Jonah 3:10-4:11
When God saw what they (the Ninivites) 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. 4 But this
was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 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. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for
it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And
the Lord said, “Is it
right for you to be angry?” 5 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.
6 The Lord God
appointed a bush,[a] 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. 7 But
when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so
that it withered. 8 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.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to
be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 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. 11 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?”
Philippians
1:21-30
21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.
22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not
know which I prefer. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to
depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; 24 but to remain in the
flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I
will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26
so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to
you again. 27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,
so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will
know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one
mind for the faith of the gospel, 28 and are in no way intimidated by your
opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your
salvation. And this is God's doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the
privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well— 30
since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I
still have.
Matthew
20:1-16
1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a
landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into
his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing
idle in the marketplace; 4 and he said to them, "You also go into the
vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. 5 When he went
out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6 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?' 7 They said to him,
"Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, "You also go into the
vineyard.' 8 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.' 9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of
them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought
they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.
11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 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.' 13 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? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give
to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose
with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' 16 So the
last will be first, and the first will be last."
So the last will be first,
and the first will be last.
·
I’ve never hired day
laborers for my farm, so I don’t know if this is how things usually go. To our
minds, paying a person who worked one hour the same wage as one who worked ten
or twelve hours in the blazing sun is very unfair.
·
Well, fear not! This is
not a lesson on business, worker’s compensation, contracts, or business ethics.
It is a parable of the Kingdom of Heaven.
·
Does that put our minds
at rest or does it leave us unsatisfied, troubled, and wondering? How can the
Kingdom of Heaven be so obviously unjust and skewed? How could those lazy
so-and-so’s who sat in the village square shade all day get the same wage as
the hard-working go-getters who were hired with breakfast still in their hands?
Why did the land owner tell his manager to pay the most-recently hired first?
If he had paid the first hired before the others, nobody might have caught on
to the scheme.
·
As I said before, this
is not a lesson on how to treat the workers in your or my vineyard. If we focus
on the workers, either the first hired or the last hired, or if we focus on the
coin, we are looking in the wrong place. Workers will always be looking for
work; human are beings that like to be busy and if that busy-ness brings a
wage, all the better. The coin – a Roman denarius
– was the usual daily wage for workers in most trades. It’s hard to translate
the value of this coin into today’s items, but the best guess would say a
family could be fed for a day or maybe two with one denarii. This whole thing gives context but doesn’t help all that
much.
·
Let’s focus on the
vineyard owner, the one doing the hiring. Since Jesus says at the beginning of
the parable: For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in
the morning… , we can take him at his word. The Kingdom will turn
all our human understanding on its ear. It will not be what we expect and in
fact, might aggravate us and our expectations. We want what we consider justice
and that might not be justice as God conceives such a thing. We want proper
reward for all we’ve achieved for the Kingdom (or what we think we’ve achieved… for God, of course.)
·
Grace will take us on a
roller coaster ride that we might not be able to comprehend or imagine. It will
constantly surprise us and often shatter our usual ways. Grace knocked Paul
down and blinded him on his way to Damascus! Grace led Francis of Assisi to
desert from the army… twice! Grace hit Luther with an understanding of
salvation by grace while he was in the washroom! Who knows how that same grace
will impact any of us?
·
Grace might cause us to
question a lot of things. One of the things to be questioned was brought up in
reading commentaries on this portion of the Gospel. One theologian asked this
question and it’s one I think we might all have to ask ourselves: When we
hear this Gospel story, do we place ourselves in the group that was the first
to be hired? Why not the noon time people, the 3 o’clock folks, or even the
5 o’clock people? From that perspective, the parable takes a whole different
cast. Where is grace for us in those cases?
·
The idea behind this
Gospel passage is Jesus’ desire to show that the Kingdom of Heaven is unlike
any earthly kingdom… and that’s not really a bad thing. The Kingdom of Heaven
will be a surprise and possibly a shock… and that’s not a bad thing either. The
Kingdom of Heaven is and will be a kingdom of grace.
·
And at the risk of
saying something trite, grace is always amazing.
So the last will be
first, and the first will be last.
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