Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Glory to you forever.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.
When he went out about 9 o', clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And he said to them, you also go into the vineyard and I will pay you whatever is right.
So they went.
When he went out again about noon and about three o' clock he did the same.
And about five o' clock he went out and others standing around and he said to them, why are you standing here idle all day?
They said to him, because no one has hired us.
He said to them, you also go into the vineyard.
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.
When those hired about five o' clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.
Now, when the first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received the usual daily wage.
And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, these last only worked one hour, and you gave them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
But he replied to them, friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage, take what belongs to you and go.
I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.
Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I'm generous?
So the last will be first and the first will be last.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Ages 3 to 10 are welcome to go with Katie for story time and they will come back and join us at the piece.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Gracious God, there's a wideness in your mercy like the wideness of the sea.
There's a kindness in your justice which is more than liberty.
Amen.
Later in the hour, as we do every year about this time, we'll bless Bibles presented to our fourth graders.
One of the discoveries they will make is that the Bible is not a single book.
It's a library of over 60 books whose ancient authors write about God in ways that still inspire us.
Today's sermon begins with a quiz for Bible readers young and old.
Are you ready?
Of all the books of the Bible heard as part of our Sunday readings throughout the year, which is the only one that ends with a question mark.
Well, that would be Jonah, whose ending we heard a few moments ago.
Jonah is unique among most books of the Bible.
It reads like a parable or comic fable.
And while it tells of a person called to do a prophet's work, it quickly becomes the story of an anti prophet which who defies God's call.
And yes, it ends not with a concluding statement, but with a penetrating question.
I'll take a moment to recap the first half of the story.
God calls Jonah to go east to the great city of Nineveh and condemn its long history of evil behavior.
Nineveh was the ancient capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire and centuries before Jonah's time, his people had been treated savagely by its invaders.
Now God instructs Jonah to call on Nineveh to repent.
The Bible's great prophets reveal God's character to us.
But Jonah can't do this.
While he embraces the justice side of God's character, he's not on board with the mercy side.
Mercy is God's inexhaustible capacity for forgiveness, empathy and compassion.
As Bishop Marianne expresses it, mercy reveals God's very nature and God's relationship to us, which we experience as unmerited grace.
But Jonah doesn't want the Ninevites to get any.
His defiance gives the Bible a great adventure story and call us to reflect on how justice and mercy figure in our own walk of faith.
Determined to avoid the mission to Nineveh, Jonah flees and boards a ship sailing far in the opposite direction.
But God sends a storm and Jonah goes overboard.
Then, as we know, God sends a great fish to swallow Jonah. And he was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
While inside the great fish, which by tradition we call a whale, Jonah says a prayer, giving thanks for God's protection.
And let's pause here in our season of creation to appreciate the ways in which nature cooperates with God.
Unlike Jonah, the great fish is God's obedience servant, swallowing Jonah yet providing him with a safe place for prayer.
And then by spitting him up on land again, the great fish helps to advance God's purposes, putting Jonah back on course.
Jonah finally obeys God and makes the trek to Nineveh.
But his preaching is half hearted.
He tells simply, 40 days more and Nineveh is overthrown.
That's it. One seven word sermon that promises God's judgment but says nothing about God's mercy.
Jonah seems to hope that the Ninevites will ignore his perfunctory message.
But surprisingly they listen.
They act on his words.
Immediately. The whole city and its leaders turn to God with acts of repentance. And God decides to spare Nineveh from punishment.
Mercy wins out over judgment.
Good news, right?
If only all sermons could be merely seven words long and have such a dramatic impact.
There's a lesson for us here.
But instead of celebrating his remarkable success, Jonah is furious.
And this is where we pick up the story today.
Angry because God doesn't destroy the Ninevites, Jonah prays some of the most petulant words in the Bible.
I knew it, he says.
That is why I fled, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Love and ready to relent from punishing.
Jonah owes the fullness of God's character in mercy. God saved disobedient Jonah from drowning.
But Jonah whines that he would rather die than see the Ninevites benefit from this gracious side of God.
Nature again cooperates with God as a bush appears, giving Jonah a shady place to rest and reconsider.
But when the bush withers and the hot sun returns, so does Jonah's anger.
