JONAH 3:10-4:11
PSALM 145:1-8
PHILIPPIANS 1:21-27
MATTHEW 20:1-16
Sermon – September
18, 2005
God’s Generosity
The landowner said to the laborers who complained, “Are you envious because I am generous?”
Last Sunday’s
Scriptures reminded us of our duty to be forgiving
people, even as God offers forgiveness.
We pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Today we recall God’s forgiveness – even to people we don’t particularly
like – and God’s generosity – even to people who, by human reckoning “don’t
deserve” such generosity. In actual
fact, even the best of us only have a chance to receive God’s blessings because
of the amazing grace and love of God
– and even the worst or tardiest of us also have a chance for the same reasons.
We get this
message from two memorable Bible stories.
Both have great truth in them – and neither is to be taken
literally.
The first is
a story which our Jewish friends and neighbors read on the High Holy Days when
the focus is on forgiveness. It’s the
story of Jonah, a great, powerful, memorable story with timeless and priceless
truths in it – but which gets “blown off” by some people as a fanciful and
meaningless children’s story about “someone getting swallowed by a whale.” The whale – or “great fish” in Hebrew – is a
“special effect” not a crucial part of the story line. So, whether you love the Book of Jonah,
dismiss it, or don’t know it at all, let’s all listen to the word of God in
this colorful narrative.
The job of a
prophet in ancient Israel was primarily to speak God’s word to people in
the present and only secondly to predict what would happen in the future
– usually, connected to whether or not the people listened to and obeyed God’s
word.
In this
story, God calls an otherwise unknown person named Jonah to preach to the
people of Nineveh, imploring them to repent of their sins or else
be punished severely by God.
Nineveh was
the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, the most vicious and most powerful
nation in the Middle East in the 8th Century B.C. It totally wiped out the northern Israelite
Kingdom in 727 B.C. (hence the “10 lost tribes of Israel”) and knocked down the
southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah for a “count of nine” until its army mysteriously
fled back north.
God asking an
Israelite like Jonah to preach “repent and be saved” to Nineveh would be like
God asking a person from Poland to preach “repent and be saved” to Berlin
– or Moscow – in 1945...or asking a Kuwaiti to preach “repent and be
saved” to Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad in 1991.
The last
thing Jonah wanted was for the people of Nineveh to have any chance
to be saved. So, instead of obeying
God’s orders and going to Nineveh, he goes down to a seaport and buys a ticket
on a ship going to Spain, the farthest place he could get a direct
sailing. Now, understand, ancient
Israelites were not skilled sailors or even experienced passengers on
ocean-going ships any more than someone who’s never been out of Nebraska would
be. Old Testament poetry is filled with
fearful references to the ocean and chaos;
the writers were petrified to get out of sight of land.
So for Jonah
to buy a ticket to sail from Israel to Spain was like someone with
claustrophobia getting on a non-stop flight to Australia: he was really
motivated. He really did not
want to obey God’s orders. And thought
he could disobey just by “getting out of range” – of God? It’s about as deliberately silly as the
depiction of Adam and Eve trying to hide from God in the Garden of Eden. Like a little kid [I cover my eyes] saying
“You can’t see me.”
Once underway
with Jonah on board, the ship is pounded by a storm. The pagan sailors pray to their gods – and even throw their cargo
overboard in an effort to save the ship.
Jonah confesses to them that he’s trying to run away from God and says
that if they throw him overboard he’ll get what he deserves and they’ll be
fine. They are good people – better
than Jonah! – And they don’t want to do that, but finally, in danger of going
down with their ship, they finally give in to Jonah’s pleadings and toss him
into the ocean. Immediately the storm stops.
The pagan
sailors decide that the God Jonah was trying to flee from is indeed The One
True God and they all convert! Jonah is
a successful evangelist – despite his
best efforts.
This is where
the “whale” comes in. Jonah spends
three days in the belly of the “whale” where he sees the error of his ways and
decides to obey God’s command. After he
leaves a note for Geppetto, Jonah is spat out on dry land and walks to Nineveh.
With great
vigor, Jonah marches up and down the capital city of his country’s worst enemy
declaring that it will be destroyed by God unless its people repent. Then, rubbing his hands with anticipation,
he climbs to a good view point outside the city, buys a bucket of popcorn and a
soda and sits down to watch the show.
Which he hopes will include lots of fire and brimstone, and the utter
destruction of Nineveh.
BUT...the
entire city repents, from the King on down.
Never mind how unlikely this was in real life: the storyteller
deliberately chooses the least likely candidate for repentance to
demonstrate what God would do if such a city – or a similar person repented.
You may know someone who is your
own “Nineveh.”
Everyone in
Nineveh repented in sackcloth and ashes, a la Ash Wednesday. The King even ordered sackcloth to be put
over the cows in case the cows had sinned.
God saw the
genuineness of the repentance.
God forgave
the people of Nineveh.
And Jonah was
really ticked off, because he hadn’t.
So God had a
plant grow up overnight to shade Jonah from the hot desert sun – we’re talking
Iraq, remember – which delighted Jonah.
Then God made the plant wither and die, which ticked off Jonah again.
The story
concludes, “Then the Lord said [to Jonah] ‘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?’”
God is
merciful to those who sincerely repent and change. Whatever they’ve done before.
Even if they are people we don’t like.
We’d better get used to the Lord being “gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger and of great kindness” as the Psalm says.
We are
all beneficiaries of God’s great generosity, and God will be generous to
whoever God feels like being generous to, and we’d better get used to it. And even like it.
Which is the
theme of the Gospel story of the laborers in the vineyard. This is not a story about the need for a
farm workers union, nor is it a story to aggravate other farmers. The landowner in the story agrees with
laborers for the usual daily wage, so those who work all day get what they
agreed to and would normally expect.
It’s just that late comers to the work force get the same amount,
skewing their “wage rate per hour.”
But, like I
said, this isn’t really about a farm.
Jesus starts the story saying, “The
Kingdom of Heaven is like...”
This is a
story about salvation.
There is only
one “wage” paid out by the “landowner”: people either are saved or they
aren’t. It was like being on Noah’s
Ark: either you were on board and lived, or weren’t and didn’t. How early you got on board didn’t matter.
Either people
are welcomed by God into God’s Kingdom, or they are outside when God locks the
door. Those who lived mostly godly,
sober and righteous lives for decades and are saved may be alongside those who
suddenly did dramatic U-turns with their lives and turned away from sin “at the
eleventh hour”, just as some of the laborers in the vineyard got on the payroll
an hour before quitting time.
If anyone of
us feel like we’ve just turned toward God in the nick of time, let us be
grateful; if anyone of us feel like we’ve been living lives devoted to God for
years let us also be grateful to God for God’s generosity toward us and towards others – including
any who have just turned their lives around!
Everyone is offered salvation by
grace through faith. Let us all
give thanks for God’s amazing grace, mercy and generosity and not be
“sour pusses” like Jonah or the grumbling workers. God’s mercy is good news;
God’s generosity is good news. And both are still offered to those who might
still change.
What is God
like? How should we then live? Last week, we recalled how God is forgiving;
therefore we should forgive others. This week, we’re focused on God’s
generosity; therefore we also should be
generous and joyful, spreading the Good News of God’s mercy and generosity
and rejoicing in all who receive it, no matter who they are, what they may have
done, or how we may have felt about them.
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church