It’s not fair!
How many times as parents, have we heard that cry from our children, the catchcry of sibling rivalry, either the climax of one of those dreadful squealing arguments that go nowhere, and drive any adult with earshot to distraction, or, if directed at the adult, often the lead-in to some skilful emotional blackmail.
How many times have we heard it?
The notion of fairness is important as we are growing up, and it doesn’t stop with adulthood. Although we perhaps don’t verbalise the idea so often, it’s always there in the background the idea of cause and effect, reward for effort, taking turns all part of our cherished picture of how we think the world should work and by extension, of how the kingdom of God should work.
Today’s readings tell us something different…
We started with the second half of the Old Testament story of Jonah. The story is divided neatly into two. Jonah is called by God twice, and our reading today actually begins with his second calling. I want to look briefly at what happened prior to that. It’s a story full of drama, and one that you probably heard as a child “Jonah and the Whale”!
Jonah isn’t an easy person to defend.
He was a prophet in the Northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BC, advisor to the king. One day God calls him to travel east, far from his own turf in Israel, and to preach a message of doom to the great city of Ninevah. Jonah responds instead by fleeing west by sea, (destination Tarshish, in southern Spain), a long perilous journey for anyone in those times. Of course, he is God’s prophet fleeing, for his own reasons, from a specific task God Almighty had given him. Of course, it’s going to end in tears!
God sends a storm and Jonah recognises God’s anger. The sailors are terrified, the storm gets worse, and they cry out to the God of Jonah for mercy. They repent of their sins and turn to Jonah’s God for rescue.
Jonah knows what’s really going on. He’s the one in trouble. He tells the sailors his guilty story and he asks them to throw him overboard. It’s not right that they should die with him.
They do as he asks. God causes the storm to abate and saves Jonah from a watery death by sending a gigantic fish swimming nearby to swallow him. Jonah remains in the dark inside the belly of the fish for three days. During those three days he prays and reflects on all that happened and resolves wisely to do God’s will after all. God commands the fish again and it vomits Jonah onto dry land, pointing him eastward. God has given Jonah a second chance.
After that experience, God calls him again to Ninevah. This time Jonah recognises the power of Almighty God, and in reluctant obedience he finally sets out in the right direction.
His reluctance is understandable. It wasn’t a random city that had caught God’s attention.
Ninevah was the capital of the dreaded pitiless Assyrian Empire, now known as Iraq,
feared throughout the known world at that time and hostile to Israel. Assyrians had devastated Jewish cities, killed Jewish people, occupied their lands and carried survivors off to be their slaves.
Jonah doesn’t want to get involved; first, because he knows what usually happens to God’s prophets prophesying trouble, and he’ll be entering the capital city of Israel’s sworn enemies. Secondly, because he has no personal interest whatsoever in Ninevah’s salvation, no yearning to see the cruel pagan city repent and turn to God. If the city is doomed, so be it.
But God has a different idea. Jonah finally realises that he is included, whether he likes it or not. His only consolation is the thought of how satisfying it is going to be to pronounce God’s judgement on all those Ninevites. He gets to the city gates, takes a deep breath and shouts the message God has given him:
“Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!
That’s it.
Not a major harangue. Just one sentence the sum total of Jonah’s prophecy as recorded in the Bible. He moves on through the city, bellowing the message, and street by street the people respond.
“Yes!” they shout. “We believe! We hear what you’re saying!”
The ripples spread. The message is relayed person to person and the Ninevites cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness. The king orders a general fast as an outward symbol of the miracle that is happening in the hearts of his people. He directs them to put on sackcloth and to pour ashes on their heads as a reminder of their repentance and their new belief in the power of the God of Israel, and to make doubly sure, do the same with their animals!
By the time Jonah has reached the other side of the city, shouting God’s message all the way, he‘s lost his voice, but with a single sentence sermon he has converted the largest city in the Assyrian Empire! He should be overjoyed, but he’s not he’s furious! The last thing in the world Jonah wants is for the Ninevites to be spared. He wants to see them go up in smoke. More importantly, he wants to be right.
What’s happened here? He’s screwed up his courage to make the journey and speak the words, telling the Ninevites they have less than six weeks to zero hour, only to have God whisper in his ear, “Jonah, I’ve changed my mind.”
Everyone in this story repents except Jonah. He’s so angry and exhausted that he tells God that all he wants is to die. He shuffles off to find a safe vantage point so he can watch the city for any developments. Maybe God will change his mind and destroy them anyway. He just can’t accept the possibility that God’s sense of justice doesn’t coincide with his own.
It’s not fair!
As Jonah squats in his makeshift camp sulking, watching hopefully for some sign of disaster in the distant city, God causes a vine to grow over his head to shield him from the heat of the sun. Jonah likes this, a sign of God’s favour! May be God will give the Ninevites their just deserts after all. But his satisfaction is short-lived.
The next morning God appoints a worm, no less, to attack the vine, and Jonah once again descends into despair and fury, telling God that he would rather be dead.
Now God confronts Jonah with a question:
“You are concerned about a vine that lives and dies in 24 hours. Should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120 000 people who have lived sinful lives for so long they have no boundaries, no understanding of right and wrong? They can’t even tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
And that’s the end of the book of Jonah.
No explanation, just the rhetorical question that points up the boundless grace of God towards the 120,000 in habitants of the wicked city that repented in sackcloth and ashes and turned to him.
If that weren’t the end, though, we can imagine Jonah having his answer to God ready:
“No, Lord, you should not be concerned about Ninevah, much less their animals. Their repentance is all talk. Think of all they have done over the years. Where is the justice in all this?