It seems he can't relate to God if God can relate with mercy to those whom Jonah despises.
This big disconnect leads God to pose the challenging question that closes the the book.
You are concerned about the bush, and should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who don't know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
Jonah makes no reply.
But the question lives on for us and for all people of faith, including someday our fourth graders.
Should God be concerned about us, but not about people with whom we are in conflict, grateful for God's love and mercy? Should we expect God to withhold mercy from those we judge to be unworthy?
Can God's mercy be rationed to favor one group according to our ideas about who belongs?
God's answer to Jonah and to us is no.
This same God appears in Jesus parable about the vineyard laborers the workers hired at 9 Cannot Fathom why the landowner pays the same daily wage to those not hired until 5.
I imagine many of us can relate to the world workers frustration about this landowner's surprising payroll practices.
The first hired workers grumble about his treatment of the last hired.
They say, you have made them equal to us.
Jesus teaches that in God's economy there are no outsiders, no us and them.
Our desire to be part of God's family is what matters.
Instead of questioning God's generosity, we're called to emulate God's radical welcome to all.
God's question to Jonah, should I not be concerned about Nineveh?
Is echoed in the landowner's question to the grumblers, are you envious because I am generous?
Like Jonah, the grumblers in the vineyard are left speechless.
And yet the question won't go away.
As a people, we have long struggled to balance the scales of justice and mercy in our views of the world.
The human thumb tends to press down more readily on the justice side while the divine thumb presses more on the mercy side.
Over the years, I perhaps like you, have experienced conflicts, resentments and festering wounds that stoke my desire for justice more than my readiness to share God's mercy.
We've all had our Ninevehs.
As I look around the world, there seems to be a shortage of mercy in our guarded, siloed culture.
Indeed, there are people in power throughout the world and sadly in our country who not only lack mercy but mock and deride it, bringing fear and disruption to many lives.
At Saint Columbus, we're responding with mercy and compassion for our neighbors.
Also on my mind in this election season is the growing capsule of alienation between people of differing political perspectives.
When I was a fourth grader, very long ago, I knew ours was a country with divisions and passionate disagreements.
But in recent years that divide has become more bitter and deeply entrenched, with alarming majorities of people in both parties viewing members of the other side with hostility seen not only as mistaken but immoral, not only misguided but malevolent.
A study done at UC Irvine this year coins the term political breakup, finding that a third of Americans have lost relationships with friends, family, romantic partners, co workers over political differences.
Author David Brooks, in his book how to Know a Person, writes that our tendency toward partisan rage reflects a larger trend toward social isolation, anxiety and loss of empathy in today's low trust society.
Brooks observes that today's political division play out in nearly every institution, including the church.
I lament the gulf that has come to separate conservative leaning red church and a liberal leaning blue church.
Both express a commitment to follow Jesus, yet neither trusts the other's agenda, and I wonder if the two are more inclined to talk about one another than with one another.
Brooks book is not religious, but he proposes remedies that draw on things the church is good at doing and can foster an environment for mercy, facilitating respectful conversations, helping us to cultivate and practice empathy skills, offering safe spaces for people to tell their stories, discovering wisdom and connections that surprise us.
He champions two organizations that are trying to dial back the anxiety.
One is called Weave the Social Fabric Project, bringing community leaders together to build trust.
And the other is Braver Angels, which gathers Democrats and Republicans together. Support simply to listen and talk with one another.
I pray that when today's fourth graders are my age, both the country and the church will have discovered more common ground.
Shrinking the mercy gap begins with enlarging our circle of relationships.
As Bishop Marianne writes, the farther apart we are, the easier it becomes to treat one another as abstractions.
Then mercy easily falls away.
Mercy is a discipline that requires a commitment to stay in relationship when retreating into our safe corners would be easier.
Jonah retreats into his corner rather than talking with the Ninevites.
The grumblers in the vineyard retreat into their corners rather than talk with the late hired workers.
But imagine what they all might learn from one another.
Yet God does not give up on them and hasn't given up on you and me.
Being part of this community reassures me that to live as God's family means growing towards God, aligning my limited character with the fullness of God's character, as difficult as that can be, and seeing others in the world through God's eyes.
With mercy as wide as the sea, it may be so for us all.
Amen.
