Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“It’s not fair” is something we hear children say almost as soon as they are able to speak. From the beginning it seems we have an inbuilt sense of what is fair and unfair. As we get older we learn to say “maybe, but who says the world is fair”. We learn to live with the reality that the world isn’t the way we think it should be - it isn’t fair.

Today’s readings challenge that view (Ezekiel 18:25-28). God isn’t fair by the standards that seem to be built into us. But the problem isn’t with God, the problem is our understanding of fairness. We don’t find it easy to accept, but scripture tells us it is fair that the first shall be last, that those without money can come and eat and drink without cost, that prostitutes and extortionists will get into heaven first (Matthew 21:28-32).

The trouble with our idea of fairness is that it’s built around me. I judge what is fair in relation to me. It’s not fair, means it’s not fair to me. But God never says to his creation “you are not fair to me” - that would be absurd. God isn’t asking us to play fair, he’s asking us to love. He’s asking us to give up looking out for our own interests, but rather to look out for the interests of others - to “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves”, as Paul puts it. The question we have to consider is not, is it fair to me but is it fair to her or him - not is this to my advantage but is it to the advantage of the other.

We are not built that way. Maybe this is a reflection of our fallen nature, our original sin, our struggle to be the children God created. Paul tells the Philippians: “Christ Jesus though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.

Rather, he emptied himself…” God became man and the man emptied himself of his Godhead to become human. We can believe that of Jesus. But that’s not the point Paul is making. He starts by saying “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Jesus” - we have to empty ourselves. Only when we can truly make ourselves the least of people then can God fill us.