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The Dean, The Very Rev'd Ross Bay, preached at the annual service of the Auckland District Law Society
Friday 12 February 2010 in the Maclaurin Chapel, Auckland University
Reading: Matthew 20:1-16

Thank you for the invitation to address you today. It is gratifying for me to know that you gather in this way as professionals to mark the beginning of your year’s work. A new year offers opportunity for fresh starts and hopefulness. The stress of frenetic activity that often seems to characterise a year’s end is lost in the haze of the summer holidays. Life has regained its perspective. We can set goals and bring determination to the fulfilling of them. It is light when we are getting ready for work in the morning, and still wonderfully light as we head home at the end of the day.

Of course each year contains its unknowns and its uncertainties. We have all been around long enough to know that and so it is not a naive hope that we carry forward. The past year brought challenges to us all as we headed into it wondering about the impact of recession; anticipating and absorbing the blows as they inevitably came. We have perhaps weathered it all much better in New Zealand than elsewhere, but it has still taken its toll. It has no doubt been a reminder that the practice of law is a business as much as it is a vocation and a professional discipline. So we trust that the signs are a little better this year, and that we have reason to be cautiously optimistic about that aspect of things.

It occurs to me that clergy and lawyers have a number of things in common. I will highlight two of them. The first is that there must be more jokes told about clergy and lawyers than most other professions. If jokes were the only way that someone had to find out the kind of people we are, then they would conclude that clergy are sexual predators, and lawyers are crooks. I therefore choose to refrain from telling a joke about either profession this morning.

The second commonality is thankfully far more edifying. And that is that each of our professions has an incredible opportunity to influence and shape our society and its peoples. Which I believe has far more to do with what we represent than any effective power which we may in practice wield.

I say that, for in spite of the subject matter of the jokes about us, ours are professions which are generally respected, and of which must is expected. Indeed the reason for the tenor of the jokes is because it is the antithesis of who we actually are or should be. So when one among our number fails to live up to that, there is genuine outcry and disappointment. And I would suggest not simply because of the direct impact of our failing on others, but perhaps more fundamentally because of the sense of the betrayal of trust which people place in us.

People do trust us and should be able to trust us. For we are representative of the concept of justice. We might say one represents God’s laws and the other human laws. But beyond whatever words each of those might write on the page, I would want to hope that they are essentially one and the same. For we each model truth and right in our society.

Our very existence therefore influences and shapes society. But the real impact of our existence as professions and our ability to influence and shape our society for good only becomes real when each of us lives up to our vocational imperative of living justly and acting justly. And I define justice as the establishment of what is right in a society in a way that brings good to the people of that society as a whole. But I would add to that definition by saying that there is no justice without mercy. Which brings me to the parable we heard read to us from Mark’s gospel.

Of course the situation described by Jesus in this 1st century Palestinian setting is one with which a 21st century New Zealand employment court would have a field day. No written contracts, an inequitable rate of pay, and a complete dismissal by the employer of the grievances raised.

Jesus though is not setting out a framework for good industrial relations. He is rather challenging us to think about what it means to act justly and with mercy. There were many vineyards in Palestine, and like here it was seasonal work with a need for a large labour force at harvest time. The situation of gathering people from the market place to help was just like Jesus describes. Sometimes people with their own small land holdings, having completed their own harvest, would go in to offer themselves as casual labour to the bigger landowners. The end of each day was wages time and this employer provided all the workers with the same wages despite the differing hours they have given. Jewish hearers of Jesus’ day would have regarded it as pious to give wages even to those not expecting it, for it was an opportunity to support those in the wider community who may exist at a more subsistence level. The original workers have been paid what they had agreed as a fair wage at the start of the day. They lost nothing. Justice was served, but mercy was added. Therefore the landowner shames the murmurers, reminding them that they are objecting not to injustice but to generosity.

Well as I said our employment laws would see it differently in our context now, but I wonder if we can carry the principle through into our situations. There is no justice if it does not go hand in hand with mercy. It was illustrated for me yesterday in the interviews I heard about the release of the Law Commission’s report on drug laws. Is what they propose becoming soft on some drugs crimes? Or is it endeavouring to temper justice with mercy in order not simply to punish those who do wrong, but to create an opportunity for a wider sense of right to be achieved as we make a difference for good in the lives of those caught in drug addiction? I will be interested to see the report for myself and to follow the debate as it unfolds.

So we embark on a new year. It is a hopeful time at its outset, perhaps more hopeful than it might have seemed a year ago. Goals are forming in our minds for what we may achieve in it. Ahead of us always is the call to live up to the best of what our respective professions stand for. We are the embodiment of the concept of justice for others and thus together and severally we have tremendous opportunity to influence and shape the common life of our society for good.

Let us take hold of the challenge of all that we have heard from the Scriptures this day and live justly with mercy.