Sermon for September 21, 2008

“Mercy and Salvation for all? God’s Justice is not fair!!!”-

Let us pray

Come, Holy Spirit,

Come with your fire and burn us,

 Come with your rain and cleanse us,

Come with your light and reveal to us,

Convict us, convert us and consecrate us,

Until we do something with our lives.

Amen.

Good morning and please be seated.  This week and next the stories and parables we read from the scriptures give us a glimpse of the differences between the ways of God versus  our ways on this earth.


     About ten years ago, in The Good Book: Reading The Bible With Mind And Heart, Peter Gomes wrote that what makes the Bible so compelling is the company of characters who, like ourselves, are so often both confused and confusing and yet play their part in the drama of human relationship to God.  The stories of such characters, he added, are not true because they are “in the Bible;” rather, the stories are in the Bible because they are true to the experience of men and women with their God. 

     Perhaps there is no other character in Hebrew Scripture about whom this is so accurate as Jonah.  It says a lot about our ancient ancestors that they included the Book of Jonah in the canonical collection of the 12 Minor Prophets.  From beginning to end, this very short story can be read as a literary figure of the anti-prophet: instead of hearing, proclaiming, and doing the Word of the Lord, as Elijah or Jeremiah did, Jonah invariably does the exact opposite.  Called to go east and prophesy repentance to the despised and heathen Assyrian city of Nineveh, Jonah flees from God’s call, promptly goes west and gets on a ship bound for Tarshish, a destination better known to us as the Spanish Costa del Sol. When a violent Mediterranean storm comes up, the heathen sailors on board have infinitely more respect for the God of Israel than Jonah himself does. The episode with the whale is very well known in Sunday school, although the Hebrew simply says a “very big fish.”  These verses clearly make light of the really dangerous and hostile situations in which prophets such as Jeremiah did, in fact, find themselves.  When, with great reluctance, Jonah finally goes to Nineveh to prophesy repentance, the king and all the inhabitants do something almost never heard of in the writings of Amos, Elijah or Jeremiah: they actually believe the Word of the Lord and proceed to fast and pray in sackcloth and ashes. 

Whereas the true prophet would have rejoiced with God at the miraculous conversions brought about by his preaching, instead Jonah becomes upset and very angry with God.  “This,” he said, “is why I wanted to head for Spain in the first place: you always do this!  Here are all these miserable nasty heathen offenders and all you can do is be gracious and merciful, overflowing within you the milk of human kindness, and you don’t punish them!  What is the point?  It’s not fair!  I might as well be dead!” As the story draws to its close there is another episode of comedy involving a big tree-eating worm, and then the moral of the tale becomes clear: God’s mercy and compassion are indeed unbelievable, they go way beyond the human logic of what is fair and unfair.[i]

The book of Jonah contains something deeply true in our experience of God’s relationship toward ward human beings, whether unbelievers in the midst of a storm like the sailors in this story or sinners like the Ninevites, are simply beyond our calculations of what God’s justice looks like and beyond our wildest imaginings.  God’s justice is beyond our human understanding.  His ways are not our ways.

This deep truth is expanded by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel today about workers in the vineyard.  This parable also offends our secular sense of justice and fairness.  It’s just not fair that those who work only an hour or less in the cool of the evening should be compensated the same amount as those who slaved 10 hours or more throughout a heat of the entire day.

And so they grumbled.  In their shoes we probably would have grumbled, too. And maybe we already have, in similar circumstances.  How do these feelings affect our relationship with God?  Look at Jonah’s response in today's Old Testament reading. Darned if those people in Nineveh didn't repent! Of course, that was the whole point of the message God had asked Jonah to deliver, but apparently Jonah was really looking forward to seeing "those Bad guys get theirs." He sounds downright accusing when he says, "I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing." Have you ever known anyone that you would like to see get the punishment he or she so richly deserved? Perhaps there are moments when we wish God wouldn't be quite so merciful! To others, that is.

Even among those who pray, "thy kingdom come," there is jockeying for position in the kingdom. Remember the request of James and John, who wanted to sit, one at the right hand, and one at the left, of Jesus in his kingdom. Remember how after the Resurrection Peter, after proclaiming his love for Jesus, and being told, "Feed my sheep," still had to ask, referring to the beloved disciple, "Lord, what about him?" And Jesus had to tell Peter, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me."

Look again at the beginning line of today's Gospel: "The kingdom of heaven is like...."

What if God's kingdom is a place where there is no contest? What if "fair" isn't even a word that can be used in God's kingdom, because in that kingdom each and every one of us is Abba's beloved child? What if the kingdom is a place where we don't get what we deserve (thank God!), but rather what our loving Father wants so much to give us? What if God's infinite love and grace and mercy, all of it, is poured out on each of us and no matter how much you get, all of it is still available to me? What if everybody gets the best seat in God's kingdom because we all get the place that is prepared especially for us? If that is the case, we wouldn't want to trade places with anyone, would we?

My good friend Father Brad Hall had that very special and Jesus-like quality of making everyone he knew and encountered feel like they were his best friend.  There was no good, better, and best: I had known him for 20 years and regarded him as a true “soul friend.” It wasn’t until his funeral that I discovered I, along with about at least 200 others, including President Gerald Ford, also considered Brad Hall be their “best friend”.  In that relationship, Father Brad had given all two hundred plus of us a sense of what God’s kingdom is really like: we all were made to feel very special and given the best seats in the house.

If this is the kind of kingdom for which we pray, "thy Kingdom come," then it is up to us to help make it happen, with the Holy Spirit’s help, here on earth. What if we really forgave others their trespasses, in the knowledge that God forgives us, and them? What might happen if we stopped worrying about whether we were getting our fair share and, instead, recognized each of our brothers and sisters as God's beloved child?  How can we, as god’s children, pool and share our resources so that each and every one of us may get his or her “daily bread”-no more, no less?  What would be the results if we made ourselves available to be the instruments of God's love to these other children of God, not worrying about what they did or did not deserve? What if we would earnestly pray that God would show us how God wants to use us, and would listen, and would act? You know what? That's what the kingdom of heaven is like.[ii]

As we conclude by saying together the Lord’s Prayer, let us have ears to hear carefully the word in this dominical prayer, for they contain our marching orders.

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,

And the Glory forever and ever.

Amen.

The preceding ideas and quotes are borrowed from sermons found in the archives of www.sermonsthatwork.com.  

[i] September 18, 2005 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20) - Year A by the Rev. Angela V. Askew


[ii] Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 20 September 22, 2002by The Rev. Barbara Beam