Trinity 16

Trinity 16 2023

 

Jonah 3.10 – end of 4, Matthew 20.1-16

 

Today’s readings were both great stories, but puzzling stories too. From the Old Testament we heard part of the story of Jonah, which is mostly famous because of the whale in the middle of it, or big fish, to be more accurate to the original Hebrew. But that’s only one episode, and it all leads up to the passage we heard today, the very end of the tale – the only book in the Bible which ends with a question, as it happens.

 

The story of Jonah was probably originally an oral folk tale – it has that sort of flavour to it – but whoever wrote it down in the form we have it now, probably several centuries later than the time it was set in, crafted it very carefully to convey a thought-provoking and challenging message, in that final question which God asks Jonah  “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh?”.

 

God had sent Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh, th capital city of the brutal Assyrian Empire, but he had initially refused. The Assyrians were the Israelite’s worst nightmare. They’d conquered Israel and treated its people with great brutality. It was easy to understand why Jonah, an Israelite, didn’t want to go there. For a start, he was terrified of the Assyrians. They weren’t likely to take kindly to being told what to do by the likes of him. But if he was worried about what might happen if they didn’t repent, he was even more worried about what might happen if they did. He knew his God. He knew he had a regrettable tendency to love people who didn’t, by his reckoning, deserve to be loved. He knew that if they repented God would forgive them, and he didn’t want that to happen.

 

So he tried to run away from God’s call, on a ship heading as far from Nineveh as possible. But Jonah ended up being thrown into the sea, and that’s where the whale came in, rescuing him from drowning by swallowing him whole. When the whale spewed him out onto the shore, Jonah gave in, and went to Nineveh after all, though against his better judgement, and with a very heavy heart.  

 

Reluctantly, he began to preach to the Ninevites, and everyone repented, in true folkloric style – in sackcloth and ashes, fasting from food and drink, everyone from the king right down to the donkeys and cattle. And God forgives them.

 

A happy ending? Not for Jonah. He was furious. How dare God forgive his enemies, people who have hurt and oppressed Jonah’s people? But for God it was clear cut – the Ninevites were just as much his children as the Israelites. He couldn’t help loving them and wanting the best for them. He loved them because they needed his love, not because they had earned it or deserved it. As soon as they turn back to him he was standing ready to meet them.

 

In the Gospels Jesus tells a story with the same message. A vineyard owner hires workers – some are hired in the morning and work all day; some are hired at the last minute. Yet each is paid the same. In the Greek it is a denarius, and the significance of that is that a denarius was the daily wage for a labourer. It wasn’t riches, but it was enough. If you had a denarius in your pocket at the end of the day you had what you needed to feed your family and live with reasonable dignity. In modern parlance we would call it a living wage. Those who have worked through the heat of the day are scandalised. How can the owner think this is fair? But his point is that this it is his money, and he hasn’t done them out of anything by hiring these other workers. They have what they need – that precious denarius - it’s no skin off their noses if he gives the others the same. They have families to feed too. If he wants to provide a living wage to as many people as he can, what is that to them?

 

But they can’t cope with that, and most people probably instinctively sympathise, as Jesus knew they would. He is being deliberately provocative here, touching that sore spot in most of us which equates financial reward with personal value. If you are paid more, you are worth more, so if someone beneath you on the professional ladder gets an increase, you should too.

 

Of course, this raises all sorts of interesting questions about the way we think about pay, and material things more generally, and those are worth pondering. In effect this employer is providing a Universal Basic Income for his workers, a living wage, still an idea that many find hard to get their heads around today. But you could argue that, as an idea, it went right back to the story of the Exodus from Egypt, when God had provided manna in the wilderness for the people to eat, which they could gather each day, but only enough for that day – any more would go mouldy.

 

 I’m sure Jesus expected his hearers, steeped in those Old Testament stories, to pick up the resonances. But I don’t think he was just talking about money and food here. He is talking about the love of God, just as the writer of the book of Jonah was.

 

When things get tough, it’s easy to succumb to mean-minded attitudes to others. If we think there is a scarcity of something our human tendency is to ration it, and that means deciding who deserves it and who doesn’t.  But these Bible stories tell us that  God’s love doesn’t need to be rationed, even if we could do so. God can love whoever God wants to love, even brutal Ninevites, or the sinners Jesus was often berated for keeping company with – it won’t mean there is any less love available for anyone else.

 

“You get what you deserve” is a deeply ingrained human belief. We want it to be true, because it makes us feel in control, convincing us that we can earn God’s blessing if we work hard enough or do the right thing, whatever that might be. It makes sense to us on an instinctive level. But the wonderful truth of the Gospel is that it doesn’t make sense to God. He looks at us – all of us, the good, the bad, the rich, the poor, the hard-working rule-keepers and the hapless, Jonnie-come-latelies who turn up at the last minute, grubby and chaotic – and simply sees us all as his children, made in his image, his children, hungry and thirsty, his children, alone or afraid, his children, weighed down with guilt. And seeing our need, he meets it.

 

The key to Jesus’ story, the key to the story of Jonah, the key to understanding the Bible’s message about God generally, is that denarius, the freely given, undeserved gift of God which we sometimes call grace. “Give us this day our daily bread”, we pray – not me, but us, all of us. We pray it not only so that our stomachs may be full, but that our hearts and souls might have what they hunger for as well. God calls us to hold out our hands for what we need, and be thankful for it, and to make sure that we are not getting in the way of others receiving it either.

Amen