"IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!"
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21)
October 1, 2017
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
"The house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' O house of Israel, are My ways not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?"
Ezekiel 18:29 (ESV)
"It's just not fair!" We hear that a lot, don't we? We even say it ourselves--especially when we look around at all of the "unfairness" that seems to be such a big characteristic of the world that we live in. "It's just not fair!" A drunk driver veers off the road, jumps over a curb, and plows into a group of people waiting for a bus. Five are killed, including two small children. Three more are disabled for life, and one of them is a child. And the driver, meanwhile, walks away from the accident without a scratch and a few short months later he's back on the street, drinking and driving again. With righteous indignation we cry out: "It's just not fair!"--and we are absolutely right. It's not. But who do we blame for this unfairness? Not the irresponsible driver who caused such a tragedy. Not the judge and the court system that let him get back behind the wheel and on the street so soon. No, instead we ask: "How can a just God allow such a thing to happen?"
Through His prophet Ezekiel the Lord, in today's Old Testament Reading, reprimands His ancient people for the same kind of attitude. When sinners living in a sinful world begin to experience some of the consequences of their sin, they inevitably point the finger at God, as if they are shocked to discover that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) after all, and they demand to know how He can permit such a thing to happen (as if He delighted in the self-destruction of His creatures). What God's Old Testament people didn't seem to understand and what we still don't seem to understand today is that life isn't fair. In fact, a pretty good argument could be made (and has been made) that there really is no such thing as "fairness" in an objective sense, but that it's merely a concept that humans have invented to either justify themselves or to improve their lot in life in comparison with others. As we meditate on the prophet Ezekiel's words this morning, let's examine the mess that we find ourselves in as we live in this world and what God has done to rectify it.
What so many people (even a lot of Christian people) can't seem to understand or accept is the fact that, regardless of how good or bad we may be and regardless of how strong our faith is or who that faith rests in, we still have to live with the consequences of sin each and every day of our lives. Because we are sinners living in sinful world, we are all subject to experiencing any and all of the consequences of sin. There doesn't always have to be a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the things that we do and the things that happen to us. When you really stop to think about it, the amazing thing in all of this is not that bad things happen to good people on occasion; the truly amazing thing is that more bad things don't happen to all people all of the time. It's a messed up world that we live in--a fallen and broken world. We know it and we complain about it all the time. So why are we so surprised and angry when we occasionally experience a taste of just how messed up and fallen and broken it really is?
And why is this world such a mess anyway? Or better yet, who is it that messed it up? Surely not God, even though He seems to get blamed for it more often than not. No, God created a perfect world. The Scriptures are very clear about this: "God saw everything that He had made," we read in Genesis, "and behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). Yes, God created a perfect world--a world in which everything happened just the way that it was supposed to. But that wasn't good enough for man, the crown of God's creation. It was too structured for him--too confining--too predictable--too boring. Man wanted to have more control over his own destiny, so he chose to discard God and His perfect world to see how he could improve on it. The end result of this rebellion and all of this human effort at "improvement" is the miserable world that you and I have inherited and struggle in every day. And just in case we might be tempted to blame the whole thing on Adam and his wife, can we honestly say that our attitude toward God and His will is any different than theirs was?
It is certainly not God who has messed up this world. On the contrary, God has begun the process of restoring it to what He intended it to be from the very beginning. He has done this in the life and ministry of His Son Jesus Christ. This process of restoration is not yet complete and it never will be in this life, because every day we, like our first parents in the garden, continue to choose our own way over God's way. But the mold has been cast. The Savior has come, and He has undone all of the damage that our sin has inflicted on us and on all of creation. He has righted everything that is wrong. In particular He has made us righteous in the sight of our perfectly righteous God. But oddly enough, He didn't do it through justice or fairness--at least not through what we call justice and fairness. Isaiah the prophet writes: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). Is it just--is it "fair"--that the only Innocent One who ever lived should suffer and die for the offenses of all the guilty?
No, it's not just. It's not "fair." But you see, there is another principle at work here--a principle that exceeds our way of thinking and acting to such a great extent that we can't even begin to comprehend it. This principle is something called grace. And what is that? Grace is undeserved favor--the favor of God bestowed upon us in spite of our unworthiness. From a specifically Christian perspective, grace can be defined in a well-known acronym: Grace is G-R-A-C-E:--God's Riches At Christ's Expense. We can't fully understand grace because it's a foreign concept to our way of thinking. We don't deal with people on the basis of grace and we don't want to deal with people on the basis of grace. But that is how God deals with us and that is how He desires us to deal with one another and with others.
No, God is not "fair"--and it's a good thing that He's not. If God were "fair," then every one of us would be condemned to an eternity without Him and without hope. But God is better than "fair;" He is gracious. In Christ He has come into our unfair world and has willingly become the greatest Victim of its unfairness--not because He had to, but because He loves us so much that He was not content to see us wallow in this mess of our own making. Thank God that He is not fair! Thank God that He is gracious! In this unfair and messed up world of ours it is in the cross of Jesus Christ alone that we find the intersection of perfect righteousness and perfect love, which are strong enough to overcome all of our imperfections and to give us the sure and certain hope of a truly perfect world to come.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.