“You Sure You Want Fairness?”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, November 1, 2026 – All Saints Day
Reading: Ezekiel 18:1-4; 25-32
I’m really enjoying our series on Ezekiel. It’ll go on pause in a month for Advent and Christmas and then come back briefly in January. The prophets are a darker corner of scripture, not one we visit often, so the patterns are unfamiliar, and sometimes troubling. Kind of like life, right?
Does anybody remember this pattern: you’re a kid. Your sibling or friend gets something you don’t, and you complain to your parents that it’s not fair. And what do they say? Life is not fair. i.e., get used to it. I hated being told that. But what did I turn around and use as soon as my kids came along? I heard a comedian say she had planned to only ever tell the truth to her future kids. But when it came to actually parenting, she’d yell things like Green Lantern and the Tooth Fairy say if you don’t put your shoes on, they’re cancelling Christmas.
Perhaps you’ve seen this internet meme about equality and fairness. Equality and justice are not actually the same thing. In capitalist societies like ours, we promise equality of opportunity but not of outcome. And life is indeed no fair. Some people inherit a lot, some people are really gifted and energetic, why would you trust the state to even that out? And some of us do need more help. And if we distribute those crates, the smallest among us can see too, and enjoy the game. I think this is the first baseball analogy in here since the Springer dinger. Hard to believe that was only a year ago.
Our text from Ezekiel is concerned with fairness. It quotes a popular proverb in Israel at that time: the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. In other words, some people suffer because their parents misbehaved. We see this all the time. Substance abusers pass on their habits and genes to their children. Racism from previous generations has harmful effects now. In Ezekiel’s time, the Jews in exile in Babylon find the saying apt. They’re in exile 70 years. Which means generations are born in exile. They didn’t do anything wrong. But they still suffer. Their parents may have sinned, but is it fair for them to inherit no land, no temple, no king, and possibly no Israel? This is the kind of proverb trotted out at such moments, like “life is no fair,” call the Green Lantern: Get over it, kid. That’s just how things are.
But then God weighs in... And obliterates the proverb.
As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no longer be used by you in Israel. 4 Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins who shall die.
Don’t say that anymore. It’s not true. I don’t punish kids for their parents’ misdeeds. Everyone gets judged on their own merits one day.
Now, it’s impressive enough that God nukes a popular saying. We’ve got some popular religious sayings I would also like to see nuked. For example, “God won’t send you more than you can handle.” My church people in the US south had all heard that one. Meant to bring comfort. But when someone faces death, the saying is poison. That’s a lot more than anyone can handle. Or in the case of a child’s death, some would say, “God needed another angel in heaven.” This is explicitly anti-Christian teaching. Angels are created to be angels by God. No human being becomes an angel, or vice-versa, ever. But more importantly, it sounds like God snuffs out little life for fun and doesn’t care what devastation it leaves behind. A monstrous view of God. Now I’m sure you’ve heard this one: “Everything happens for a reason.” Sounds vaguely faithy. But lots happens that God does not will: God never wills sin or death. Friend of mine wrote a book called Everything Happens for a Reason and other Lies I have Loved (Kate Bowler). Or maybe this: God helps those who help themselves. There is truth in this one. Effort often yields results. But you don’t need God for it. The author of that platitude? No great religious figure, but one Benjamin Franklin, a genius in early American science and diplomacy, but not faith. I would like God to weigh in and demolish those because they’re not true. God doesn’t only send what folks can handle. God invites us to take up a cross. God doesn’t pluck children for heaven. Things happen that are absurd. And God doesn’t just help those who help themselves. God saves those who can’t help themselves. That’s the gospel.
A longing for fairness is why our country is so heartbroken at the fire at Wainwright Air Force Base in Alberta a few weeks back. A conflagration on a shooting range and soldiers are burned terribly, four dead, dozens still critical. They’re kids. Early 20s, as baby-faced as the folks on our walls here who we’ll remember next week. Canadians are not used to soldiers dying in bunches, thank God, we haven’t had that since World War II, though of course this country also bled in Korea and Afghanistan, and Canadian Forces are deployed in difficult places today. Fairness would have been life till a ripe old age, for those who shield the rest of us. Lord Jesus, bring healing, raise the dead, and sustain their loved ones till you do.