It’s not fair.”
So today we have the story of Jonah, and beside it, the parable Jesus told of the owner of the vineyard and the workers he signed on at various times through the day. These stories are not really about people, about us. They are about God, about the boundless generosity of our heavenly father, that amazing grace that blesses all his children.
“A young man demanded his inheritance from his father,” Jesus said. “He left his father’s house and in a far country spent the lot on drink and loose living. When he finally crawls home in rags, his father runs to meet him, embraces him in love, and throws a welcome home party.”
But Jesus doesn’t end the story with the celebration. There at the end of this story Jesus places the elder brother outside, shunning the party, voicing outrage at his father for his forgiveness of his wayward son, and anger for the years he has worked tirelessly beside his father without recompense.
The father’s answer to his resentful elder son in Jesus’ story is both a blessing to all believers, and an insight into the heart of our loving, forgiving heavenly father.
“My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because your brother was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found!”
Both of today’s stories too, end in righteous indignation. Isn’t it always the same?
God’s gracious generosity, when it doesn’t tally with our ideas of cause and effect, so often draws from us not gratitude, but resentment.
So, what happened to prompt Jesus into telling today’s parable about the workers in the vineyard with its radical teaching of reversal, a day’s wages for everyone, however long they have worked?
In Chapter 19 of Matthew’s gospel, we see that Peter had just asked Jesus what he and the other disciples could expect as a reward for their loyalty. They have given up everything to follow him; Peter asks what will Jesus give them in return. He promises them twelve thrones in the world to come, but with an added caveat.
“Many that are first will be last,” he says, “and the last first.” Then he tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
Jesus reaches the climax of the story with the moment all the workers have been waiting for. The sun goes down and the owner calls his manager to line them up and hand out the wages. Beginning with the last hired, he presses a coin into each man’s hand. There are murmurs of disbelief, and then shouts of joy from the tailenders as they realise that they have been given the full day’s wage.
The others look on in anticipation of an even higher payment, but their expectations are dashed when they too receive the same amount. Then the grumbling starts, and self-righteous demands for an explanation.
Jesus concludes his parable with the owner reminding the workers that he has kept his side of the bargain, that he has paid them exactly what they agreed to be paid, and what business is it of theirs what he pays the others? The vineyard is his; the money is his.
“Or do you,” he says, ‘begrudge my generosity?”
Of course they do.
It’s just not fair!
We can imagine Peter and the other disciples listening to Jesus’ words, once again grappling with the idea that the kingdom of God functions very differently from our human expectations. So often we too fall back into the same trap of putting the cart before the horse.
“I’m doing all I can to be a good Christian.
I try to be a good person…
I do this, and this and this…
I don’t do that, or that or that….”
(We all have our own personal lists)
‘’and I believe that God will reward my efforts with his promise of eternal life. I’m OK!”
Wrong!
Hear what Paul had to say in his letter to the church in Ephesus:
“It is by grace you have been saved,”
(Grace: the unearned, undeserved generosity of our loving heavenly father.)
through faith
(your trust and belief in Jesus as your Savior and Lord.)
and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God
and not by works, so that no-one can boast.
How freeing is that? Paul goes on:
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2.8-10)
So we are not saved by our good works; we are saved for good works.
They are the fruit of our salvation, not the reason a joyful, willing response to God’s amazing grace and mercy.
Our salvation lies wholly in our faith in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord.
Our gracious heavenly father continues to trust us, imperfect as we are, with the work of bringing in his Kingdom. God calls us into his vineyard and gives each of us the greatest gift of all, the promise of eternal life, not because we have worked hard enough, or long enough, but because Jesus has done it all for us on the cross. He chooses us in our baptism, renews us at the communion table, sends us out as labourers to plant and harvest, to speak to those who have never heard the good news, to be Christ to them, and to proclaim again and again the Word to those who have fallen away.
When the Ninevites repent and escape the promised doom and the workers at the end of the line get paid the same as those who worked all day, and the people we judge most harshly receive the mercy of God, it becomes clear that there is something basically unfair in the working of God’s grace.
If we find ourselves offended by God’s distribution of his grace maybe we’ve forgotten who we are. Do we see ourselves as righteous prophets, pulling the wicked Assyrians into line? Or as hard workers, labouring in the vineyard through the heat of the day? Or the elder son of the compassionate father, equally loved, righteously brooding in the barn over the brother he resents and has disowned in jealousy?
Have we been at some time in our lives among the lost pagan Ninevites, so steeped in the life of sin that they couldn’t tell right from wrong? Or the workers dawdling around the marketplace for most of the day? Or the foolish selfish younger son, wasting his substance and his days, all of us desperately in need of the gracious mercy of God, always, wherever we are in our lives?
There are so many things we mean to do, that we never get around to doing. There are so many things we mean not to do but end up doing anyway….
Even when we manage to do our best, things get in the way, people get sick, money problems overshadow families, relationships wither through inattention, fear of what the future holds blights lives, and the past comes back to plague us….
There are lots of reasons why people are caught the end of their lives at the end of the queue, and only our loving God can sort us out.
On any given day of our lives, and on our last day on this earth, when the sun goes down,
when the work is done and the steward heads towards the end of the line to hand out the pay, there is a very good chance that some of the cheers and the laughter and the gratitude that will greet him will turn out to be us, rejoicing!
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As we tell these stories, and as we reflect on them,
through the saving grace of Jesus
the Kingdom of God is among us….
and it is not fair at all, thank God. Amen