Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin with Sirach, one of the books included in Catholic bibles but not in Protestant or Jewish scripture. Sirach speaks about God as a God of justice who knows no favorites. That said, God hears the cry of the poor and oppressed: “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest until it reaches its goal.” In Luke’s Gospel Jesus speaks of two men who entered the temple to pray. One was a pharisee, a man of great learning and respect; the other was a tax collector, a man seen as a sinner beneath contempt. While the pharisee prayed in triumphant terms, thanking God for making him better than others, the tax collector throws himself on God’s mercy and admits to his being a sinner. Jesus then states: “I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

God is not fair. That’s right, you read this correctly. God is not fair: it says so right there in the first reading. “The Lord is a God of justice.” It does not say that the Lord is a God of fairness.

You see, there really is a difference. When we deal with each other in fairness we essentially treat everyone the same, but when we deal with each other in justice we treat everyone differently. When we deal in justice we give what the other person needs.

Parents know this. They (hopefully) recognize that different children have different needs. I once had a coworker who had a son and a daughter. His son was headstrong and had a thick skin. Left to his own devices he would play baseball all day and would never get within a mile of a book. He was certainly smart enough to do better in school than he did but he just didn’t see any value in studying. Vague promises from parents and teachers that he was being taught lessons that he would need later in life fell on deaf ears. My coworker recognized that his son needed almost constant reminders to read and study but that with enough “encouragement” his son would do what he needed to do. His daughter, on the other hand, loved being in school. She constantly got good grades and her friends were also top achievers. But she was also a “daddy’s girl” and lived and died on my coworker’s approval. He learned through hard experience that even the mildest criticism or correction lead immediately to tears for the rest of the day. He had two children whom he loved with his whole heart, but he knew that in disciplining his children he couldn’t be fair. The few times his son commented, “You don’t yell at her like that” he needed to explain that if he yelled at her she would dissolve into tears while if he spoke softly to him, he’d flunk out of school.

Let me give another example. During the 1960s the Green Bay Packers (an American football team) was coached by Vince Lombardi and among football fans Lombardi is a coaching legend. In his first 7 years the Packers were the best team in football for 5 of them (including the first 2 Super Bowls). Vince led with a strong work ethic but he also knew how to successfully coach his players. Paul Hornung (running back) was a tough cookie and responded best to strong criticism. Lombardi knew he could be as harsh as he needed to be and Hornung would take it in stride. But the quarterback Bart Starr looked on Lombardi as almost a father figure. Lombardi knew that any criticism of Starr needed to happen in private. Public criticism from Lombardi deeply wounded Starr. Lombardi was just and not fair.

I say this because I think we all want to be dealt with fairly by God, and we’re not. I think when we see refugees from Syria, or Afghanistan, or Somalia we cringe over their lot in life. And I believe many of us feel some level of “survivor’s guilt.” Why them and not me? I was born into a loving middle class family. I grew up at a time when I was not called to take up arms and defend by country. My health, at least to this point, has been good.

And two weeks ago I was called to the bedside of a child, not even a teenager, who was dying on my hospice. This past week a 41 year old husband and father of two from my church died of cancer.

We all recognize that these horrible events were not caused by anything they did. We don’t know why they drew those particular cards, but nobody has ever said to me “this isn’t just.” Instead we say “this isn’t fair” and they are right.

So instead of wondering why life isn’t fair, perhaps we should look to how we can make everyone’s life just. If you’ve been reading this for a while you know that I place heavy emphasis on our role in “salvation history.” In other words I reflect deeply on our role in participating in God’s desire for justice, that all of us receive the justice we deserve.

And I think this “sets the table” for what we read in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ time, like ours, creates strong societal divisions. Some people, some jobs, some neighborhoods are valued while others aren’t. And in Jesus’ time the pharisees claimed an important place. They were the “best of the best.” They were blessed. They held positions of honor because they were learned in Scripture and spent their days reading, studying and debating God’s word. Today we recognize them as the authors of the Talmud, Jewish wisdom literature.

Tax collectors, on the other hand, were despised. They were fellow Jews yet agents of the Romans, they were tasked with the role of collecting money from the working class. And if that weren’t enough, there is good reason to believe that their pay came from their ability to overcharge and keep the difference.

If you were a pharisee and entered the temple with a tax collector, you could hardly be blamed for looking down your nose on him. And indeed that’s exactly what the pharisee did. He didn’t look on his good fortune with gratitude, but with entitlement. His words dripped with arrogance: “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector.”

Meanwhile the tax collector, probably recognizing the contempt others felt toward him, said this: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

We know nothing of the background of these two men, but I think it’s safe to assume that they came from different backgrounds. The pharisee likely came from a family of some means who were able to send him to school to learn about the Torah; they sat in temple in a place of honor and everyone knew him. The tax collector likely had to scramble for a living, having no opportunity to attend schools to be a pharisee. While nearly everyone of that time aspired to be a pharisee, nobody aspired to be a tax collector.

And this is where Jesus comes in. He has no respect for the events that made the pharisee a pharisee. And (we can read this in the Gospel) Jesus had no patience for his self serving and self congratulatory prayer. Instead he recognized and praised the tax collector’s need for mercy.

For those of us who have been blessed, for those of us can be forgiven for believing our good fortune is the result of our hard work, should pay extra attention to these readings. Because God does

The pharisee could have been the hero by praying the same prayer as the tax collector. No matter who we are, no matter what we’ve been given, no matter what position we enjoy in our society, we are still in need of God’s mercy.

Why are some of us given the lion’s share of the world’s fairness while others aren’t? We don’t know, and perhaps it’s none of our business. But these readings call us, indeed demand of us, that those of us who benefit from “fairness equation” work even harder to make the world just. Sirach tells us that God is just. If we believe we are created in the image of God, doesn’t that call us to be just also?