There is a problem with Ezekiel nuking the ancient proverb. It sounds a lot like stuff that is in the Bible. And in really important places in the Bible. Like the middle of the ten commandments:
I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Punishing to the third and fourth generation. Now, God’s mercy is for a thousand generations. That’s a lot more than 3 or 4. Like hundreds of times more. A thousand generations ago is 25,000 years. Anyone in your ancestry who did something good in the last 25,000 years, God remembers and blesses you for it. That’s good news. Three or four generations is far less, but the rabbis still called this “the severe decree.” Severe, but familiar. There’s family lore about a financial decision a grandparent of mine made that cost us generational wealth. Not my fault, but it sure affects me. You got a story like that in your family too? Course you do. So, in Exodus the accent is on mercy, 99.997% mercy to .003% punishment. Not a bad ratio.
Ezekiel sees that 99.997% and raises it to cool 100. No one is condemned spiritually for what their parents do. I’ll only judge you for your misdeeds. I will not judge your kids. Y’all: pay attention when the Bible talks to the Bible. Ezekiel is receiving something from Exodus and revising it. Sort of like when Jesus says, ‘you’ve heard it said but I say to you.’ Where you think he learned that? Mary taught him his Bible y’all. For Ezekiel, Exodus is not quite merciful enough yet. Because God is altogether and nothing but mercy.
Still sounds kinda harsh though right? It’s about God punishing. You, not your kids, but punishing. Didn’t someone tell God the church is trying to get over this fixation on judgment? Have our PR people get in touch with God’s PR people. But as ever, God is way ahead of us. “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,” God says several times in this chapter. Anyone. Even those we think deserve it. God is only ever on the side of life. And God is trying to stack the deck for us on the side of life. Turn from what you do wrong and live.
There’s a running joke in one of my favourite movies, The Big Lebowski. There is a group of bad guys who are proud to call themselves nihilists. For those of you mercifully spared late night dormitory bull sessions, a nihilist claims there is no morality, it’s a made-up power-grab. “We are nihilists Lebowski. We believe in nothing.” In the movie’s conclusion, the nihilists’ scheme to get rich fails, and one of them whines, “it’s not fair.” And another scoffs, “Fair? Who’s the nihilist now?!” The longing we have for fairness is really a longing for God. Who will judge and set things right one day. So, if Ezekiel insists that God is fair, and judges us on our merits and no one else’s, God still has work to do. Because lots of good people don’t end up blessed. Lots of the wicked seem to do quite well actually. God must be planning a resurrection to make things right. That’s not in Lebowski. But it is in the Bible.
Here’s why I like Ezekiel so much. It depicts a pattern you can trust. There’s every reason to think the Jews should have vanished from history in exile. They’d lost things God promised would last forever. The promise of the land. Worship in the temple. A king on David’s throne. “Forever” turns out to be quite temporary and is now expired. Why shouldn’t the people vanish too? But Judaism reinvents itself in exile. What if we worship without a temple? In a foreign land? With no king but God? Synagogue Judaism as we know it today was born. And it’s much closer to what we do in church than temple worship would have been. Case 2: Jesus’ people are crushed by his crucifixion. Well, I guess it was all a waste of time. But then he starts appearing to them. Forgiving them. Sending them out with news that the resurrection has begun. Case 3: God’s people are slaves in Egypt under Pharaoh’s boot and whip. And God springs us to freedom through the sea. That’s the pattern with God. These aren’t one-off events. This is how God always works. By death and resurrection. And I’m guessing there’s nobody here for whom that’s not good news. Is it fair for God to work that way? By slavery and Exodus, exile and restoration, death and resurrection? Dunno. Fairness is the wrong category: sort of bloodless and uninteresting. But it sure is beautiful.
One of Jesus’ favourite stories is also his most maddening. You know it. A farmer needs laborers. Goes out to find a crew. Gathers a bunch of ‘em and they start first thing. Goes and gets more late morning. Goes and gets more mid afternoon. And goes one last time for a group who work for only an hour. In Israel you can’t withhold pay overnight. And that last group, barely sweaty or dirty after a single hour, gets a whole day’s wage, a bright shiny denarius. The ones who worked all day think wow, we’re going to make out like gangbusters, we worked 10 times as long. Instead, they also get a denarius. A day’s wage. Now notice, this is perfectly fair. It’s what they’d been promised. But they’re still angry. And the owner asks, are you envious because I am generous? If you want fair, sure, God is fair, here’s your lousy day’s wage, you earned it. But if God wants to give as much to those who haven’t earned it, who can object?
