t quite how we would do it. The stories didn’t always lead to what we thought was fair. And there was just way too much grace being given to people who didn’t deserve it. But at another level, we knew we needed that grace ourselves, and we kept coming back for more stories of this risky, generous, life-giving God.

All the same, there’s stories, and then there’s real life. In real life, we’d prefer a clearer system of reward and punishment. You can’t structure a justice system on radical grace. You can’t manage your money with rampant generosity. You can’t make longterm plans on ‘things turn out differently than you expect.’ It’s all well and good to claim these things about God, but we’re faced with a serious conundrum: What will our lives look like, if we follow this God?

So no wonder people have tried to insert their own values into their understanding of God. One way, of course, and not a good way, is the prosperity gospel: the message that following God brings real, tangible blessings to our lives. The ‘gospel of health and wealth,’ as it’s known, teaches that having faith will lead to material blessings, to financial success and good health. Giving to particular ministries helps also, usually the ministries connected to the preacher.

We can name names of prominent televangelists and others at the forefront of this theology, many of whom enjoy unlimited authority and considerable personal wealth as a natural outcome of their ministry. A few years ago, there was an incredible story in New York of a pastor in a Brooklyn church getting robbed by armed robbers right in the middle of the service. But what was more incredible was the value of what the robbers took. From the pastor and his wife they removed chains, rings, watches, and other jewelry totaling about $1 million. The story quickly went from ‘this poor pastor got robbed’ to ‘how did they get all of that???’ Bishop Bling, as he became known, turned out to be someone with decades of experience fleecing his congregations, people who trusted his teachings that God would reward their giving. Not exactly someone living out Jesus’ example and teaching of self-sacrifice and loving relationship. I’m sure those faithful people in the pews believed wholeheartedly that one day God would bless them just like their pastor.

That’s an extremely extreme example. But it is easy for all of us to think that God will somehow reward us for doing right. The Bible can become a kind of contract between God and us: if we have faith, then God will reward us. God wants us to be happy and healthy, and if we do the right things, we will be. After all, that’s how our world works, or at least, how we think it should work.

A theologian and writer named James Fowler wrote a book years ago called Stages of Faith, exploring faith through the lens of developmental psychology. Just as we grow and change over time in our emotional and social development, so too Fowler noted that we grow and change in our faith, and how we understand God and how God acts in our lives. From the child’s imaginative faith to the heroic sacrificial faith of the great saints, all of us progress through identifiable stages – though the path isn’t always linear and one-way. Just as we can regress emotionally, we can regress in our faith, or we can find ourselves in uncomfortable transition between one stage and another in different aspects of our lives. Suddenly what we’d understood to be true of God no longer lines up with our experience. We might be thrown into crisis, with an image of God that no longer fits who we are and how we see the world. At times like this, we’re faced with a choice: retreat into an earlier safe-feeling idea, regardless of whether it still makes sense; abandon our faith altogether; or grow.

One of the stages of faith is what Fowler calls literal faith, where we bargain with God – where we understand God to be one who rewards us when we’re good and punishes us when we’re bad. It’s an understanding that works well until it doesn’t – till God seems to be more unpredictable and less reliable than we’d thought. Because it doesn’t take much living before we see that bad people get away with things without being punished. And even more obviously, it becomes clear that no matter how good we think we are, we’re not always rewarded in just the way we hope. Bad things, sometimes a lot of bad things, happen to good people. There’s a whole lot of sermons to preach on just that topic alone – this is a hard stage, and it’s one we can find ourselves in over and over again.

Today’s gospel finds the disciples in that situation – and in one of those crisis points. All has been well, following Jesus, and they can feel the momentum building. Now they’re on the road to Jerusalem, and great things are ahead, they can feel it. But first they must travel through Samaria, and those obnoxious Samaritans don’t receive them well. Shall we zap them with a thunderbolt? the disciples ask Jesus. No (you idiots), he responds. Oh, you can hear them thinking. But I thought we were on the road to Jerusalem to claim your power. People can’t be nasty to us now – we’ve got the power! Let’s use it! After all, what use is traveling with God if we can’t zap the bad guys? No, Jesus says. And they move on.

So then some of them start negotiating with Jesus. We’re behind you all the way, man. You’re it, you’re the thing, we’re sure of that. We’ve just got this list of terms we need to go over with you. It’ll only take a second. No, Jesus says. No no no no. Either you go with me or you don’t. He does no bargaining, makes no promises to them in return. There’s no, ‘Come with me and you’ll get to zap the bad guys,’ or ‘Come with me and claim the kingdom,’ or ‘Come with me and make your fortune.’ It’s simply, follow me. Are you coming? And off he goes, not looking to see if they’re following or not.

Those poor disciples, always the example of what not to do. But I identify with them, for sure. We would rather have the bargain, I think. We would rather say, ok, God, I’ll follow, I’ll live the Christian life, and in return, I know that you will ____. Fill in the blank: land me the job I really want; make me well again; protect my kids; whatever it might be. More than jewelry; we long for real, good, true things, with all our hearts. And yet God makes none of those promises. God’s only real promise is, I will be with you.

Any of us who have been parents have had to utter those sad but familiar words to our kids: Life isn’t fair, honey. Live long enough and it becomes clear that fortune is capricious and we’re never really in control of the outcomes. And yet we still cling to the idea that God will do it differently – it’s like we revert to being children in our hopes of assurance in a risky world. Yet scripture is filled with stories and examples and teachings that say, it’s not like that. God doesn’t promise to make it all work out our way. God doesn’t operate according to our terms. God doesn’t promise us goodies and security and all that our hearts desire. Instead, God promises to be with us. God promises relationship – love and companionship that is more than any particular outcome we could have in mind. God promises good, God’s good, good that is beyond what we can ask or imagine. That’s what life abundant means – life that is fuller and richer in the living of it, concerned not with holding on to what we have and want but rather to the deeper love that is offered to us.

There’s a famous poem that was quoted by King George VI in his Christmas address at the beginning of WWII: The poet asks for a light to go safely into the unknown, and the response is 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’ For all that we protest, we know it to be true. May we find ourselves ready to respond to that simple invitation, ‘Follow me’ – ready to move further up and further in. Amen.