XXV SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

God’s “Injustice”

Readings: Is 55:6-9; Phil 1:20-27; Mt 20:1-16

One of the main false images of God that we carry inside us and that urgently needs to be scrapped is that God is fair. I wrote a book titled: “God’s Injustice and Other Anomalies of His Love”: in fact, God is profoundly “unjust”, according to current logic, and… thank goodness for us, because if He were to continuously punish us for our sins, for our disobedience, even the most terrible punishments would not be enough at any given moment! Fortunately, the Lord tells us in the first Reading, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Is 55:6-9).

The biblical concept of “justice” (in Hebrew “sedaqah” and in Greek “dikaiosyne”) does not correspond to the human one well expressed by Ulpian, in Roman law, of “voluntas suum unicuique tribuendi”, that is, giving each person their due. “Never has a translation been as unfortunate as this one, because, even if Paul did borrow the word from the Roman legal world, the meaning he gave it is completely different” (G. Ravasi). For the Jews, “justice” is essentially solidarity with the community, living harmonious relationships with brothers and sisters. For this reason, in Scripture, God’s “Justice” is essentially His plan of love for humanity, His saving, merciful, and faithful activity, which is ultimately fulfilled only in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:21-26).

That is why, when the New Testament speaks of retributive justice, God does not operate with a “do ut des” logic. He is not a sort of big merchant who, using precision scales, hands out rewards or punishments in exact proportion to merits: He is willing to forgive all our sins as long as we do the same with our brothers and sisters (Mt 6:14-15; 18:21-35), He forgives all our debts if we forgive our debtors (Mt 6:12), He commends “the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly…, making friends with dishonest wealth” (Lk 16:1-12), and if it is impossible for a rich person to be saved, “what is impossible for human beings is not impossible for God” (Mt 19:23-26). Likewise, rewarding not on the basis of faith or religiosity but according to the objective situation of poverty (“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…; woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort”: Lk 6:20-25) goes against the concept of reward based on personal merit. Deep down, God is an “unjust” judge according to human criteria because, in today’s Gospel, He rewards with the same wage both those who worked twelve hours in the vineyard and those who worked for only one hour (Mt 20:1-16).

It is the injustice of Love, of mercy that overflows beyond impartiality: it is the logic of one who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in the desert to go in search of the one that is lost (Lk 15:4), of one who rejoices more “over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people” (Lk 15:7), of the Father who slaughters the fattened calf, throwing a grand feast, for the returning prodigal son, while never granting a young goat to the obedient son to celebrate with his friends (Lk 15:11-32), of Jesus who transgresses the Law that would command the stoning of the adulteress, and sends the woman away without condemning her (Jn 8:1-11), who forgives the woman who was a sinner, “because she loved much” (Lk 7:47-49).

If in the Old Testament God’s justice was manifested through the grace He offered to “pious” people, Jesus proclaims an unheard-of truth for the Jewish world: God takes care of the sinner! God’s Justice is therefore His Love! To manifest that His being Justice is being only Love, God will take upon Himself, in the Person of the Son, the sins of humanity, and will Himself pay the penalty by dying for them (Rom 3:25). The Cross is therefore the sublime revelation of the meaning of divine Justice, the supreme theophany of His being Justice-Love! This is truly the “Gospel”, the joyful news: nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:35-39)!