This rankles me. I feel like I’m working really hard. And some other clown is going to sachet in at ten till closing and make as much money as me? It’s not fair. But grace is no fair. Grace is favor undeserved poured out by God for no good reason. One way ancient Christians interpreted the parable is about those who don’t serve Christ most of their lives yet are still rewarded. Those who come to faith late. Or are stillborn or die in infancy. They don’t do anything to merit heaven. Scripture says heaven is never merited. It’s always gifted. You don’t earn it any more than they do. The thief dying beside Jesus asks him to remember him. And Jesus promises him paradise. After 20 minutes of faith. I try to say this at funerals. Funerals feel like a job audition for heaven. They did this great thing, that great thing. Increasingly funerals feel like roasts: this person was so funny. But the word to be said over any life is not on a resume or how we partied or vacationed. It’s Jesus Christ and his grace, since he raises the dead. One of you asked me the very good question: okay, why’d my mom do all that good then if it doesn’t help her with God? The answer is out of gratitude for grace unearned and undeserved. Which is the only good reason to do anything at all.
I’ve only learned recently about a Jewish teaching on the merits of the fathers. That is, Abraham Isaac and Jacob did so much good, more than they need. So, they have extra merits unused and accumulated. These can be transferred to the accounts of Jews who come after them. And I love this idea because ancient Christians sound the same. Jesus Christ has all the merit there is. And he doesn’t need any of it, so he transfers it to our account. Interacs it. And our debts are gone. That’s not deserved. It’s gift.
There is a problem in all this though. Took me a minute to figure it out, sitting with this passage on your behalf this week. Ezekiel says look, no inherited guilt. All of us stand on our own record before God, no one has to answer for some prior generation. But here’s a problem. We do believe in inherited guilt. Our first parents Adam and Eve disobey and ever since things have not been right with God. We’re born into that and can’t change it. We call it original sin. And every one of us inherits it, not our fault, and yet we are still guilty. The only exception is Jesus, born without it, who then saves us from it. Some Christians go on and extend this exception to Mary. Which reminds me of a joke. Jesus is with the woman caught in adultery. He delivers his zinger: let the one without sin throw the first stone. A stone comes flying in. And Jesus yells “mom!” (if you’ve ever been Roman Catholic you get that joke faster).
So, in a way we’re more pessimistic as Christians than this passage in Ezekiel warrants. The prophet more positive and optimistic.
But in another place this passage is more demanding than I can believe. Did you notice this? “Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” How exactly do I do that? When I was a kid, we’d insult one another by saying “get a life.” Insults are snappier now: heard someone called a waste of skin recently. Ouch. Ezekiel says get yourself a new heart and a new soul. How do I do that again?
You may be familiar with this language. It turns up elsewhere in the prophets. Not as a command, but as a description of what only God can do.
A new heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put my Spirit within you and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
That’s not a threat or an insult or a task. It’s a promise. God is going to give us new fleshy hearts and the breath of life. Christian faith has sometimes been called a heart transplant operation. A heart surgeon told a preacher friend of mine how awesome it is to hold someone’s heart beating in his hand. My preacher friend said yeah, I know, I do that every Sunday.
Y’all, fairness is vastly overrated. I’ve noticed lately on social media—the place we all go to feel worse—friends my exact age retiring. I’m 52. At my current rate of savings, I’ll be able to retire when I’m 287. I’ve also noticed peers buying vacation homes that could fit every house I’ve ever lived in inside them. Obviously, they made different life choices. And I like my life choices. I love being y’all’s pastor. But look what I’m doing: comparing. Same age. Same institutions and degrees. I don’t think they work a lot harder than me. Or that God loves them more. Someone wise said “comparison is the thief of joy.” In Dante’s Purgatorio he has the eyes of envious people sewn shut. They need to learn not to look at others. How about we compare with Jesus? Because we’re all doing better! He’s homeless you’ll remember. And broke. Gives the disciples’ money bag to the guy he knows steals. He promises his presence. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. But you know what that is? Salvation. That’s more than enough.
So, we do believe in inherited guilt, despite this passage, because of other passages. And we believe that mainly because of what we believe about Jesus: his salvation is so astounding our plight must’ve been much worse than we realized. But salvation means we’re adopted into God’s family. With all his vast company of saints. Made little sisters and brothers of Jesus. It’s a big, rambunctious, fractious family, like all the good ones. It’s filled with people we can’t even see with our physical eyes. And our big brother’s gifts get passed around to everyone. We don’t just inherit sin from Adam and Eve. We inherit more infinitely more grace from Jesus, by baptism and faith. Fairness? Nah. Mercy? You bet. Forever and ever. Amen.