Brief synopsis of the readings: The prophet Isaiah calls us to seek God and call to him. He suggests we turn away from wicked thoughts and toward God for mercy “who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus told his disciples a parable about a landowner who goes out in the morning to hire day laborers. He found some workers and they agreed on their wage. Several times during the day the landowner hired laborers for the rest of the day, clearly fewer hours than the first group of laborers. After the work was done the landowner went to pay his laborers. To those who worked only a few hours he gave them a full day’s wages. Seeing this the other workers believed that they would be paid more than was agreed to as they had worked more hours. But everyone received the same amount, regardless of how long they worked. The full day workers then complained to the landowner as they worked harder and longer than the rest. The landowner then reminded them that they were paid what was agreed to and they should not complain about the landowner’s generosity. Jesus then concluded by stating “the last will be first and the first will be last.”

You know, some days it just doesn’t pay to be generous, or to put it more succinctly, no good deed goes unpunished. I know many of us look on today’s Gospel and think the landowner should have paid the same hourly wage thereby giving the full day workers more money than the part day workers. Others of us look and say that nobody received less than they were promised and if the landowner decided to act with generosity, why should anyone complain?

Before my father in law died a few years ago he appointed me the successor trustee of his estate. It involved hours with brokerage houses and one of the attorneys I worked withI joked that when it came to dividing the estate we needed to think of fairness as “the F word.”

Anyone who does this job will tell you that recipients will often tie their value as a person or their relationship to their loved ones to the amount they receive. They argue that they should receive their “fair share,” regardless of what is fair to the others. Otherwise mature adults transform into bickering children and longstanding relationships fray or even break (and in fairness this didn’t happen with my father in law’s estate).

I believe these readings point to the difference between fairness and generosity and that distinction can be elusive. While fairness calls for an equal distribution of finite resources, generosity calls us to something more divine, something…infinite.

We can all agree that the landowner was generous with the part time workers and he clearly had the wealth to be generous. But generosity can often seem random and we go nowhere good when we expect or demand generosity from others. Restaurant servers, and indeed anyone who works for tips, can describe the randomness of what they receive and it often bears little or no resemblance to their work. Seasoned workers will tell you it’s best to be philosophical and not count on what they deserve.

We don’t often think in these terms, but generosity and mercy are, by definition, unfair. Unless we have limitless amounts of money, giving more to one person (friend, child, server) means giving less to another even if the recipients aren’t aware. As a matter of fact, Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew Chapter 6 that when they offer generosity they should do it secretly so that only God sees it. It’s told in a larger context of not bragging but it also has the practical effect of not announcing the unfairness of it all.

But what do these readings tell us about God and our relationship with him? When Isaiah tells us that God’s ways are not our ways is that a recognition that we shouldn’t seek God’s ways? Or is it a challenge, an inspiration? Challenge accepted.

We all know that God’s generosity and mercy are limitless and I believe we don’t live our best discipleship when we attempt to limit God’s generosity. We’ve known for our entire history that God’s greatest generosity lies in his gift of salvation, a wage that is never earned but is freely given to all who desire it.

Alas, too often we try to decide for ourselves what’s fair and what isn’t and we try to make God’s ways our ways even when it comes to salvation. When the Church designates someone a saint we make a statement that this person is indeed saved and it’s good for us to pray with them. But we’ve never declared that anyone is excluded from salvation. We believe that God’s generosity and mercy are above our pay grade.

But older Catholics (and even some newer ones) remember that certain sins were designated as moral sins, even something as simple as missing mass meant condemnation. I once gave a talk to a group of Sunday School (CCD in the Catholic world) teachers and I made a passing reference to artificial birth control. A neighbor of mine was in the audience and she believed that salvation would be denied to any couple who used artificial means to limit conception. She was furious with me and after my talk informed me that she wouldn’t report me this time but that I was on notice.

As you probably know I rarely pass an opportunity to explore someone’s belief (and maybe inject a little mischief). And so I posed this question: “I know that you and your husband don’t practice artificial birth control and I know that you’ve devoted your life to accepting God’s offer of salvation. But how would you feel if you were granted entrance into Heaven only to find that birth control users were also there? Your greatest desire is granted, but it’s also granted to people you don’t agree with?” As you can expect her face turned a color not otherwise found in nature and she stormed off (and never spoke to me again).

She and I disagreed on this but I felt that God’s generosity doesn’t cost him as his generosity is limitless but it doesn’t cost us anything either. If we believe God’s promise of salvation gains value by its scarcity we limit God in ways that should scare us. The laborers in today’s Gospel would have been happy if the landowner didn’t hire other workers or if their wages were higher than the others. They were only unhappy in comparison.

They would have been much happier if they had seen fairness as “the F word.”