Jonah 3:10-4:11
When God saw what the people of Nineveh did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.
Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
At the port of Jaffa near Tel Aviv there is a large sculpture of a fish. That fish is intended to depict the whale of a tale of Jonah’s misadventure. A little backstory for our OT reading today: God wanted Jonah to go to Ninevah, to preach to the people there, to urge them to repent and return to the Lord. And Jonah didn’t think that sounded like such a good idea. Because the folks in Ninevah were not known as fine upstanding citizens. “Those people are dangerous,” thinks Jonah. “I’m not going!”
He chose instead to board a boat headed for Tarshish. And you might remember the rest of that tale: a great storm arose and all the people on the boat blamed Jonah for that storm. They threw him overboard where he is swallowed by a great fish. But the fish spits him out onto the shore, where God’s says to Jonah, like I was saying, Jonah, go to Ninevah, get going.
So Jonah did go to do the work that God asked him to do in Ninevah. As a matter of fact, he did such a good job there that the people did indeed repent. And when God saw their hearts had changed, God changed God’s mind and spared them. And instead of rejoicing that their hearts were turned or thankful that God has spared them, Jonah gripes to God on a whole new level. “You spared them. You weren’t supposed to spare them. See I knew this would happen, that you are gracious and loving and kind. And I’ve come all the way here and now you’ve spared them.” “That’s not fair!” we can almost hear him cry.
We don’t know if Jonah really thought that they weren’t deserving of God’s mercy or that they just needed to suffer – pay their dues so to speak - before they were shown mercy. But Jonah had a real problem with God giving them a second chance.
And there’s the great irony of this story, isn’t it? Because it’s only because of God’s mercy that Jonah himself knows about second chances. His life has been saved from complete disaster. And his own second chance has allowed him to preach repentance and be part of the merciful redemption of the people of Ninevah. Somehow it seems that Jonah has forgotten that he is the beneficiary through God’s grace of that most precious of things: a second chance.
Intriguingly this text is linked in the lectionary today with this wonderful text from Matthew’s gospel – we have both an ungrateful Jonah and some ungrateful laborers in the vineyard. Jesus is telling a parable in the gospel today that likens the Kingdom of Heaven to a landowner who engages day laborers for his vineyard. He goes to the marketplace early in the morning. And rounds up workers to go work in the vineyard. He apparently needs more workers throughout the day.
He continues to go back to the marketplace – at 9:00, at noon, at 3 in the afternoon and at 5 in the afternoon when we think that the day is nearly over. He keeps finding people at the marketplace when he goes back. And finally he asks at the end of the day why there are people there waiting. And the men that are standing there tell him that no one has hired them.
So the end of the day comes for this landowner and he tells his manager to pay everyone. To pay those last ones that he rounded up first, but to pay everyone the daily wage those who worked only one hour and those who worked all day or an hour. They are all to receive the same. And those who had been there and working hard all day are disgruntled. “Shouldn’t I be worth more than that guy? I’ve been here all day working away in the heat of the day and the sun. Shouldn’t I be worth more than the daily wage since I’ve been here all day?”
They may not have considered the fact that those workers who were still standing in the marketplace throughout the day – that there’s a reason for that. Maybe they didn’t look as strong or as fit as the first folks that got hired. Some of them might have been sick. Maybe they were Gentiles or foreigners. And so they just weren’t going to be the first ones to be chosen.
I’m guessing that most of us have at some time or another worked an hourly wage job – a low hourly wage job - and so this story grates on us just a little bit. It’s our understanding that we punch a timecard so that the hours are recorded accurately and then we’re paid down to the minute for the hours we worked. We receive our paycheck and make sure the payroll folks did it right.
We’d go nuts if a co-worker, who worked an hour, got the same pay we did after working all day. Right? “That’s not fair!” we would all say. We’d call the state labor board. We’d Google the Fair Labor Standards Act. That’s the human way where fairness is based on budgets and laws, driven by the bottom-line needs and desires of employers, suppliers, customers. That’s the human way.
But we’re talking about God’s economy here. Matthew’s Gospel today reminds us that we live in God’s economy, that by human standards God is a lousy bookkeeper. And as a result, God’s mercy and grace are bottomless for everyone all the time. We look for equity but all we find is generosity.
But for whatever reason, this landowner has decided that these last people who were passed over all day long, that they were going to get the full measure of grace and mercy too because the landowner was willing and able to be that generous to the folks who perhaps needed the most grace and mercy and generosity.
This, Jesus says, is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like – a place where the last, those who have been passed over and disregarded, those who have not known mercy and grace, will find all those things. But those who were chosen first, those laborers who begrudged their brothers perhaps in the same way that Jonah was smarting at the idea that those Ninevites were not going to face punishment, instead receive mercy.
And here’s the question for all of us: can we live happily, joyfully when those around us are receiving grace and mercy? Can we do so without comparing our situation with others? Have we sometimes forgotten how many times we have received that same grace and mercy ourselves?
If we’re feeling a little less than generous about God’s grace and mercy it may be that we fear that God’s mercy is finite, that it’s going to run out. Like there’s just not going to be enough, that when it comes to us maybe we’re not going to get our fair share of God’s mercy and grace. But that’s just not true. God’s mercy and grace are never going to run out, they are ABUNDANT.
What we have realize it not just that we are receiving God’s love and mercy every single day, but we have an opportunity to see ourselves as God saw Jonah – the recipient of grace and mercy who is then sent forth to help others know those same things. Each day is a new opportunity for us to live as people who are grace and love-filled, to embody a grace and love-filled life to the world.
So I think this parable calls us to look at ourselves honestly and lovingly just as God looks as us. It invites us to turn from being judgmental and holding grudges when things don’t go the way we think they should, to let go of the stuff of our lives that stands between us and being a joy-filled and grateful people.
One of the sayings we hear now and then is “get over it.” There’s wisdom in that: to be in a mindset of working thorough things as best we can and then letting go. As long as we hold on, we continue to hurt others and ourselves. God forgives us and loves us and so we must forgive and love ourselves and others. Gratefulness is at the very heart of our faith.
There’s a hymn called “There’s A Wideness in God’s Mercy.” I’ll share the last verse with you. Because I think it reminds us of where we all stand as people who have benefitted so much:
“For the Love if God is broader than the measure of the mind.
And the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love but were more faithful we would take God at his word.
And our lives would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.”
Amen.
